Venom

m o n Ve Dorothy Horsfield

Venom

Pandanus Online Publications, found at the Pandanus Books web site, presents additional material relating to this book. www.pandanusbooks.com.au

Venom Dorothy Horsfield

PANDANUS BOOKS Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

© Dorothy Horsfield 2005 This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Typeset in Garamond 10.75pt on 14pt and printed by Pirion, Canberra National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Horsfield, Dorothy, 1948– . Venom. ISBN 1 74076 179 0. 1. Separated women — Australian Capital Territory — Canberra — Fiction. 2. Entomologists — Australian Capital Territory — Canberra — Fiction. 3. Man-woman relationships — Australian Capital Territory — Canberra — Fiction. 4. Spiders — Fiction. 5. Canberra (A.C.T.) — Fiction. I. Title. A823.3

Editorial inquiries please contact Pandanus Books on 02 6125 3269 www.pandanusbooks.com.au Published by Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia A Sullivan’s Creek Publication Pandanus Books are distributed by UNIREPS, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052 Telephone 02 9664 0999 Fax 02 9664 5420 Production: Ian Templeman, Duncan Beard and Emily Brissenden

For Rob and Jenny

PROLOGUE I can see it in my mind’s eye. Under the spreading eucalypt in the back garden on a warm afternoon, a baby boy is sleeping peacefully in his pram. It’s one of those Victorian, white wicker prams with high spoked wheels, robust springs and a hood to shade the child’s face. His chubby body is almost naked and fine embroidered netting has been thrown loosely over the pram to protect him. The spider comes quickly and silently, up the rim of the wheel, diagonally across the woven side, to slip effortlessly through a fold in the netting. In less than a minute, it has fatally bitten the baby, plunging its fangs relentlessly into the soft white flesh. So it goes, the odious, nightmarish funnel-web. Primeval and thick-bodied, dark as sin, its bite induces terror, breathless panic, a swift and deadly agony. Since the first recorded death of the baby boy in 1927, it is known to have killed 13 Australians. M. H. Spider Notebook

CHAPTER ONE

Mention a funnel-web and everyone has a story to tell; stories of near misses and lucky escapes. A spider is found in the bathtub, a shoe, a pile of discarded clothing, fished out of a backyard swimming pool. But a funnel-web, are you sure? Unmistakably! An angry, black spider, up on its back legs, venom glistening on its fangs. Who would’ve thought there were so many of them? The notorious Sydney funnel-web, Atrax robustus, is only one of about 40 Australian species. That’s the one that lives smack in the middle of our most densely populated city. The rest of the known species also live on the eastern seaboard, except for a couple in Tasmania, South Australia and around Canberra. Paddy assures me not enough is known about these and other possible species. M. H. Spider Notebook

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Madeleine was surprised by how easily she fell into the job. And how quickly she grew to like, to trust, Dr Patrick Jones. If she had known the damage that would be done to him and her role in it, she would never have gone near him. But how could she have anticipated the way things would go? At first, she did not even know what to make of him. And the job? ‘Arachnophile Fights Back!’ the advertisement said. ‘Assistant Needed. Outdoors work. No experience necessary.’ It had a CSIRO endorsement at the bottom. When she rang the switch and asked for Dr Patrick Jones, a voice answered at once, a quintessential Aussie voice, nasal, swallowing words, with an accent as broad as the western plains. Dr Jones was offhand to begin with, as if she were interrupting a meeting or something. She could not get much sense out of him. When she had asked what the job involved, his response was a sigh of exasperation, boredom, weariness — she wasn’t sure which. ‘Best to come see me,’ he drawled, ‘tomorrow, yes.’ A rustle of paper suggested he was consulting his appointment book. ‘At 11 o’clock, aahhh well, we can look each other over, you see? ‘You pretty keen on spiders?’ he said, as if an afterthought. He’d hung up before she could think of a reply. Overnight she could think of nothing but the possibilities of this job. Despite a science degree and her years as a researcher for this organisation or that, she was determined not to work long hours while her son was so young. Six hours a week in work that was bizarre enough

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to be interesting was a dream job. Next morning, she spent an hour or so in the library. With Josh blessedly asleep in his carry pack, she put together a few basic notes on spiders. She thought too about Dr Jones, with his Queensland drover’s voice. His catchy advertisement was no doubt irresistible. The bloke had probably had a thousand phone calls. At 10.30, with Josh on her back, Madeleine headed for the old concrete and glass building at the back of Yarralumla. It was part of the CSIRO’s Division of Forestry and was hardly any distance from her small timber house. The place was built into a hillside and flanked by tall greenblack pines. Inside, the place looked pretty decrepit, with lumpy over-polished vinyl covering the foyer floor and flaking paint on the cement walls. She wandered the corridors until she located Dr Patrick Jones in a cubbyhole of an office at the back of the building. He appeared to be doing absolutely nothing, beyond gazing out the window. She hesitated, unsure what she had expected — a queue of applicants, perhaps. His room was unbelievably cluttered, though the stacks of books and files around the walls appeared to be carefully ordered by scraps of colour-coded paper. The chipped floor-to-ceiling shelving was crammed with jam jars containing a staggering variety of spider specimens: large, small, spindly, squat, black, brown and brindle. On the wall opposite the shelves were poster-sized diagrams of spider anatomy and a framed montage of spiders and scorpions. His scratched, ink-stained desk had

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been cleared, except for his monitor and keyboard, a model of an oversized furry black spider mounted on a metal spike and a paperweight of a funnel-web perfectly preserved in a ball of transparent plastic. There was also a bunch of dusty wattle in a glass vase. Sitting at the desk, Dr Jones stretched his legs, then leaned forward clutching his face despondently. Abruptly aware of Madeleine’s presence, he jerked to his feet and reached across to shake her hand, ‘Miz Henderson, hhmmm … Paddy, Paddy Jones, eh?’ He indicated that she should take the wicker chair opposite. She drew Josh onto her knee where he curled up, thumb in mouth. Now Dr Jones appeared to be looking her over. Not so much her, as the two of them, mother and baby. She met his stare, determined that she would make no apology for choosing to bring her baby to a job interview. He shuffled nervously. ‘I’ve brought my CV,’ she announced. He skimmed through the typed sheets, then handed them back to her. ‘Well, now,’ he began, rocking back in his chair, fingertips pressed together, ‘shall I ask the questions or the other way round?’ ‘Both,’ Madeleine murmured. He was making her nervous. ‘Aahh, what kind of job is it?’ He pressed on. ‘The money is very generous.’ It wasn’t, of course. He would pay her 15 dollars an hour for five hours or so on Saturdays. Yes, but the job? Collecting spiders up in the mountains.

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Actually, he went on, to be precise, it involved clearing and resetting funnel-web spider traps. What kind of a research project, she wondered, involved catching funnel-webs? ‘You find a lot of funnel-webs round Canberra, Dr Jones?’ Her eyes slid across the shelves of specimens. ‘Paddy, eh. Best call me, Paddy.’ He shrugged. ‘There’re a couple of local species.’ ‘Poisonous?’ He began drumming his fingers on the desk. ‘Almost certainly so, I should say, yes.’ ‘So how do you clear a funnel-web spider trap?’ ‘Very carefully,’ Paddy conceded. ‘The thing is … we don’t want to go damaging the spider, you see?’ Why hadn’t she thought of that! ‘So, what’s it for, then?’ He seemed at a loss to explain, but when he began to talk she saw that she had misjudged him. He was passionately inspired by his project. ‘Bloke,’ he said, ‘in Sydney, Australian Museum, taxonomist. You know? Got an idea about classifying all the funnel-webs in the country.’ He was on his feet, busying himself in one of the cupboards. It was filled to bursting with more files in green manila folders. Paddy pulled out one and flopped it open on his desk. She saw the boxy layout of a scientific research paper. ‘Alpine funnel-web, Brindabella funnel-web,’ he said, hesitant now. ‘They reckon they’re new chaps, new species. Well, maybe so — every so often they turn up, dead male

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spiders, mangled in the snow — not a lot to go on. Wrong habitat, of course — might be a bit cold, so they say. Coastal rainforests, warm and moist, now that’s how they like it. But what if the critters’ve adapted? Hard to say — they come in all sizes and shapes, colours and what have you. Depends on the diet.’ He paused. ‘Wants a good scout around.’ She smiled, warmed by his enthusiasm. He was probably the wrong side of 50, laughter lines crumpled his face, his spiky silver hair was shaped in what her father used to call a basin-cut. He was rangy, loose-limbed, his body all knobbly bones and angles. He looked fit, sinewy, an outdoors type, his skin as brown as vintage whisky. On the phone, she had imagined he would be different — someone more charmless and egotistical, perhaps. But talking to her, his abrasive twang had softened so that she wondered whether it was an occasional affectation. She shifted the weight of Josh on her knee, caressing the soft silk of his hair with her chin. Paddy closed the folder then leaned against the cupboard, massaging his cheeks as if assessing how well he had shaved. ‘Kiddie, 11 or 12 years old, grew up on the South Coast, saw my first funnel-web … At that time, in the Fifties, there were no records, not many good records.’ He hesitated again so that she guessed he had planned to explain this to her but was he making himself clear? ‘So you found the first South Coast funnel-web?’ she prodded. Her question unsettled him. ‘Well, yes and no … other people, you know … well, I remember thinking this was it …

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and then later, you know, later it was identified, positively identified.’ She looked away uncomfortably, but he was already seizing the obscure thread of his words. ‘It was the spiders round the house — not just the funnel-webs and the trapdoors — whatever — I always wanted to find out more. You know what I first remember? As a child, watching … watching a mass of spiderlings take off from a rosebush. They cast their silk to catch the wind.’ She saw it so clearly: the soft velvety roses thick with little black spiders. A sinister image, surely, and yet he seemed to imply otherwise. ‘I had no idea spiders could fly,’ she said, to hide the confusion of her thoughts. Paddy frowned and she guessed that he found her question childish. ‘No, no, not fly. They float. A line of web is caught up and carries them on the wind currents.’ He was being pedantic now. ‘Up to 2,000 metres — it’s how they go from place to place, cross the oceans.’ ‘I see,’ she said, managing another small smile. Obviously, he enjoyed startling people with information. ‘While back,’ he went on, ‘the CSIRO initiated a project, controlled burning, valley up the Brindabellas, to have a bit of a look at alterations in the water table. I went in afterwards, you know, the place black as a battlefield, and I couldn’t help noticing — well, they were pretty hard to miss — there were the ground-dwellers. They came through the whole thing — huntsmen, trapdoors, and … and the funnel-webs.’

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That seemed to be the gist of it. ‘So how many specimens have you collected so far?’ He laughed, surprising her. ‘None. Not a one!’ Then, heading for the door, folder tucked under his arm, he signalled for her to follow. ‘Now then, that shouldn’t bother a lively young lady like yourself!’ Heading along the corridors to the photostat room, ‘to get you something to go on with’, Paddy surprised her again by lifting Josh from her arms. He carried him face outwards with one hand cupped under the child’s buttocks. Like a human mobile chair, Madeleine thought, wondering how long it would be before Josh began to squirm. At the photocopying machine, Paddy placed the toddler on the floor at his feet. Then he moved quickly, assembling the material and presenting it to her in a tidy pile. And that, it seemed, was that. Does this mean I’ve got the job, Madeleine wanted to ask? When he shook her hand in a peculiar old-world way, she ducked her head to conceal her dismay. Now he was looking at her in alarm. ‘I thought you could have a look at those and we’ll talk again in a day or so.’ He bent to grasp Josh in a gentle goodbye. Mistaking the gesture, the little boy raised his arms to be picked up again. Delighted, Paddy swung him off his feet and pressed him clumsily to his chest. Josh drew up his knees and pushed away with his fists. Instantly, Paddy lowered him to the floor, so that Josh clutched Madeleine’s legs in bewilderment.

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Paddy pressed the tips of his fingers together, looking past Madeleine at some point on the wall beyond. ‘My wife can’t stand spiders,’ he announced, ‘won’t have ‘em in the house.’ He drew breath, stared again at Madeleine and her little boy. He’s trying to make up his mind about me, she thought. Then, he was all fidgets and shuffles. ‘We get going Saturday arvo, eh? Let me see now, you better ring me up. That okay, yep?’ Relieved, Madeleine felt her face grow hot. She settled Josh on her hip. ‘Well, sure — I’ll be in touch.’ ‘Good.’ He was ushering her towards the door. Still, she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Did you get a lot of applicants?’ For the first time, Paddy smiled, cocking his head and fixing her with an endearing mockery. ‘Hundreds!’ ———— Walking home through the spring chill, sifting through the interview, Madeleine thought what an awkward man he was, cloistered in his burrow. Spiders, it seemed, Paddy could handle — people, well, that was different. There was a kind of purity about guys like him, holding the world at arm’s length in the interests of scientific pursuit. No, hang on, that was a bit fanciful. He was jumpy, talking about spiders and not wanting to look her in the eye. He’d been all for a cuddle with Josh — up you go, down you go. And he had called her … lively and, despite herself, she was flattered.

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Thinking about Paddy, the job and the new directions it might hold for her, she did not go home, not immediately. Instead, she wandered the streets, as she did most afternoons after Josh’s nap, making her way down to the park on a backwater of the lake. Weekdays there was seldom anyone about, but there were children’s climbing frames, tree houses and a circular concrete waterworks. The park was her discovery, a haven of sparse bushland, whose twisted old gum trees filtered the sun into a soft dusty light. She lowered Josh into the sandpit while she sat on the wall, elbows on her knees. He loved to play in the dry soft sand, perched with his back marvellously straight, his fat tummy a perfect arc from below his chin. He crunched the sand in his fingers and threw handfuls to the sky, his face set with grave concentration. Since Josh’s birth, time had slowed down. Motherhood, she learned soon enough, was lonely and exhausting. Still, she was the first to admit she was one of the lucky ones. She did not really want for much; she had her savings from her last job and the occasional cheque from the rellies; and Doug paid for the basics, ‘to give her space to get into mothering’. And, from the first moment, she’d loved her child beyond comprehending. She filled each day with the tedium of washing and cleaning, playgroup, a walk to the shops, to the playground, the library. Most evenings, she read pulp novels, crime thrillers by the metre, and, when she tired of them, pop archaeology — the search for King Solomon’s Mines, the Curse of Tutankhamen or true-life

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adventure stories, a trek to the North Pole, a botched attempt at Everest, walking in the Hindu Kush, escapist tales of heroism and exotic places. It was the weekends that stretched like a desert, the restless afternoons spilling into pointlessness. On Saturdays, Doug came and took Josh away, a shared custody arrangement that lasted until the end of Sunday. As yet, she did not really know anyone in Canberra, beyond weather chat at the supermarket checkout, a nodded greeting to neighbours. The winter had been the worst: cold and silent, nights of just her and a sleeping baby, turning over in her mind the scrap-ends of her life. Outside Josh’s small beacon of light, her life was muddled and directionless. Abruptly, she leaned forward to scoop up her fine little boy, tickling him till he chuckled, hugging him tightly. Now she meant to see if she could fit a job around her days.

CHAPTER TWO

According to Paddy’s research material, the funnel-web is probably the world’s most dangerous spider, more venomous than the black widow, which, after all, is closely related to the Australian red-back whose bite is unlikely to have killed anyone. What else? A funnel-web is a particularly ferocious spider and attacks an intruder rather than scurrying away. It rears up on its back legs in that well-known posture from pestcontrol ads, grasps its victims and stabs them repeatedly with large needle-sharp fangs. Nor is it easy to brush away a frenzied spider. Its fangs are strong enough to penetrate a finger nail or leather boot. But it’s the venom you really have to worry about. It’s absolutely and uniquely hideous. Highly acidic, it causes

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intense agony at the site of the spider’s bite. It also contains an agent that promotes its swift dispersion through your body. And, if that’s not enough, it contains a neurotoxin, atraxotoxin, which attacks your nerves and tissues, causing convulsions, oedema, critical disturbances in blood pressure and heart rate, coma and finally death. One-fifth of a milligram of atraxotoxin — equal to about two grains of salt — will kill a healthy adult. So at least I know what to watch out for. Actually, at this stage, funnel-webs seem more interesting than frightening. Maybe in a subliminal way I’m buoyed by Paddy’s enthusiasm and his scorn for the sort of tabloid press that spiders have been subjected to. Hard to avoid, of course. M. H. Spider Notebook

Madeleine had lived in Canberra since just before Josh’s birth. She was wiry, a broomstick handle, scarecrow thin, her mother said. These days she pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail out of the way of Josh’s grasping fingers. Her face was pretty enough, people often said as much, though

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peppered with freckles and so pale. It had been months since she’d paid much attention to her appearance. Instead, she got around the place in baggy jumpers, tracksuits and scuffed runners, anything warm or comfortable. Her wardrobe was full of clothes she’d decided she could no longer be bothered with: the hearty woollen coat, like a Russian army greatcoat, which Doug had bought for her last winter, linen slacks, soft shirts, dresses of silk and satin and lace. They belonged to that other wounded part of her life. She hadn’t chosen the move to Canberra, no way. Swollen with pregnancy, she had finally yielded to Doug’s pleading. He had wanted it every way: her presence, his baby, above all, the job with the federal pollies. Think of it, he had said, clean air, no dog shit on the footpaths, money in our pockets. Easy. Well, isn’t it? Christ, he said, there are a helluva lot of interesting things happening there. And a job, something for her to do? She had counted on returning to work when the maternity leave ran out. Well, she had better get her priorities sorted out, he said. Right now she was going to be looking after his kid, wasn’t she? Time enough to get a fix on the rest of it. She had given in — because she knew he would go anyway, because those last months of pregnancy had left her listless and needy, because there they might work it all out, even learn to love each other. More fool her. New place, new baby. So it goes. From the start she could not make much sense of where she was. Most days the wide sky was grey, the air fuzzy with dust and mountain mists. She found herself adrift. Doug was gone

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early and came home late, heady with it all, the thrust and parry of ministerial power play, with a world that was increasingly remote. She made up a bed in the spare room so that he would leave her undisturbed. It was the first step, of course, of course. But, in all honesty, it was after Josh’s birth that she began to seriously detach herself from Doug. Night feeds, exhaustion — her love affair with the baby left her no time for anything else. It was Doug who finally suggested a trial separation, grasping her shoulders, making her pay attention with that queer intensity of his. ‘Until you get all this sorted,’ he said. ‘Go for it,’ she said, looking away, telling herself it was too late to care. Months later and she was still here; for Doug’s sake, because there was no doubting his love for Josh, for the baby, for broken families, 1980s style, juggling the demands of personal fulfilment and part-time parenting. Living apart, they had become better mates, at least that’s what Doug said. If occasionally they found themselves in bed together, for Madeleine it assuaged her guilt — for not being able to love him. Really she could not summon the energy to go anywhere else. She told herself she did need a little clarity. Life, love, motherhood and muddle — our lives are supposed to teach us who we are. Right now, even a measure of retrospective wisdom would help. ————

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At the last minute, Madeleine was forced to ring Paddy and postpone her first Saturday on the job. There had been an urgent message from her brother. Her father was ill — a heart attack. He was in intensive care, maybe wouldn’t make it. She was distraught, her voice subdued and Paddy was quick in his sympathy. She went home that day, that morning, with an aeroplane ticket bought on the plastic and baby Josh left in Doug’s care, a list of reminders taped to the fridge. Her father? Dying? It was unthinkable. Only this week, two days before, he had rung her. As always, he shouted down the telephone, like someone cooeeing across a couple of paddocks. ‘Madeleine? Eh? How’s, how’s it going?’ ‘No, wait, let me guess,’ she said. ‘My doting male parent? So how’s what going?’ He was unflinching. ‘Whatever. You getting up on your high horse about something?’ She began to gabble. ‘It’s okay, it’s fine. No, really.’ ‘You settling in?’ It was new to her, his querulous insistence. ‘Yes, of course, I’m not joking. Canberra’s lovely. I can’t believe how good it is. You should come down and see for yourself.’ ‘I might just do that.’ His next words were a long time coming. ‘Have a look at that grandson of mine.’ He was fretting, sentimental, thinking of his male grandchild. But Madeleine had mellowed too after the wars and skirmishes of her adolescence.

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‘You could drive down,’ she insisted. ‘first chance you get.’ Pleased, he did not know what to say. ‘Well then … well then …’ ‘Go on, soon as you can.’ ———— As arranged, she met her older brother, Alexander — Xander, at the transit terminal in Sydney and they flew on together to Newcastle, landing on a strip of tarmac carved out of the bush 20 minutes from the city. They took a taxi straight to the hospital. Madeleine had thought to catch the vintage ferry across the harbour but instead they skirted around it, crossing upriver. Months before, the earthquake had shifted the city’s foundations and the central business district looked like a war zone. All around were demolition teams, scaffolding, ruined sites draped in canvas sheeting. Road access to the hospital had been fenced off and they walked the last hundred metres. For as long as Madeleine could remember, the old building with its curved red brick walls and banks of windows like an ocean liner had held pride of place in the city. It had been built where the main street began directly opposite the beach and it had a grandstand view of the endless ocean and the queues of container ships and oil tankers waiting to get into the port. Now a jagged, perilous crack had left the main wing beyond

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repair. In the parking lot, the wreckage of iron-frame beds, other furniture and office equipment lay discarded and weather-damaged. Lifting her head, Madeleine watched patients in pyjamas, nursing staff, people appearing and disappearing along the balconies above. But at street level there was no one, only silence and ruin. She felt Xander’s hand on her shoulder, saw his grimace of distress, which was the beginning of tears. In a kind of dread, they began to walk the hospital’s perimeter, finally locating a basement entrance from which the concrete fire stairs led up to the wards and to the intensive-care section. Her father, long-limbed, heavy-boned, his skin as ash grey as the sea beyond the window, filled the narrow bed. He appeared to be naked under a cotton blanket. Madeleine saw that a drip was attached to his arm. The wires patched to his chest were connected to a monitor. His eyes were closed. He might have been dozing, though his forehead was creased in an effort of concentration or pain. Behind his head, the electronic graph beat out the irregular rhythms of his heart. Madeleine leant against the wall, longing for this not to be happening. Folding her arms, hugging herself, she was careful not to look at her father again. She glanced at her brother. Xander was trembling and shaking his head. ‘Fucking hell, fucking bloody hell.’ Madeleine stroked his back. She felt inept, as if she were merely performing the formalities of comfort. She wanted to shake him, force him to put aside such grief. Crying had to come later, not now, not now.

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They sat on opposite sides of the bed, mostly in silence, waiting for their father to wake and talk to them. ———— Late in the afternoon, they went to their home. The place was in turmoil. Everyone was gathered in the lounge. Aunty Gwynne was there, shrunken in an armchair with her stick clasped between her knees. Lillian, her daughter, sat across the room talking to the old fella from over the road, whose name Madeleine could never remember. There were others too, familiar faces, a couple of nieces, her mother’s cousin, Mick. Resolutely, her brother greeted them all, shaking hands and kissing cheeks, while Madeleine followed him, nodding like a sideshow puppet. As soon as she could, she ducked away to the kitchen. She found Bella, the Italian woman from next door, clearing up tea cups and cake dishes. Bella quickly shook the water from her hands and turned to hug her. When Madeleine stiffened, she dropped her arms in embarrassment. ‘Eh, Madeleina?’ Madeleine had not meant to be rude. ‘Do you need a hand?’ Bella shook her head. ‘You must go to see your mother. She is outside, in the yard.’ Madeleine looked in the open garden shed, then found her mother at the side of the house. Everywhere there was evidence of her father’s home handyman work: the new

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wire-mesh fence with its absurdly sturdy bolts, the cement path, smooth and scrubbed white, a high side gate. An extension ladder was propped against the wall in the narrow walkway on one side of the house. Her mother was standing beside it, balancing on the fence. She was clearing pine needles out of the guttering, wearing thick blood-red rubber gloves and men’s overalls. She had tied a scarf round her head, knotted at the front like a charlady. She was working fast, scooping up swampy clumps and stuffing them into a garbage bag. Madeleine stared up at her, like a child considering a grown-up’s unfathomable oddities. ‘Oi,’ she called, only half-joking. ‘Wot’s wiv yu, then?’ Her mother peered shortsightedly at her, then, tucking the plastic bag under her arm, stepped onto the ladder and briskly backed down it. Shaking off the ghastly gloves, she took Madeleine’s hand between hers. She was agitated. ‘It’s that Bella. Blasted tree dumping its rubbish all over the place. You’d think a person like that’ve a bit more thought and consideration.’ Madeleine put her arm round her mother. She was a tall woman, stiff-backed and strong, though age had rounded her shoulders, shrivelled and stained her flesh. Her face was fiercely self-righteous, her body trembling. There were other emotions, too — barely concealed hurt, confusion, fearful sorrow. ‘Have you said anything to Bella about it?’ Madeleine asked, wishing she could find the right words to calm and comfort.

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Her mother threw up her hands. ‘You know what your Dad’s like, worrying himself silly about the rust.’ Madeleine had never felt so helpless in the face of her mother’s misery. The she-oak next door had always been there, its grey trunk gnarled and twisted, towering magnificently hither and thither, though for most of the year its branches looked half-dead. A tree to survive the ravages. ‘It needs to be cut back,’ her mother persisted, ‘right level with the fence.’ Now she was arguing with invisible protesters. ‘Ugly brute of a thing. It doesn’t belong.’ She gave one of her theatrical shivers of disgust. ‘I can’t count the times your father’s been up the ladder. Enough is enough. Lord knows, we’ve tried to keep the place up. It never stops. He’s out in the yard — your Dad is — every day of his life.’ Madeleine strove to follow her mother’s blunted logic, sensing only the currents of her distress. It was essential the tree be felled, uprooted, obliterated. It deserved to be. It was slipshod, useless, blighted, driving them into their graves with overwork and worry. All at once Madeleine was exhausted. Her mother’s deflected intensities always had this effect on her. ‘It seems a shame,’ she said, irritably, ‘to chop it off like that. I’ve … I’ve got used to it.’ It was her mother’s cue to become angry. Her daughter — contrary, as always. Instead, she eyed her patronisingly, taking in the drawn face, stubborn and averted. ‘Yes, of

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course, I do see what you mean. But it’ll bush up again, darling. They always do.’ Then, over-brightly, making Madeleine wince, ‘Oh, couple of old fussy-pots, your Dad and me.’ She was striding swiftly towards the backdoor with Madeleine in tow. ‘I suppose that handsome brother of yours is inside, buttering up the henparty.’ She gave an exaggerated sigh of exasperation. ‘There wouldn’t want to be too many days like today, I can tell you.’ What an impossible woman her mother was. ‘You’re a pillar of strength, Mum.’ Her mother stopped in her tracks, giving a low pleased chuckle. ‘I have my moments,’ she conceded, ‘mind you, I’m not too sure today’s been one of them.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Madeleine said, miserably. ———— Over dinner before returning to the hospital, with just the three of them eating fish and chips straight from the newspaper wrapping, Xander announced, ‘Dad was really glad to see us.’ Into the silence, Madeleine said the first thing that came into her head: ‘How could you tell?’ ‘He was,’ Xander insisted. ‘I was just wondering how you knew.’ It was a stupid thing to say. ‘No, I mean it,’ Xander said, shifting uneasily so that Madeleine saw that above all he wanted to reassure himself.

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‘He smiled when he opened his eyes and saw us.’ He fell silent, straightening his back, hands palm down on the table, struggling to carry the burden for them all. Again, Madeleine felt her heart wrench for him and yet she could not find the words to say so. She remembered as a child she had followed where he led, had sat stubbornly with her back against his bedroom door, sobbing up a storm when he would not come out to play with her. Now, as always, it was Xander who was articulating the appropriate sentiments and, despite the strange aching disorder of her thoughts, she was grateful for it. He understood the common currency — what they should and did feel. Later, over coffee, he explained that he had come up expecting the worst and was relieved when he saw the old bastard. ‘I thought Dad looked terrible,’ she said, with the tactlessness of a dumb kid. But surely the worst wasn’t over? Her mother sat tight-lipped. Her brother was patient. ‘No, he had his wits about him.’ He was appealing to his mother. ‘I said to him, “Dad, most people get their kicks from booze and dope, not oxygen tubes stuck up your nose.” I said to him, “Some people’ll do anything to get attention.”’ Her mother looked at him as if he were mad. ‘Listen,’ Madeleine jumped in, ‘this is vintage Dad. I said to him, “Look, it’s not tiring you out, having us here?” “No,” he said, “you just sit right there and keep an eye on me.”’ Xander laughed, loud and false. ‘Yep, that’s vintage Dad.’

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It was her mother’s resolute, disdainful silence that made Madeleine say, ‘I think he still might … die.’ Xander sat without moving, though his eyes were wild with the emotion of it. When her mother began to speak, Madeleine felt she had hardly been listening to them. ‘I just don’t know what brought it on,’ she said, leaning forward with queer urgency. ‘By golly, I thought he was gone, you know? He was sitting right there on the couch, his eyes were rolling, he was in such a sweat. Shaking, his whole body shaking and tears streaming down his face. I thought it was the end.’ She paused, looking carefully at Madeleine and her brother. Had they any idea what she had been through? ‘“Honey,’ I said, “Len.”’ She slapped her cheeks, one side to the other, showing how she had tried to bring him round. Xander was on his feet now, wrapping his arms round his mother. ‘You did real well, Mum.’ She patted his arm, leant her head against him, sharing her distress. Madeleine sat at the opposite side of the long dining table, fingertips pressing her temples, eyes bright with unshed tears. Like the wallflower at the wake.

CHAPTER THREE

I wouldn’t want to make too much of it, but I’m finding out a lot about spiders that I can identify with. Even envy. Most of them lead such self-sufficient lives. They pass peaceful unassuming days spinning their intricate mandalas. They feed or fuck without sentimentality or shame or guilt or grief. They are not bound by love or destroyed by loss. Some of their courtship rituals could be described as romantic, at least from my human perspective. For instance, the male orb-weaver strums his song of seduction by plucking strands of the female’s web in an eight-legged rhythm. After that, he tickles and strokes her tummy, until she falls into a submissive swoon. The flamboyant male jumping spider performs a comical spider dance, strutting back and forth, waving his legs and shaking his belly. He can keep it up for hours.

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A crab spider is much less patient, tiptoeing up to the female, then deftly wrapping her in silk. The European nursery-web spider captures a fly and ceremoniously presents it to the female, gift-wrapped in web. But he sometimes cheats, gobbling up the fly and offering its dry husk or a pebble instead. Paddy’s notes don’t say how the females react to the chisellers and con men. Except to point out that spiders rarely cannibalise the male after mating. Black widows sometimes do. And red-backs. And funnel-webs. M. H. Spider Notebook

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Paddy picked Madeleine up at exactly 1pm the next Saturday. He did not bother with polite greetings, just signalled his arrival with a couple of honks of the horn. Climbing into his rust bucket of a Land Rover, the first thing she noticed was that the back seat was loaded to the roof with green plastic funnels and empty three-litre pineapple juice tins. With her day-pack between her feet, she surveyed the stacks — 20 or so shiny new tins. Behind them was a cardboard box containing a couple of dozen Vegemite jars with perforated plastic lids. There were also quarter-metresquare sheets of galvanised iron, two shovels and an assortment of smaller garden tools. ‘You plan on catching a lot of spiders?’ She had to speak loudly to be heard above the bone-shuddering roar of the engine. Paddy responded with a quick nod so that she still wasn’t sure he’d heard. The second thing she noticed was that he was an appalling driver. He was up to 100 kilometres an hour in a blink, crunching the gears and lurching waywardly from lane to lane. He was so fidgety, one minute sinking back against the seat in casual abandon, the next hunching forward to grip the steering wheel with new resolve. And all at breakneck speed. How her father would have railed against such abuse of a machine. Cars had always demanded his most loving respect. ‘Women,’ he’d once snarled at Madeleine, ‘I gotta watch your mother every second. Else she’ll run the engine into the bloody ground.’

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Madeleine cupped her chin in her hand. A severe heart attack, a miracle of survival, had been the diagnosis and already, at his insistence, her father was home again, in his own bed. ‘Hospitals are very dangerous places,’ he told them, ‘disease everywhere you look.’ All week, images of him, memories, the things she should and would say to him, ran on a sub-track through Madeleine’s mind. Unfinished business — unfinishable. She wondered whether forever after, her love for him would be woven through her life in a patchwork of small agonies. ‘You okay?’ Paddy called. He tapped her knee gently. She shifted in her seat. ‘Sure, fine.’ ‘Dad still on the mend?’ Madeleine nodded, glancing at Paddy. At least he seemed to be enjoying himself, dressed for the part in a tattered Driza-Bone, skivvy and dungarees, and hefty mud-encrusted walking boots. She knew so little about him and did not think he would take kindly to her asking. He had made it clear spiders were a new direction for him. What else? He’d mentioned his wife at home, who didn’t seem to share his weekend enthusiasms. And children? He’d been keen enough on Josh. Perhaps his own children were already grown up and somewhere else. And he was watching her too, with sidelong looks through the muddle of his driving. It was a considered look, taking in all of her, toes to nose, but underneath illuminated by a puzzling intensity. She might have resented such scrutiny from anyone else. But she guessed

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he meant no harm, was probably simply curious about her as he seemed to be about everything else in this world. He had brought something to show her, he said, his eyes crumpled in gentle teasing. It was the classic shot, flipped onto her lap from a folder tucked between the seats — a five- by eight-inch black and white photograph of a funnel-web ready to strike the finger of some poor unwitting sod. It had reared up into a vertical stance, fangs protruding and a globule of venom hanging from each one. It was stark metallic black against a grey background. On closer inspection, Madeleine realised that the ‘finger’ was in fact part of a stuffed rubber glove. Nevertheless, the spider looked enraged, odious and malevolent. ‘Just part of your standard briefing material for apprehensive new researchers?’ Paddy grinned and plucked back the photo. ‘Believe me,’ she said, more game now, ‘I’d recognise your old funnel-web anywhere.’ Paddy pounced. ‘Would you! Would you, now. Ha!’ Then, just as abruptly, his face softened, though his next question had the priggishness of an exam interrogator. ‘How, precisely, would you identify a funnel-web?’ She had read his background material, made her own notes and of course wasn’t at all sure. ‘I guess what I meant is that if I saw a … a species of Atrax resembling that photograph, I wouldn’t be hanging round for the positive identification.’

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‘Quite,’ Paddy said, ‘quite.’ He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, ignoring, Madeleine decided, her lame response. ———— Namadgi National Park, three-quarters of an hour’s drive south of Canberra, would do for starters — that’s what Paddy had said on the phone. In the winter, snow fell there and lay crusted in sunless corners until well into the spring. The road rose steeply into the mountains through a narrow valley flanked on one side by pine forest and by dense bush on the other. At one end, it was almost a gorge with high granite cliffs and a waterfall falling sharply into a shallow creek. Looking back, Madeleine saw that below the valley the countryside spread wide into rocky farmland, sheep country, covered in straw-like stubble. And, in the far distance, through the haze, she could glimpse the outskirts of Canberra. They went further and higher, with the road banking and twisting and the bush pressing in like a canopy. Paddy hit every tight corner too fast and braked hard in a flurry of bad driving. Behind her, his load of tins and glasses shifted and clanked. Madeleine braced her feet against the floor in an effort to stop herself being thrown around. ‘You ought to slow down,’ Madeleine burst out. ‘It’s bloody dangerous.’ Paddy’s response was to sit up a little straighter, hands aligned at two o’clock on the steering wheel. And, though his driving did not improve, he did slow down.

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They went on in silence, Madeleine with arms folded testily and Paddy with a look of innocent forbearance. He was the first to speak. ‘Well, now, my wife tells me I’m not such a good driver.’ ‘Nope, you’re not,’ she assured him. ‘Too fast, poor concentration, no sense of anticipation.’ Madeleine thought she could hear the echoes of his wife’s tirades. ‘Yep, I guess that’s about right.’ ‘Are you suggesting a spirited young woman such as yourself could improve on my performance?’ He sounded so pompous and aggrieved, she smiled. ‘I’m certain of it.’ He smiled too, no offence taken. When his face softened, Madeleine believed she glimpsed his kinder, humbler self. ‘Just say the word and I’ll give you a demo,’ she said airily. ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he said, drumming his fingers, pretending his thoughts had already drifted onto other matters. ———— They passed a resort complex with a restaurant, picnic grounds and a metal bobsled track zigzagging down a hillside. Just the place for Josh — she would mention it to Doug — a birthday outing with Mum and Dad. She pushed the thought aside, the familiar jab of anxiety reminding her

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how Doug would jump at the chance to play the happy couple — at least for a day. A kilometre further on, Paddy pulled into a parking area. After a pause, he manoeuvred himself out of the Land Rover, arched his back and stamped his feet. Then he began to busy himself, checking his pockets, adjusting the shoulder straps on his day-pack, rummaging through the equipment in the back of the Land Rover. Madeleine got out and stretched slowly. It was very cold, three or four degrees, probably less when you considered the chill factor from the stiff wind that bent the eucalypts against the steep hillsides. Looking around, she thought of the drabness of the bush, its grey-greens and insipid browns denoting a place of tenacious desolation. For Paddy, no doubt, it was different. He would have made it his business to know the local ecology, each bit of flora and fauna, climate, geological formations. She followed him along the road and up the embankment where a signpost marked the start of a walking trail. They began to climb, following the zigzagging track through scrub and around clumps of granite boulders. The bush closed in, with the sounds of the road below quickly muted by the creak and hiss of the trees in the wind. Madeleine tramped along with her head down, watching her footing on the rocks, the tree roots and muddy slopes. The sudden silence, the rustling emptiness of the place, the claustrophobia, weighed on her spirits. Paddy swung along in front of her with hardly a backward glance.

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Gradually, the trail levelled and snaked along the side of a ridge, then turned steeply down to the edge of a swampy open field. Devoid of trees and bathed in light, it looked as if it had been deliberately cleared for grazing. The air, which seemed to seep up from the frosty ground, was bracingly cold. Alongside the clearing, in the murky shadow of the hill, the path had disintegrated into ice and sludge. Madeleine sank to her shoelaces, then, slipping and sliding like a slapstick comic, she ended up on her backside in the freezing, glutinous mud. Biting her lip to stop herself crying out, she hauled herself into a crouch. Trying to stand up, she slipped again, her feet zipping from under her as she thumped into the mud. Paddy doubled back quick smart to help her. ‘Tsk, tsk tsk,’ he said, holding her steady and even producing a towel from his backpack to blot some of the slime from her jeans. But he was more practical than sympathetic. ‘Best to keep walking, the blood circulating, y’know? Dry off in no time.’ On they went, Paddy with invigorated, sure-footed strides and Madeleine much less confidently. Now she was uncomfortably cold. Though it wasn’t much after two o’clock, the shadows were already lengthening, the wintry sun flickering palely through the trees. On the far side of the clearing, the trail divided, with a left-hand turn one way, the other continuing along the escarpment to their destination. Paddy stopped, took off his pack and sat down on a log, while Madeleine caught up.

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‘Look here, young woman,’ he said, ‘you bring a change of clothes?’ Chilled and irritable, Madeleine turned away. It had not occurred to her to bring extra clothing for an afternoon in the bush. She thought of his carefully assembled equipment in the back of the Land Rover. Next time, she would make a list, be the hotshot assistant, as was apparently expected of her. She hugged herself peevishly. Paddy had his head down, rummaging in his pack. He pulled out a pair of woollen hiking trousers and a jumper. ‘Put this lot on, eh.’ Catching the look on her face, he drew back. Fidgeting, he half-folded the clothing, rolling them in his arms. Awkwardly, he presented them to her again, a meagre gift. Relenting, she murmured her thanks. She would duck into the bush to put them on but when he deliberately turned away, she began to undress. Hopping on one foot with her naked leg half in the dry trousers, she saw him sneak a look. A look, not a glance, eyeing her off. It was unexpected and she was conscious of her pale thighs, about as shapely as garden rakes. Now he was fussing with his gear again, clearly embarrassed, so that she too felt her face redden. She quickly pulled on the jumper. Perhaps to make amends, he showed her his ordinance survey map and she saw that below them, invisible through the trees, lay the Orroral Valley; Square Rock was a lookout point almost at the head of the valley. Paddy tapped the paper, then pointed back along the trail. ‘Smokers Flat, you see?’

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‘Should be Stumblers’ Lament,’ she suggested, to make light of the unease between them. Paddy said nothing, just glanced at her quickly, taking her measure. They were standing close together, heads bent over the map. She could feel his warmth, smell his sweat. She threaded her fingers through her hair and pushed it back from her face. ‘Freezing cold and not a rotten log in sight,’ she said, archly. ‘Your funnel-webs would hate it here?’ ‘Maybe so, maybe so.’ He slowly refolded the map as if lost to his thoughts. Then gently: ‘Well now, sounds like just the reason to keep going?’ ‘Ay, Ay, Wing Commander,’ she said, ———— Twenty minutes more of easy walking and they were almost there. In her stride now, Madeleine had to acknowledge that her spirits were beginning to lift, swinging through the bush, uphill and down. Paddy’s good humour was infectious. Reaching the top of an incline, he began to sing in a rich baritone, Paul Robeson songs, ‘Life is a burden of labour, da dah da da dah neighbour’, the Welsh national anthem — ‘Where e’er I roam, though far from my home’, belting them out, the words half-forgotten. ‘To scare off the snakes,’ he said, all corny mischief. On the sloping approach to a stack of small and large boulders, Paddy announced their destination, ‘Square Rock’,

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as if it were something extraordinary, warning her in the same breath that they did not have the time to linger there. He led her round the rocks and up a metal ladder onto a flat platform. From there they climbed higher to the top of a huge, though precarious-looking rock that formed part of a sheer wall, plunging vertically into the valley. In one direction in the misty distance she could see the mountains that rolled on to the snowfields, in the other, 30 kilometres away, Paddy said, was Canberra’s suburban sprawl and highrises. But, for all the drama of the vista, Madeleine retreated quickly into the shelter of the rocks, away from the powerful snowy wind that cut through her clothing and blew the words from her mouth. She guessed Paddy felt the same. He showed her to a sunny spot, like a rocky burrow amid the boulders, ‘for a quick smoko’. He knocked up a cup of tea on a small camp stove while she sat, knees drawn up, eyes closed with her face lifted to the sun, feeling its warmth on her skin. She roused herself when Paddy touched her shoulder and handed her a steaming mug. What could be finer than this? He was sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, balancing his tea between his hands. He looked lithe and weathered, not a good-looking man, but an interesting one. He seemed preoccupied after his jauntiness on the hike. Sipping her tea, she was only half-aware she was watching him. Indeed, her scrutiny seemed to unsettle him so that he emptied the remains of his mug into the dirt and began to pack up. ‘Shall we go?’ he said politely, to mask, she thought,

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some obscure annoyance. Then he was off, with loping strides while she threw on her pack and scrambled after him. ‘What say,’ she called to his retreating back, ‘we have a conversation about what happens next? Presumably, you’ve got a few ideas where to find these famous spiders of yours?’ He pulled up and turned to face her. ‘Ideas, yes.’ She shrugged. ‘Right.’ Without another word, he was off again, though 10 minutes later he stopped at a clump of rocks for ‘a look-see’. He told her bossily to look in every cranny and crevice for webs, scrappy messy ones, vaguely elongated with anchor lines and clear entrance holes, holes plural, adding almost as an afterthought that she must go carefully, of course. She was sure he must be putting her on. Still, she went through with the charade, gingerly peering in dark cracks. She pulled a strip of bark from a snow gum and was startled by a flat-bodied huntsman, waving its legs lethargically. The trunk had patches of scribbly lines like someone with an unsteady hand had practised cursive writing on it. Looking around, she saw that all the trees bore the same cryptic message. Paddy would surely know what caused it. She heard his shout of alarm, almost a scream, with an edge to it that sent her scrambling and scrabbling across the rocks, calling his name in a hoarse voice. It was long seconds before she found him, a good way off the track behind a clump of boulders. He was spread-eagled halfway up a four-metre-high rock face. He shouted again, ‘Good Christ.’ She could not fathom what was the matter, beyond

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the fact that he might be ludicrously stuck. The tips of his boots clung to a tiny ledge, an arm reached out to a small bulge of rock. She saw him swiftly pull his right hand out of a crack that ran down the rock and shove it in further down in a valiant effort to stop himself falling backwards. An instant later, he pulled it out and clung on up the top again — back and forth his hand went in witless panic. She made out the tatters of a web and guessed that the spider was swiftly pursuing its clumsy intruder up and down the chimney of its burrow. Abruptly, with a glance at the ground below, Paddy put both hands flat on the rock, then leapt backwards. He landed heavily in a half-crouch, staggering back and forth until he fell over sideways. Madeleine thought to help him to his feet, swallowing an impulse to laugh. He waved her aside and stood up stiffly, ‘I didn’t find your little tumble quite so funny.’ ‘Oh, hell,’ she gabbled. ‘It’s a hopeless weakness I’ve got, y’know, laughing at other people’s misfortunes.’ Paddy’s face became thoughtful, his eyes drifting over the rock face of his mishap. From the outside pocket of his all-purpose backpack, he produced a screw-top glass jar and a pair of long tweezers. He put the jar carefully on a rock. Tucking the tweezers in his jacket pocket and with a measured look at the rock, he scaled it again. While Madeleine watched with alarm, he poked the tweezers into the black crack and brought out an angry, struggling spider. Holding it high above his head he leapt backwards, this

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time landing with the agility of a mountain goat. In a jiffy, the spider was imprisoned in the jar with the lid firmly sealed. This time, it was an impressive performance. Together, they inspected the spider. It was dark-brown, the right size and the right shape, Madeleine thought. ‘You reckon this is it?’ Paddy kept looking, the jar cradled in his hand like a treasure. ‘Good heavens, how should I know?’ He was mocking her, Madeleine was certain of it. ‘Damp soil and leaves,’ he said in his pompous way, ‘is what this little chap needs right now. Else it won’t be making it back to civilisation.’ Madeleine frowned. ‘Moisture,’ Paddy insisted, ‘or it will die very quickly.’ ‘I see.’ Admonished, she remembered something to that effect in Paddy’s notes. ———— They headed for home, with the sky silver-white as the sun dipped and darkness gathered. Still, they were back at the parking lot well before nightfall. Paddy placed the precious jar in a wooden specimen frame that was screwed to the boot of the Land Rover. Driving back, they were both subdued. Perhaps Paddy was pissed off with her. Five hours of so-called work had yielded very little except one doubtful specimen. Madeleine could only wonder if funnel-web hunting was always so unproductive.

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When they pulled up at her house, he handed her an envelope containing her wages. ‘A bit of reading this week, young lady.’ ‘Shall I ring you about the spider?’ It was a shrewd question. ‘Ah well, I’ll certainly let you know the outcome.’ ‘Great. Bye.’ Madeleine hopped out, slammed the door and headed down her driveway without looking back. ———— Paddy watched her disappear into the darkness, the swing of her hips, untidy curls tumbling down her long back. Pale and thin as sticks but with shoulders squared against the world. Underneath he sensed her fragility, a vulnerability born of confusion or hurt. He saw himself gathering her up and standing firm against life’s batterings. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. His researcher, his employee. A bright girl, no doubt. Lazy habits of mind. A touch abrasive. The lines from his university days drifted unbidden into his mind: She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes … Romantic claptrap. Still, he lingered, the engine idling — a common courtesy, he told himself, to see her safely in the door. Abruptly, a rectangle of yellow light illuminated

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a lounge-room window. He could even glimpse shelves of besser bricks and planks crammed with books, toys scattered on the coffee table and behind it a wall almost covered with a poster of an earthmover, shovel poised to gouge the earth. The room had a homely, lived-in quality, the irreverent, creative squalor of student digs. He saw Madeleine cross the room and reach up, framed in the soft light, to draw the curtains. Good Christ, she would see him, still there, watching. He kicked the accelerator savagely, wanting to be away.

CHAPTER FOUR

To be bitten by a female funnel-web is unusual and rarely fatal. This is partly because the females spend almost their entire lives tucked away in their burrows. The funnel-web is probably the only species of spider in the world in which the male is more deadly than the female. The venom of the male Sydney funnel-web is about six times more toxic than that of the female. Which is not to suggest the females are harmless. Remember the woman who was killed when a spider fell down her shirt while she was bushwalking? Paddy says she was bitten by Australia’s largest female funnel-web, the northern treedwelling species, Hadronyche formidabilis, whose venom is six times more toxic than the Sydney male. The male Hadronyche formidabilis’s venom has yet to be analysed.

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Mind you, as Paddy never tires of pointing out, you have to keep this in perspective. The number of deaths from funnelweb bites is ludicrously insignificant when compared with famine, plague, war, or even road accidents. M. H. Spider Notebook

It was her mother’s vanity that irked Madeleine. It was typical that Laney would respond to the burden of her husband’s illness with a single-minded enthusiasm for new projects. To begin with, she resolved to replace all the curtains. ‘To update, to modernise, to bring new life into the old home,’ she proclaimed over the phone, facing down Madeleine’s muted objections. Days were spent considering samples, choosing fabrics, measuring windows, estimating costs. Taking a room at a time, she pulled down the old curtains, bundled them into corners and set about sewing the new ones, the electric machine cutting through the silence like a buzz-saw. She made matching scatter cushions for the sofa then new covers for all the chairs. ‘Just the colour of a good claret, darling,’ she trilled. Then there was the imitation Persian rug for the lounge and the lamps, ‘a touch

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of class, in brass and mustard silk taffeta, not expensive of course, never!’ Next, she spring-cleaned the house, clearing out cupboards, discarding with ruthless determination 30odd years of assorted bits and pieces. When Madeleine hinted her misgivings, Laney sniffed: ‘Oh, your lot’s all in the garage, in boxes, I expect you’ll come and get it.’ She cleaned the windows and sugar-soaped the walls — the next best thing to a much-needed coat of paint. She did her best to polish the beaten old sideboard, the hallstand, the chipped coffee tables, defeated by their need of a good sanding and relacqueuring. Though she talked of nothing else for weeks, she did not demand that her husband involve himself in these enterprises. She sensed quite rightly that his lack of interest was bottomless. Besides, for all their married life, he had been the most stubborn of men. With the house stripped of its homely clutter and cleaned to bright unfamiliarity, she turned her attention to herself. Her existing ‘serviceable’ clothes, she called them scornfully, were stuffed into plastic bags for the church charity drive and again she measured and cut and sewed late into the night. Grudgingly, Madeleine admitted that the shirts and skirts and slacks in silk polyesters, liberty print cottons and dark heavy linens were clever and carefully made imitations of designer-label elegance. ‘At a quarter the cost,’ her mother proclaimed with crisp smugness. She put a rinse through her heavy yellow-white hair, then a home perm so that it stood out from her head, Madeleine thought savagely, in fragile blue crinkles like a dissolute golliwog.

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Underneath, she accused her mother of a grosser offence: the self-centred insensitivity of asserting her own vitality and renewal when these things were slipping through her father’s fingers. In the days after his first savage heart attack, Madeleine strove to keep in contact with her father. She rang often, though she could barely afford it and endured her mother’s twittering about her home improvements. ‘Fine, I’m just fine,’ her father would volunteer reluctantly. In those difficult few weeks, because another plane fare was out of the question, she only once made the five-hour trip by bus and train to her parents’ home. Madeleine understood, or thought she did, her father’s retreat into silence. In all his life he had never countenanced idleness but now he simply sat quietly for long hours in the garden. Weeds grew through the cracks in the pavement and the grass was never mown, but he saw no reason to bother with it. Though she made a point of sitting with him during Josh’s afternoon nap, she did not know how to break into his preoccupations. Madeleine wanted to think he was using his convalescence to settle accounts with himself. Once or twice, he rallied to her presence. ‘You like being a mum?’ he asked. ‘Suit you, does it?’ They had moved their chairs under the plum tree out of the afternoon sun. Windfalls that had littered the ground all winter long filled the air with the smell of pungent rot. ‘Sure do,’ she said, making light of his question.

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‘Happy little bloke.’ He put his elbows on the armrests to support himself and pulled himself upright. Madeleine looked away. A big man, strong, knew how to look after himself — that had always been his boast. ‘Good-looking, full of beans, lots of brains — that’s our Josh,’ she joked. ‘Must be a chip off his grandfather’s block.’ Her father eyed her severely so that she knew there was no diverting him from whatever came next. ‘Your chap … Doug …’ he began, pronouncing the name as if no one in the world should be called that. ‘Well, now … what have you got to say?’ ‘Not much,’ she acknowledged, thinking that her father had a talent for asking the telling questions and none for the necessarily complicated answers. ‘I’ve had a lot of practice at looking after myself.’ He reached out and grasped her arm. She could feel his fingers trembling, though whether from anger or alarm at her flippancy, she could not tell. ‘You better watch your step, my girl.’ His grasp tightened. ‘Might find yourself in all sorts of hot water.’ He was watching her quizzically, in his eyes, too, that inward, unfocused look — the one she had first seen when he was in hospital. He had never liked Doug, though apparently for the most trivial reasons. His Gucci ties. His sunlamp tan. His flashy car, all push-buttons and bright lights like a circus sideshow. His well-mannered smile, buttering up her mother. ‘That bloke of yours,’ her father had once growled, ‘got the gift of the gab. Thinks he’s going places, does he?’

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She twisted uneasily, but her father’s grip on her did not slacken. She’d ask him what exactly he was implying. Tell him that these days she did not like Doug much herself. Tell him again that she was no wide-eyed adolescent who didn’t know which way was up. It was her mother who interrupted, slapping open the screen door and shouting across to them that baby Josh was well and truly awake. He was after his mummy. ———— ‘I’m at the end of my tether,’ her mother announced. Laney was doing her low-impact aerobic exercises on the diningroom floor while Madeleine sat at the table with Josh on her lap sucking his orange juice. Her mother had taken to wearing her handmade creations around the house and making up her face, thickly coating it with foundation, scarlet lipstick, midnight-blue eyeshadow, even before she served breakfast. ‘Look at your Dad,’ she puffed through cracking kneebends and body stretches, ‘so damn morose, sitting out there looking at the clouds while the yard goes to rack and ruin. I don’t understand it, an active man like that. All his life, he’s been a doer.’ ‘Maybe he’s got a few things on his mind,’ Madeleine said, haughtily. ‘Of course he has, darling,’ her mother said, matching her tone. She sat down opposite her daughter. ‘It doesn’t do to give way to these things. Surely!’

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‘Maybe he doesn’t have your strength of character.’ Laney’s determination to present herself as triumphantly alive irritated Madeleine beyond endurance. Her mother chose to ignore the sarcasm. Equally, Madeleine thought, she probably didn’t notice. ‘It hasn’t been easy. Good Lord, I’ve done my best to pick up the pieces,’ she went on, fixing on her vibrant new curtains, firmly drawn against the sunlight. Madeleine fidgeted with Josh, refusing to answer. Forget ‘New Wave Feminism’, her mother’s notions of woman-as-victim had pre-empted it by a lifetime. Now Laney was on the edge of tears, staring at her accusingly. With a surge of despair, Madeleine thought how little things ever change, how her mother’s self-pity and selfishness were as constant as the stars. Hauling herself to her feet, she slid her arm around her mother and pressed her cheek against her hair. ‘I’ll put on the kettle, shall I?’ Cradling Josh on one arm, Madeleine waited for the water to boil. Now her mother was primping her hair, which was in disarray from her daughter’s awkward affection. There were so many accusing questions to ask, Madeleine thought, of these two people, her parents, who clung to their marriage like a bad habit. Tell me, Mum, was it a love affair, in the beginning? Did you fall in love and lose it somewhere down the line? By anybody’s standards, they were an ill-matched pair. Some dreamboat, as rich as Rockefeller, who could dance like Fred Astaire — maybe

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then her mother would have been happy. And her father? What had he really wanted? A good cook with strong sidelines in landscape gardening and car maintenance? She shifted the weight of Josh. It seemed so stupid — two people battered by their commitment to marriage and respectability. She could see no good reason for such a life, especially in the face of her mother’s exasperation. Now her mother was hellbent on ignoring the torment of her husband’s illness. Maybe she thought dying was contagious — if you kept busy it wouldn’t infect you. Madeleine’s face flushed with the threat of tears. She bent her head to kiss the wisps of hair from Josh’s forehead so that his fists clenched with pleasure. What about herself and Doug? She was sitting in judgment on her mother and could hardly claim to have done any better. She could barely remember the good times, before Doug had so assiduously messed things up. There had been no big decisive moments, only a series of stupid stuff-ups. Propping Josh on the floor with some cushions, she poured the tea. Anger, blame, bitterness, and pity too — a witch’s brew of emotions was how she really felt about their lost relationship. A sudden, unwanted image came to her of Doug, half-drunk and coldly furious, punching fist against palm. ‘You can’t do this to me. You cannot do this to me.’ With sudden anxiety, she saw what her father might have meant. With Doug, there might yet be a reckoning. Again, there was the slap of the screen door. Her father shuffled into the room, an old man, no longer in a hurry.

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Madeleine poured him a cup of tea and the four of them, baby Josh included, sat at the table. Each of them was locked, Madeleine thought, in the small capsule of themselves. Her father made an effort. Deliberately surveying the room, he announced to Madeleine: ‘It’s a credit to your mother, by golly. You wouldn’t recognise the old place.’ Her father’s daughter, Madeleine too surveyed the room. ‘Looks great, really fantastic.’ Awkwardly, shamefully, it seemed they had said the wrong thing. Her mother stiffened, then with her hand to her mouth, her face crumpled in tears. Her father pulled himself to his feet and went to her, laying his hands gently on her bent shoulders. Laney’s face tightened, though perhaps because of her daughter’s presence, she held her tongue. The next moment she was on her feet, bustling about the kitchen, clearing up the tea cups as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Guiltily, father and daughter watched her. For Madeleine, there was the familiar resentment because her mother’s behaviour was another kind of performance. Putting on her brave face and leaving them both out on a limb. ———— It was her father who raised the issue the next day. This time they found a shaded spot out of the wind beside the fibro garage. Her father had constructed the elongated building

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when Madeleine was a child. She and Xander had played pirates on the galvanised iron roof, abandoning ship by jumping onto a discarded mattress. Here, coming up to her ankles, the grass was thick and green. A bank of cotoneaster bushes against the side fence opposite had gone wild. Blue and red parrots and yellow-crested cockatoos swooped on the trees like vandals, ripping off small branches and scattering the red berries. Across the yard, a couple of currawongs after earthworms were strutting through the overgrown garden beds where in other years her father had staked up big tomato bushes and runners of beans. The place was better this way, Madeleine decided, remembering the hours her father had spent clipping and pruning everything with brutal tidiness. ‘Just inside the garage door,’ he said, carefully, ‘you’ll find a plastic tray. What do you say we give those birds a drink?’ She filled the tray from the garden tap and laid it under the cotoneasters. Her father wasn’t satisfied, waving his arm to indicate where it should go. ‘Share it around a bit,’ he said pleasantly, then patted the seat beside him for her to sit down and watch the show. Straining forward, elbows on the armrests, her Dad shook his head with delight when a cocky crash-dived into the shallow water. The other birds soon came, fussing and fighting, jerking their beaks into the water. After a bit, her father slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and tossed a handful of seed near his feet. But when the birds did not come for it in the long grass, he seemed to lose interest in the

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spectacle. With his eyes half-closed and his legs stretched out, he might have been dozing. Sitting beside him, Madeleine remembered painfully that when she was a child he had made it his business to tell her things. Growing up, she had thought there was nothing he did not know about — the names and natures of plants and trees, insects and birds. She took a breath to quell the beginnings of tears. Abruptly, she stood up to get a tissue from the back pocket of her jeans. The wary birds scattered in an instant, into the trees and across the yard. ‘Getting a bit bored are we?’ her father said testily. ‘Not a skerrick of patience, that’s your trouble. Never did have any, if my memory serves me.’ Madeleine sat down heavily. ‘Oh, I don’t mind sitting round watching the grass grow. Beats talking any day.’ Her father chuckled, low and deep. ‘I see, it’s time to get down to business, is it? If you want my opinion, which it seems you do,’ he shuffled in his chair, rearranging his heavy limbs. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but let me see, you’ve gone and got yourself all tangled up with this rooster, watcha m’call him, Doug, and then you discover he’s not worth the candle. Would that be a fair description?’ Where this was leading? ‘I guess.’ Annoyed, her father was becoming shrill. ‘So, Miss Muddlebrains, you say to yourself, that’s it, finito, I’ll take my baby boy, slam the door in your face.’ Oh Christ, Madeleine thought, so that’s what it was all about. ‘You’d like to see me getting round in a ball and chain. Throw away the key.’

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Her father leaned towards her, wild and alert. ‘What I mean to say … what I mean is …’ But he could not seem to think what he meant. Madeleine put her hand on his arm to soothe him. ‘I’ll be all right, Dad. You’re underestimating me.’ Her father eyed her with that queer intensity, stern, fearful and otherworldly. ‘It’s Doug where the underestimating comes in. He’s not the sort to take it lightly — you’re thumbing your nose at him?’ Madeleine’s skin prickled with anxiety, though she would not acknowledge that it was all so monumentally serious. ‘There’s nothing he can do about it.’ ‘He can make you sorry, that’s what.’ ‘Is that all?’ Madeleine scoffed angrily. ‘I’m sorry already. Mea culpa.’ ‘Mea whatever, my girl. I’m telling you to watch your step.’ He slumped back in his chair, throwing up his hands so that it occurred to Madeleine that they were birds of a feather — he and her mother. The domestic melodrama — they both loved it. ———— Still, back in Canberra, in the days after this visit, at night when she was falling asleep, her father’s words came back to her. It seemed clear to her she had never understood what Doug wanted with her. He had always seemed to presume

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so little of her, approaching everything she did with a knowing, incurious watchfulness. Playing his cards close, keeping one step ahead of the game. Back then, when she had first begun to run into him at the television studios, she hadn’t taken much notice. A good-looking guy, sure, if you like the clean-cut, reserved type. She was working as a researcher, locked into the neurotic scramble of a nightly show. Every few weeks or so, Doug would usher in his shadow minister, a provocative old stalwart with a face like a crumpled paper bag and a firm agenda, to stir the pot on whatever issue he could claw his way into. Doug sat with her and watched through the glass window while the interviews were prerecorded. He never said much, only a polite inquiry as to whether she minded his being there. Sometimes when she looked over, he would be gazing at the ceiling or rocking back in his chair, arms folded. She had liked the idea that behind all his selfcontainment lay shared unspoken judgments. Too quickly, she had decided he was bored — with the tacky, second-rate arena of state politics, with political power itself. Thinking about him over those first months, she had imputed so much. In the indifference with which he blatantly regarded the thrust and parry of ministerial interviews, she saw a serious disillusionment. Understandably so, she had decided, since he, more than anyone, would know the lies that were told, the issues that were fudged, the sacrifice of high expectations to expediency.

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But he was marking time, that was all. He was waiting to try his hand at the bigger games. ‘Thinks he’s going places, does he?’ her father had said. Why hadn’t it been obvious to her from the start? When he had invited her to dinner, she had been genuinely surprised. Over morning tea at work, she had even told some of the others about it. ‘I like it,’ the make-up woman, Georgia, had whooped. She was in her late thirties, single and worried about it. ‘The strong silent type. I can see it all — the dash to open doors for you, the quick hand on the wallet. Honeybunch, there aren’t many of them left!’ ‘Tell him to grow his hair and get a real job.’ She couldn’t remember who had said that. Doug had collected her in the evening after work and they had gone to a kitsch Lebanese restaurant a few kilometres away. It was decorated like a deep-sea grotto with brown cement rendering for the rock walls, festoons of rope net, plastic seaweed, cowrie shells and luridly painted polystyrene swordfish. Inside, it was bathed in greenish light that turned their skins a cadaverous grey. Doug’s Omowhite shirt had glowed luminously. The place was empty except for two elderly gentlemen in fishermen’s sweaters and berets gambling up the back and a young woman in a tight black skirt and skimpy top hanging over the counter. Doug had assured her the food was ‘spectacular’. He was implying that the place was his discovery, and he was one step ahead of the yuppies.

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They sat at a laminex table and she ate several helpings of every delicious offering, chatting away with reckless compulsion into the challenge of his self-containment. Doug asked her questions about herself, just ordinary things, such as how long she had been in Sydney, what she thought of her job, what she had been up to before that. She tried to make it sound more interesting than it was. Somewhere between dessert and coffee, he seemed to soften though she could not have said exactly why. In the end, when the small glasses of ouzo had worked their effect, she had demanded to know whether he was always so calm and collected. ‘Perhaps you should just show me your CV?’ she joked. ‘You look so good I can’t believe it.’ That’s what he’d said, unexpectedly, beguilingly, eyes fixed on her with apprehension. It had stopped her in her tracks. She hadn’t known how to answer, her head fuzzy and Doug suddenly looking so beautiful. She had liked it, of course, liked him for his abrupt sincerity. And everything else about him as smooth as satin, his careful haircut, his fine clothes, his masculine reserve. Then just like that, he cracked open the facade. She had been making him up, of course, as women always do — as a deeply sensitive and vulnerable man, behind the mask. Already Doug had been busy, spinning his web around her, a little at a time so that you hardly notice until you’re entangled and fighting to get free. That first night, she hadn’t needed to say anything, had she? He had

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paid the bill, loaded her into his car and headed for her flat in the baffling silence of what next. Pulling up, he reached across her and pushed open the door. He did not kiss or touch her. Just said goodbye and nothing more. He was keeping her guessing because, even though she did not know it then, it was a game he played very well. At work the next day, when Georgia and the others demanded to know how it had gone, she had shrugged them off irritably. She felt a little ashamed of herself, as if something of significance had been thrust tantalisingly before her and she had let it slip away. And after that: nothing for weeks. Then, coming into work one morning, she found a single red rose on the editing console and Doug with his arms folded rocking back on a chair. Corny as can be and the look she gave him said as much. He flipped forward and grasped her by the shoulders. ‘What d’you reckon I take you out to lunch?’ His insistence intimidated her. He held her fiercely, confronting her with a queer sort of need, deep down a little out of control, maybe. Georgia, fussing across the room, was electric with curiosity. She gave Madeleine a nod — you could be so lucky. They had gone to the zoo, a quick car trip across the Harbour Bridge and around the high road with glimpses of Fort Denison and, further away, the rusting hulks of abandoned naval ships. It was shirt-sleeve weather, sunshine and a painted sky. Doug bought Coke and sandwiches at the

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kiosk and led her to a bench opposite the monkey cage. The animals were lolling about in the sun or picking lice from each other’s fur and crunching them between their front teeth, stretching and curling their lips in a caricature of disdain. Now and again, they stopped stock still and stared at the two of them with startled disapproval. Doug seemed on edge. He finished eating quickly, brushed the crumbs from his suit, crossed and uncrossed his legs. ‘Hell, I haven’t been here for years,’ Madeleine said, wanting to put him at ease. Then, in a rush to batten down the rising awkwardness between them: ‘In fact, I was probably all of six years old the last time. My Dad thought the zoo was an essential educational experience for growing children, though all I can remember is wanting to have a good look at the killer sharks and the boa constrictors.’ When Doug made no comment, she screwed up her lunch wrappings and flipped them neatly into the bin beside the bench. Maybe she was talking too much, running at the mouth like a kid. She stretched her legs, closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun. She remembered other things too — Xander whingeing his head off for an ice-cream, her mother clenched-faced, her father guiding them on. He was getting his money’s worth, that’s what he said. He read out key facts about each inmate from the signs on the front of the cages. Loyally, she had trotted behind him, her Daddy’s girl, though by mid-afternoon she sat cross-legged on the pavement at each stop. Her father had crouched down and swung her onto to his back. She clung to him hoping it

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would last forever until he told her gruffly that ‘there was no need to go choking him’. A shadow fell across her face. Doug was standing in front of her, tapping his watch. ‘We’ve just got time.’ A funny guy, now it was look at me, listen to me, with that uncertain self-importance. She smiled up at him, a polite easy smile. ‘What for?’ ‘To see the sharks. We’ll have to be quick.’ He pulled her to her feet, holding her steady and smoothing the hair back from her face with the flat of his hand. A touch that was stark in its gentleness and yet pinned her like a moth on cardboard. She shifted unthinkingly out of his grasp. ‘I’ll beat you there!’ Before he could answer, she set off at a sprint, thumping along in her ungainly Doc Martens, making a fine commotion. After a hundred metres or so, assured that Doug was well behind her, she slowed to a jog. It wasn’t difficult, running in a steady rhythm down the winding paths to the aquarium at the bottom of the hill. ‘What kept you?’ she would say, nonchalantly examining her fingernails. Doug seemed to come from nowhere. The first she knew, he was past her with a squeak of his rubber-soled shoes and his suitcoat aflap. He disappeared round a bend, going like the clappers to the finish. He was already perched on the aquarium steps when she loped up, red-faced and gasping. ‘I was wondering what kept you,’ he said. She eyed him with mock outrage. ‘Thought I’d better let you win — fragile male ego, y’know.’

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‘Bovine excrement.’ He hauled himself to his feet. ‘Might have to feed you to the sharks if you go on like that.’ Heading into the building, she slipped her arm into his. ‘Yeah, you and what army?’ There was only one worth looking at — a great white shark suspended almost motionless in the water, its black eyes fixed on them with the glassy watchfulness of a stuffed toy. She and Doug waited for it to do a quick flip around the pool or munch a fish or two. ‘I don’t think it’s real,’ Madeleine said. ‘Radio-controlled,’ Doug assured her. ‘They only activate it at scheduled times.’ He took her hand. ‘Let’s go.’ Arm in arm, like competitors in a three-legged walking race, they tramped back up the hill to the top gate. It was Madeleine’s turn to ask questions, not too prying, mind you, but enough to read between the lines. Doug was a western suburbs boy — not fibro bungalow working class, but a cut above the rest of the street because his father had studied accountancy at night and sent his two sons to a good Catholic high school a couple of suburbs away. An economics degree from Sydney University and his old man’s 30-year membership of the local party branch were Doug’s ticket of entry into the state minister’s office. ‘And now you’re fed up with it?’ Madeleine challenged. She was absolutely wrong of course. Doug had not said so, just gave her one of his looks, figuring out why she had made such a statement. ‘Sometimes,’ he shrugged, ‘it’s pretty dreadful.

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‘However,’ he went on, low key, with his special boyish pleading, ‘right now things couldn’t be better.’ So nice, he was then, a regular guy behind all that hard-won self-control. ‘Even if I can run faster than you?’ she asked. ‘Even if you can’t,’ he said. And he grinned, like a kid with a face full of sunshine. From that day, she had wanted to go to bed with him. Underneath, he was a bit of a softie, she told herself, an oldfashioned romantic for whom women were golden chalices to be besieged and held in thrall. Warily, with guile and determination, he had courted her 1950s-style, making out but never making it. A lingering kiss, his hand pushing up her skirt, her blouse slowly unbuttoned and then the effort of stopping, of taking her home. He brought her gifts — sexy satin lingerie that fitted her perfectly, black silk stockings and handmade earrings of clusters of miniature silver roses. It was gruelling seduction that left her stupid with desire for him. Just as he demanded it to be. And she had willingly complied, hadn’t she? Just like any other female loser. So what had gone so impossibly wrong between them? Hell, what had ever been right? Their first argument, then came their first fuck, like night follows day. Doug’s flat was the chosen venue. It was one of those midsummer Saturdays in Sydney when a sulphurous westerly blistered through the city streets, tossing up whirlwinds of dust and rubbish from the gutters. The

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heatwave had gone on for days so that even indoors, out of the relentless wind, the air was filthy and stifling. She and Doug had gone to a late-afternoon movie, to a musty old cinema where the air from the overactive airconditioning crawled across her skin like a fever. They had watched an American shoot-em-up, with Clint Eastwood as the jaw-clenching crime buster. Doug sat through it impassively, saying afterwards it was okay, implying who cares anyway? Madeleine thought that a great deal could be said, beginning with the fact that she had serious cause to hate it, every celluloid centimetre of it. The look Doug gave her, hinting at forbearance, made it impossible for her to say anything at all. Irritably, she followed him out of the cinema, merely volunteering that it was the noisiest damn movie she had ever seen. Doug had checked his watch and scanned the street for a taxi, as if he had not heard. Doug’s flat was on the top floor of a refurbished terrace that overlooked Annandale. It was clean and neat as a pin and almost completely depersonalised of furnishings, beyond the high-tech sound and VCR systems with multicoloured touch button controls that were stacked along one wall, and a kingsized double bed. The bedroom was only slightly wider than a corridor so the bed took up most of the lounge. It had white satin sheets and an expensive Mexican bedspread that was smoothed and squared at the corners with hospital thoroughness. Above the bedhead on a laminated shelf was a small aerated fish-tank with plastic crocodiles, elephants, tigers and an assortment of farm animals, of the kind they

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give away in cereal boxes, bouncing about in the bubbles. Madeleine wondered at the joke though all Doug said was that he was sick of replacing the fish that died. Madeleine flopped on the bed. Although the sun was setting, it was still ferociously hot. Her skin felt slimy with sweat. She was fed up. It wasn’t just the crazy weather. Two months of foreplay had left her nerves raw with ill-humour. He ironed his jeans, for God’s sake. ‘Why do the fish keep dying?’ she demanded. Doug didn’t answer. He was tapping the metal iceblock tray on the sink, though the contents refused to budge. ‘Run it under the tap,’ Madeleine ordered, before the racket drove her insane. Doug crashed the tray down then shook it so that the ice slipped out in a neat geometrical array. He handed a drink to Madeleine, parking himself beside her on the bed. ‘I murder them,’ he said, ‘crunch the slimy little fuckers between my teeth and swallow them whole.’ He sipped his drink. ‘I guess they don’t suffer too much.’ ‘I don’t want to know.’ A sense of humour had never been his strong point. ‘So what’s your problem then?’ ‘No problem.’ But all at once it seemed that she did not really care for him. ‘I had no idea you were a fish fetishist, that’s all.’ ‘I’m not.’ He was watching her in that intense way of his. ‘What else have you got on your mind?’

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‘Not much. At all.’ She let the words lie heavily between them. After this, when she did not answer his calls, refused his invitations, her message would be clear. He was still watching her, his eyes incredulous and wounded. It was more than she could bear. ‘Christ, it’s so damned hot,’ he said, glancing quickly away and back again, as if to make sure he had understood her correctly. ‘You don’t like me much, is that what you’re saying?’ ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, shut up,’ she snapped, losing her nerve. He reached for her, she thought now, with as much love as he could manage. More than that, there was his efficiency, his nerves of steel, which determined that situations must proceed only as he willed them to. The challenge was to find a way to hold her tightly. For a time, he succeeded very well.

CHAPTER FIVE

So what do Paddy’s notes have to say about the funnel-web antivenom? It’s one of the great Aussie stories, though I’ll have to backtrack a bit. In 1956, Australia’s greatest living toxicologist, Saul Weiner, finally succeeded in developing an antivenom for the red-back spider’s bite. The red-back is closely related to the American black widow spider and to the New Zealand katipo. Until recentl,y it was often thought to have been brought here on the sailing ships that traded across the Pacific during the early decades of European colonisation. Now it’s generally believed that its habitat extends from India, through South-East Asia to Australia. Despite its reputation, the spider is a ‘timorous beastie’. When disturbed, it curls up and plays dead. While its bite could

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possibly kill a small child, it’s rarely fatal to adults. Nevertheless, the effects of its venom can be unpleasant, with dizziness, nausea, excessive sweating and muscle spasms. In the past 40 years, Weiner’s antivenom has successfully treated hundreds of such cases. After his triumph over the red-back, Weiner focused on the funnel-web venom. It proved a frustrating challenge and it was 24 years before the antivenom was achieved by another formidable Australian toxicologist, Dr Struan Sutherland. Weiner’s contribution to funnel-web research involved one of science’s more bizarre experiments. Lacking a precise clinical description of the venom’s effects on the human body, he injected a non-lethal dose of it into his own forearm. (How did he know it was non-lethal, you might ask?) Then he sat at his desk and described the progressive onslaught of the symptoms. It is not recorded at what point, if any, he was unable to continue. M. H. Spider Notebook

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‘Dead as a doornail,’ Paddy said when Madeleine rang him to find out the results of their first expedition. ‘Local species of funnel-web, was it?’ Paddy groaned. ‘Aaahh, difficult to ascertain with any certainty.’ ‘Why?’ To his credit, Paddy did not attempt to duck her question again. He had taken the lid off the glass jar containing the spider for a close inspection, then knocked it over — quite inadvertently, of course. He had been at his workbench in the garage and, the upshot was, he had no recourse but to squash the spider flat with his slipper. ‘Oh Jesus,’ Madeleine restrained a laugh. The mighty arachnophile strikes again. Paddy’s next words acknowledged her sentiments. ‘Damned fool thing to do, of course. Couldn’t risk having it loose about the place.’ ‘I thought you were pretty keen on spiders?’ she joked. ‘What do y’say,’ he replied, huffily changing the subject, ‘to a camp-out? Overnight, Namadgi, pleasant spot. Bit of extra cash in the pocket?’ ‘I’m not sure,’ Madeleine hedged. No points for subtlety, she thought, remembering the way he had eyed her off in the bush the week before. ‘Two days of hard labour,’ he enthused. ‘A blitzkrieg, cover the area, whoa to go.’

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She was about to repeat her refusal when he sensed her misgivings. ‘I’ve got a couple of tents, two tents, separate quarters.’ Having made the point he was too embarrassed to continue. ‘Let me think about it,’ she said. ———— It was weeks before Paddy again raised the issue of an overnight camp-out. The next half-dozen Saturdays were spent in fruitless hikes through Namadgi and the Tidbinbilla Reserve and the next couple along overgrown trails beside the Murrumbidgee River. Their expeditions involved an unvarying routine — a walk to a designated spot, an hour or so’s meticulous search through an area of bush, then a cuppa over a camp fire. As the weeks wore on and they achieved nothing, Madeleine’s confidence waned. It wasn’t simply that, despite her dutiful reading of Paddy’s research file, she had no idea how to find the fabulous funnel-web. She also suspected the good doctor might be a rank amateur like herself. But already they were friends of a kind and she looked forward to their afternoons together. Like most shy people, Paddy was a gentle spirit and mostly she was happy enough to plod along companionably, to be as helpful as she could. And, of course, to be paid for it. If occasionally he was given to lecturing her paternally on varieties of local lichen or the life cycle of the scribble gum moth, she didn’t mind that either. It was no more than her own father had ever done.

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But when Paddy called off their rambles for the second consecutive Saturday and by Thursday the next week had still not rung with the weekend’s arrangements, the feeling grew in her that perhaps she had disappointed him after all. He had expected more of her and this was his oblique way of easing her out of the job. She resolved to ring him. She had a right to know what was happening. ‘Aaarhhh, Madeleine, eh?’ She had almost forgotten how awkward he could be and waited with growing irritation for him to say what came next. It was an uncomfortable silence. ‘Madeleine! … Aarhh, well now, I’ve been wondering if you’ve given it any thought … mentioned it a while back … you know?’ ‘Mentioned what exactly?’ ‘Grid search. The whole valley. Have a good look, eh? Make up for lost time.’ ‘Of course,’ she said, quickly. ‘Sure. You’ve got enough gear, right?’ Paddy too seemed relieved. ‘Indeed I do.’ ———— They arrived at Woods Reserve in the early afternoon, with a bag of provisions, a gallon of water, sleeping bags and two tents to supplement Paddy’s impressive assemblage of spider-trapping equipment. They had passed the camp site that first week on their way to Square Rock — it was

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a landscaped area beside the narrow creek that ran down from Gibraltar Falls. A family was camped there, in a brown and orange striped tent that hinted at Arabian splendour compared with the well-worn, self-denying gear Paddy had provided. He insisted they immediately erect their tents on the grass near a stone fireplace, issuing unintelligible instructions to Madeleine for the proper angle and tension of the guylines and adjustment of the fly. If the result was less than perfect, Madeleine decided it was more than satisfactory — for a structure that looked for all the world like a sky-blue plastic coffin. Paddy was unimpressed, though he tactfully refrained from saying so. Personal necessities were laid armystyle inside the tent, other items were hung strategically off the ground on poles. Then Paddy sent Madeleine to gather dry kindling for the evening, while he brought over some good-sized pieces of wood from the stack provided by park rangers. That accomplished, he surveyed the scene. Nothing forgotten. Shielding his eyes, he looked further afield, scanning the surrounding bush, then lifted his face to the steep, granite hills. His expression was one of unselfconscious elation. Madeleine wondered how far this was the point of it all, whether spiders were only part of the intense private joy he took in the bush. Did he really expect to uncover the hidden funnel-webs, to make his small contribution to the taxonomy of Australian spiders? In the following hours, she was left in no doubt that he would make a valiant attempt. Starting at the perimeter of

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the camping area, side by side a couple of metres apart, they pushed through the scrub. Paddy’s aim of conducting a grid search meant covering every possible square metre of the valley and paying careful attention to decaying logs and rock crevices. As before, Madeleine worked hard at the task Paddy had given her. Behind the drab face of the bush was a teeming micro-world of skinks, fat furry grubs, fairyland fungi, luminescent white worms, frenetic ant and termite colonies, striped dragonflies with wings like cartoon propellers, green-black horseflies clustered on dung, huge mosquitoes with drooping bodies and fragile stick-like legs. Then there were the spiders, some hardly bigger than match heads toiling relentlessly in tiny webs, others curled in brown leaves that hung from branches on a single thread, which spun crazily in a puff of breeze. But it was Paddy who mostly called her attention to the huntsmen and other ground-dwellers, cunningly camouflaged amid leaf litter or tree bark. Only once did they encounter any larger animals — a couple of panicked wallabies, the noise of whose bushbashing escape reverberated into the distance. By late afternoon, when Paddy resolved to call it quits for the day, they had combed half the area — and not a funnel-web in sight. Back at the camp site, Paddy lit the fire and prepared the evening meal, brushing aside Madeleine’s offers of assistance. They did not talk much. With the sun already gone from the narrow valley, the temperature was dropping quickly. Above them, so low over the mountains that you

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could almost toss a stick to touch them, a bank of blackening clouds twisted and curled in the high altitude winds. Glancing upwards, Paddy murmured that there might be ‘a bit of weather’. They ate hugging the fire, Paddy’s hearty menu of rehydrated stew, pasta and tinned peas. Afterwards, they sipped lumpy cocoa, huddling closer to the fire as it rapidly burnt down to the embers. It was so cold now that outside the small haven of heat Madeleine was sure she would freeze. The air was heavy with moisture, which seeped into her hair and clothing. In the event, she saw nothing for it but to crawl into her tent and the swaddling protection of her sleeping bag. It was an achievement, changing into her pyjamas in her confined plastic funnel. A mistake, too, as the temperature slid below freezing. Up to her eyebrows in the spartan sleeping bag, she began to shiver as if frost was crystallising in her bones. Within 10 minutes, the rain came, a few warning splots followed by the kind of deluge that suggested a fireman’s hose trained on the outside of her tent. Puddles of icy water from the collapsed fly dripped onto her and formed pools on the floor. Sodden, cold as charity, she crawled out into the downpour and, still wearing her sleeping bag, frog-hopped across to Paddy’s tent and called insistently to him. When he switched on his torch and unzipped the flaps of his tent, she was amazed that inside seemed aglow with warmth and comfort, the walls and fly of his tent taut as

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a skin drum, keeping seepage at bay. Paddy had been pleasantly asleep. Perhaps it was his sleepiness or simply unreflective kindness but, without a word, he drew her inside, the wet sleeping bag left at the entrance. He hugged her, rubbing her back while she shivered. ‘Still cold, eh?’ He was rubbing and pounding her now, limbs and body, with the vigour of a Japanese masseur. When she protested, he stopped abruptly, then, as if inspiration had struck him, he announced, ‘A human hotwater bottle would be just the shot.’ In a half-crouch, he slid her firmly under him. Swiftly wrapping his sleeping bag around them, he covered her body, toe to toe, arms stretched along her sides to seal out the cold. She could smell the camp fire smoke in his hair, felt his neck against her mouth. Warm at last, she shifted under him. ‘I’m all right now,’ she said. He was off her in an instant. Now he had his back to her with his arms folded across his chest, apparently determined to go back to sleep. ‘My tent’s awash,’ she said uncertainly. He was silent, then, with unexpected harshness, ‘Off to sleep, young woman.’ Embarrassing really, in part because she would have liked to cuddle up, to be enveloped again in the comfort of his body. Outside, the rain continued to fall in a steady torrent. She could feel the chill of it radiating through the thin fabric of the tent. She inched a little closer — for warmth, for his quirky kindness.

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She could not sleep, though she wanted to, to ignore Paddy’s body, tense and unmoving beside her. She kept as still as she could, shoulders hunched, arms crossing her breasts. Some time later she heard Paddy draw breath and he turned to her. His touch was hesitant, a hand on her shoulder that slid down the length of her back and cupped her buttocks. Perhaps she was still cold, his whisper hinting at apology. He pulled her gently closer to him, held her against him. She was aware of the intensity of his desire for her but he did not touch her beyond cradling her in his arms like a child. She felt compassion for him — that he would want her and yet he must not. He was a good man, softer than butter, sweeter than jam. ‘Lovely creatures,’ Paddy murmured. ‘What?’ ‘Women.’ ‘Soft-hearted too,’ Madeleine kissed his cheek. ‘Off to sleep with you.’ But a moment later, she asked disingenuously. ‘Paddy, do you honestly reckon there are funnel-webs around here?’ Fleeing their flooded burrows to seek out a warm, dry place? He rolled over on his back, stretched his legs, supporting the back of his head in his hands. ‘Absolutely. I’d be willing to bet my last shoelace on it.’ He was rummaging through his thoughts. ‘What’s a professional tree man doing moseying in on someone else’s territory? Coming up emptyhanded. That’s the gist of it, eh? Bit like a gardener who thinks he’s a brain surgeon, eh?’

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‘Or a piano tuner who thinks he’s Mozart?’ ‘Quite,’ Paddy replied, so she knew he was a little offended. Now there was an awkwardness between them. Really, she had not meant to imply he was some kind of sham. ‘The habitat thing — that’s what I was getting at. You were doubtful about it — that it might be too cold for them up here.’ Paddy’s voice assumed a know-all tone. ‘Not at all, not at all. I was referring to a quite different issue, that of climatic adaptation. Let me put it this way. A few million years ago, this region was more temperate, its ecology more akin to that found on the coast, an ideal environment, one would say, for the ancient mygalomorphs. Changes occur, average temperature, tree cover, rainfall, snow, what have you — so gradual, of course. What we are talking about is a burrow-dwelling spider, with the instinctual savvy to construct her own humidicrib, as it were, deep under the snow,’ he was punching out the words, buoyed up by enthusiasm, ‘whose metabolism is so slow that she can go six months without a decent meal. A survivor, a marvellously efficient little survivor, you see?’ ‘I do see,’ Madeleine said, resenting a little his hectoring. A survivor, sure, an admirable business in face of life’s tribulations. And for the moment safely underground. She began to fidget, rearranging her limbs, pulling up the sleeping bag. Oh hell, Paddy, isn’t this all a wee bit eccentric? The man’s loony about lethal funnel-webs, she

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could say intriguingly to friends. But she was willing enough to help discover this one small creature, to gain some certain knowledge in all its possible complexity. Never one to knock back a set of amazing true facts, that was her, especially when it was spiced with a genuine obsession to know. ‘I guess, what I was getting at is,’ she went on, ‘do you think there’s a good chance we’ll find the odd one or two?’ ‘Good Lord, how should I know?’ ‘But we’re having a damned good try, right? Fussily, he pulled the sleeping bag over her shoulders and kissed her swiftly on the top of the head. ‘Off to sleep, young lady.’ ———— When Madeleine crawled out of the tent the next morning, mist was steaming from the valley. The strong sunshine was rapidly drying out a world soaked clean by the night-time deluge. On the leaves and grass, raindrops shone like glass and the sky was a strong, unblemished blue. She yawned and stretched, shivering a little in the mountain air, with its smells of eucalyptus and bush decay. Paddy was already busying himself. He had spread her sleeping bag and wet clothing on rocks to dry and lit a smoking fire using leaves, newspaper and dry supplies from the camp site stores. He glanced in Madeleine’s direction, then, head down, began throwing together some breakfast. She wandered across to him.

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‘Morning,’ she said, her hand on his arm because now he did not seem to want to look at her. He recoiled. Puzzled, a little hurt, she went off to dress, pulling some clothes from her pack that mercifully were only slightly damp. She sat at a picnic table near the fireplace to lace her boots. Clearly, Paddy was in some sort of dither. A bad case of approach-avoidance conflict. He served her a pannikin of baked beans and a mug of coffee, then ducked off to eat his own, balanced on the stone wall of the fireplace some distance away from her. He kept shifting around in the heat of the camp fire and finally came to sit opposite her. He seemed intent on ignoring her presence — rather childishly. And he seemed so flustered. ‘Paddy,’ she said, stacking up her breakfast utensils, this one on top of that, clatter, bang. ‘You were very kind to me last night.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s all.’ Paddy nodded; she had hit the nail on the head, though the next second the expression on his face was both endearing and comical. It mixed wounded sexual vanity with guilt at what might have been. And relief at what she had just said. He shook his head and sat up a little straighter. He would meet her plainspeaking head-on. ‘Not … not the usual thing, not at all. The wife, you see, an excellent woman.’ He did not continue; his marriage was his own business. Madeleine felt a jolt of annoyance. ‘It’s no big deal,’ she said. Into the silence between them, she could have said a few other things; that she had

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enough messy relationships in her life already, that she really liked him and was certain he meant her no harm, that the job genuinely interested her, that she could have frozen to death but for his ‘hot-water bottle’, ships in the night, whatever. But it was what she felt but could not say that mattered most. At the centre of herself, in her heart, was a numb confusion that even his warmth could not penetrate. Or so she told herself. Her mother’s indifference, her father’s sickness, Doug, even gentle Paddy, she thought bravely, could not touch her. Abruptly, Paddy took her hand across the table, gently separating her fingers. ‘Byron,’ he mumbled, ‘always been a bloke’s downfall.’ Madeleine frowned, what on Earth? ‘She walks in beauty, like the night … and so forth.’ Madeleine shook him off. And you’re a charming old fox, she thought, wondering how anyone could stay cross with him. ———— With breakfast completed, dishes washed in the creek, the camp site packed away, they were off again to scour the rest of the valley. Despite her avowals of the night before, Madeleine’s enthusiasm was soon on the ebb. Pushing through wet underbrush with slimy clay underfoot definitely had its futile aspect. No self-respecting funnel-web would

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show itself under such conditions. She caught Paddy’s eye, screwing up her face in mock exasperation. He pulled up. Leaning against a tree, he scraped the mud from the tread in his hiking boots with a stick. He seemed preoccupied again. Maybe he too was becoming discouraged. ‘They’re buried underground, right?’ Madeleine said. ‘Maybe we should roll in the earthmoving equipment. Find a likely patch and excavate the bejesus out of it.’ It was a stupid remark. Paddy did not deign to reply. Instead, he hitched on his day-pack and signalled that she should go ahead through the clearing. ———— Following her along the bush track, Paddy found himself watching her again. Thin as a reed she was, all feminine frailty, the fingernails bitten to the quick, but ‘keeping her cool’, as they say, tossing back that soft straggle of hair that he could lift and thread in his fingers, using words like machine-gun bullets, just like that, when a bloke wouldn’t expect it, her fists up to the world. He thought of her small house with its untidy comfort, the digger poster on the wall — for the child she had not talked about, a fatherless child, it would seem. He had no business prying and was he probably twice her age. Well, not quite, he thought, breathing deeply, standing up a little straighter. Resolutely, he would put aside the previous night’s occurrences, though in that instant he experienced again her lean body pressed to him,

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his hands on her, with an intensity that made him touch his palm to his forehead like a man in pain. ———— Mid-afternoon, in the matter-of-fact way these things have of happening, Paddy found what they were looking for. The entrance to the burrow was beside a decaying fence post. This time it was unmistakable, at least Paddy seemed to think so. He called her over and, balancing on his haunches, waved his hand like a magician’s wand over the web. ‘You sure?’ Madeleine said. He was excited, talkative all of a sudden. ‘The females hardly ever come out of their burrows.’ He sucked the breath through his teeth. ‘Only if there’s a calamity.’ ‘A calamity?’ ‘If they’re flooded out.’ Madeleine nodded. Fire, famine and flood. After last night’s downpour, would the lady still be in residence? Crouched beside him among the dank eucalypt leaves, she rested her elbows on her knees to steady herself. She felt herself drawn into Paddy’s delight — so many field trips and finally it looked like they had something to show for it. ‘What else?’ ‘They can’t stand the sunlight.’ Again she nodded. Moisture and darkness, the spider tunnelling painstakingly down into the red dirt beneath her feet.

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‘So how do they get their food?’ Paddy leaned forward, directing her gaze. ‘See?’ The web was an untidy mesh, shaped like the flattened end of a trumpet but with the entrance holes perfectly black and circular. It had been worked ingeniously into the crumple of leaves and sticks. Trip lines, radiating outwards, anchored the odd-shaped funnel. ‘You don’t go rattling those lines.’ He pointed, careful not to touch. ‘Or else she’ll be out looking for her supper.’ ‘Smart, right?’ He averted his face, ignoring the hint of sarcasm. ‘Keeps a clean house, this old lady. Puts out her garbage.’ With his index finger he poked through a small pile near the entrance, separating insect wings and legs, exoskeletons, bits of dried lizard skin. A spider’s midden. Such an ancient creature, he enthused, methodically laying out his equipment on the ground; 120 million years old, surviving in the damp crannies of the bush since before the days of dinosaurs. Primitive, heavy-bodied and secretive, quick to anger. ‘Shy,’ he went on, insistently, ‘they won’t bother you if you keep a respectful distance.’ He raised his head in a whimsical, abstracted way. He was going to say something really corny. ‘A bit of a larrikin, the male, tomcatting about at night, no fixed abode … except for your old gumboots.’ She looked away, the previous night suddenly an unease between them.

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He patted her shoulder, abrupt and affectionate. ‘You’ve got more chance of being hit by a flying flowerpot at High Mass in Rome than dying from a funnel-web bite.’ ‘Oh, so they say,’ she said crisply. But when he looked askance, she smiled again, cocking her head, flirting with him. ‘Only kidding.’ With dismay, she saw the colour rise in his cheeks. She felt pity for him — oh God, it’s not my intention, she wanted to say, I’m not really a player, and I understand it’s not what you want or need. She hauled herself to her feet, her voice harsh with the effort of lightness. ‘Great work, Dr Jones. So, what now?’ ———— The next step was a painstaking excavation. Using a small spade, Paddy worked his way down into the dirt beside the entrance holes, careful to leave the burrow intact. He would dig to the necessary depth, then excavate sideways to bring the spider out. ‘Can’t risk a cave-in,’ he murmured, stating the obvious. ‘Fragile.’ ‘Fragile?’ What of all his speeches about the funnel-web being one of life’s great survivors, unassuming, except when it managed to sink its fangs into somebody; a miracle of adaptation, even when it was half-starved? ‘Self-protective,’ Paddy went on, doggedly. ‘Likes to keep herself all snuggled up in her nest.’ He raised his arm to

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indicate the distance from his chest to the ground. ‘A fall of this height would kill her.’ So what use are they then? Once the fascination wore off, do we really need their lethal menace? Mother Nature’s revenge. From Paddy’s notes, she knew the answer. She knelt beside him, watching the slow steady care with which he worked, the sinews on his neck and arms tightening with each shovelful. ———— Glancing up as he turned a moist clod, Paddy felt again that breathlessness as if his heart shuddered and raced. Her face was absorbed, trusting that he would reveal to her something extraordinary. He wanted to comfort her, soothe that quirky frailty, so sure was he of her vulnerability. He strove to gather his thoughts. Where else would that brashness of hers come from? Young woman, he would say to her in an opportune moment, you must never expect too much. Oh Good Christ, how would he know? Or accept too little. ———— ‘Just one more question,’ Madeleine said, arching her back and shifting to a more comfortable position. ‘How exactly are you going to catch her?’ Paddy’s face was expressionless, making one of his stupid jokes. ‘I give her a little tickle on the backside and she’ll come running. You’ll see.’

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In the event, that wasn’t necessary. Despite Paddy’s careful digging, the spider sensed their invasion. It erupted abruptly from the burrow entrance, then scooted forward, pausing at Madeleine’s boot to raise its body into strike position, its fangs poised in baffled rage. Paddy shouted, ‘Hoi’, but Madeleine was already in a panic, scrambling backwards on her haunches. The spider paused for a microsecond, then made its way steadfastly after her. But by the time she was on her feet a couple of metres distant, Paddy had made the capture. Triumphant, he held up the small Vegemite jar for her inspection. ‘The old cardboard-and-bottle trick,’ he announced. Madeleine looked away. A hideous, nasty little creature, for sure. Paddy sprinkled moist soil on the bottom of the jar and sealed it with a perforated lid. ‘Put the wind up you without much trouble, eh?’ Madeleine shrugged crossly. ‘Now for the interesting part,’ Paddy persisted, blithely ignoring such irrational ill-humour. Placing the spider carefully to one side, he resumed his digging, making the hole wider but not too deep. Next he assembled the trap, inserting into the ground a lidless three-litre pineapple juice tin with a perforated bottom spread with leaves and dirt. Inside, at the top, he also fitted a funnel with a flange the exact diameter of the tin. While Madeleine stood back, he gently upended the bottle containing his marvellous find onto the bottom of the tin. He tucked the dirt and leaves

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around the trap, then placed a square of roofing iron over the top, raising it on one side with a couple of rocks. Lastly, he camouflaged the whole thing with bark and mulch. Standing up, stretching with his hands on his hips, he gave Madeleine one of his what-do-you-think-of-that, aren’t-Iclever looks. ‘Fantastic,’ she assured him, graciously. ———— On the way home, Paddy said they would come back the next weekend to check out their catch. ‘Chap in Queensland,’ he went on, earnestly, ‘amateur naturalist, looking at the Toowoomba funnel-web, Hadronyche infensus, common as grass west of Brisbane. Traps were his idea. Find a female, then the males come courting; bingo, you’ve got the species pretty well wrapped up. You see?’ ‘Yep,’ Madeleine said, picking at the threads where her jeans had split at the knees. For the moment, she had run out of questions, was in fact thinking of baby Josh, of the moment when he would wrap his arms tightly around her — belonging to each other, simple as that. She would make a snack to eat together, watch a show until he subsided into sleep snuggled up like a puppy. With Josh in bed, the night was her own. A soaking bath, her own warm bed; she was more weary than she’d realised. As usual, Paddy was throwing the Land Rover around as if the machinery defeated him. He looked scrawny, energetic, a bit worn

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around the edges. He was a good man, she did not doubt it, and she felt her heart go out to him for his strange intensities, his enthusiasms. Hunting for funnel-webs — less a job than a way of life. As they turned into her street, she saw Doug’s car parked in front of her house. It was odd that he would be early to drop off Josh. Her skin prickled with anxiety. When they pulled up, there was Doug in the driveway with Josh in his arms. The child appeared to be sleeping, his fists clenched against his chin, his face scarlet. Madeleine was out of the car in an instant, darting towards them, taking the child from him. He was ill, what was to be done about it? What had been done? She looked accusingly at Doug, who stood there, mute and inept. Doug pounced. ‘Where the fucking hell have you been?’ ‘How long’s he been like this?’ Doug jammed his hands into his pockets. ‘Since last night, that’s how long, since three o’clock in the bloody morning.’ Not guilty, he was implying angrily, I did what I could. But for Madeleine his words held a different message: poor me, look what I’ve been through; asserting his own piddling suffering above Josh’s needs. Cradling Josh in her arms, she found the door key and went inside. She laid the little boy on the lounge and removed his clothing so that he woke up and stared at her with feverish, puzzled eyes. Swiftly and efficiently, she sponged him with a cool cloth,

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then coaxed him to swallow some Panadol syrup. Then she lifted him and eased herself into the cane rocker, soothing and rocking him until the heat began to seep from his body and he slackened into sleep. All the while Doug sat opposite, head bowed, his hand hooding his eyes, passively and resentfully. When there was a shuffle at the door and a soft knock, he got reluctantly to his feet and went to answer it. Hearing Paddy’s voice as he handed over her backpack, Madeleine half-wished that he and Doug had not met. She might have been grateful for Paddy’s presence right now, remembering yet again the eagerness with which he had clutched Josh and carried him. It would have been reassuring to have him fussing around in his know-all, careful way. With a jolt, she thought of something else. Hauling herself to her feet, she carried the little boy to his cot. Then she filled a baby’s bottle with tepid water, eased the teat into his mouth and stroked his damp curls while he sucked gratefully. He would be all right, though she would pull her mattress into his room and keep a vigil during the night. She found Doug in the kitchen, helping himself to some coffee. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said when he set about making her a cup. ‘Everything okay?’ He was making an effort — the usual bullshit. ‘I guess.’ Even without looking at him, she could sense the tension of his anger. She gazed past him out the window at the giant red gum in the back garden standing out blackly

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against the silent evening sky. She folded her arms, hunching up her shoulders like someone warding off a blow. ‘Christ, Madeleine,’ he pounced, ‘you having it off with that old coot? All nose-hair and eyebrows. He looks like your bloody father.’ Red-faced, her voice plaintive and over-emphatic, Madeleine did the best she could. ‘His name is Dr Patrick Jones. I’ve got a job as his assistant on a research project to collect local species of funnel-webs. For the last couple of months, if you must know. You got a problem with that?’

CHAPTER SIX

Statistics or not, death by funnel-web bite is the stuff of mythological terror. A quick, agile spider, dark as sin, the male funnel-web is believed to be fearlessly malevolent. Its carapace has a metallic sheen, smooth as armour. Its attack is unexpected and savage, its switchblade fangs loaded with a ghastly poison. It slips unseen into the house under the gap at the bottom of the door. It climbs a brick wall and scrabbles silently through the open window. It folds itself into shoes, gardening gloves, clothing, bedclothes. A healthy 31-yearold woman is fatally bitten on the wrist while making her bed one morning in a southern Sydney suburb. A toddler dies while holidaying at a beachside resort and the spider is discovered inside the arm of his tracksuit. A man steps into the waiting fangs after changing a light bulb in his lounge room. Believe me, these events actually happened. A funnel-web bite kills in either of two stages. First comes the agony caused by the large fangs puncturing the skin and the

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swift suffusion of acidic venom into the body tissues. Within minutes, the victim suffers nausea, vomiting, blurring of vision, profuse sweating, salivation and streaming tears. The lungs flood and foaming yellow fluid spills from the mouth. The heartbeat races as blood pressure soars to almost double the normal rate. The muscles spasm uncontrollably so that the whole skin undulates in snake-like contortions. For survivors of this first stage, there is a brief hiatus, a false dawn before the insidious and gradual decline. Now blood pressure begins to fall and fall until the victim becomes comatose. An adult might take up to six days to die, finally succumbing to cardiac arrest followed within minutes by brain death. M. H. Spider Notebook

Madeleine’s father died at 7am on a wintry Tuesday the week after her camping trip. He had sat alone in an armchair through the long chilly night and died in 60 seconds of agony before breakfast. What had he thought about in those dark hours — beyond the swelling rhythm of pain

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pulsating in his heart, pincering his limbs? A vigorous man, passionate, abrasive, scornful of infirmity, he did not call to his wife for help. He did not have the patience for a drawnout, corrosive death. He was 68 years old, a good life, an untimely death — that’s what people said. For Madeleine, his death was senseless. All these weeks she had wanted to believe he was recovering. Well now, he’d said, it was just a question of looking after himself, a diet, walking the dog if he had one, the usual claptrap they tell us oldies. Just commonsense, that’s what it is, using your noggin. Nevertheless, he had set about ignoring all medical advice, claiming longevity ran in the family — grandfather lived to 96, Aunty Gwynne was 91 and going for the century. His death was meant to be postponed for a couple of decades, at least. By nine o’clock in the morning, less than an hour after her mother phoned, she and Doug were on their way to Newcastle for the funeral. At Doug’s suggestion, she left baby Josh with Jocelyn, a retired nurse Doug had found through some mates at work and who had been their standby babysitter for months. ‘Christ, haven’t you got enough to think about?’ Doug said. While Madeleine wandered listlessly from room to room with the baby nestled against her shoulder, the woman arrived bustling and grandmotherly. She lifted Josh from Madeleine’s arms, telling her not to worry, the little man would be just fine. Wide-eyed with tearless grief,

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Madeleine was glad enough of the woman’s presence. She was grateful too for Doug’s talent for organising, pulling strings, and, no doubt, throwing money around. With similar efficiency, he packed her bag, issued a few lastminute instructions concerning Josh and they were off, the black BMW whipping noiselessly through the early morning traffic. Once they hit the intercity expressway, he was on the mobile phone to Louisa, the gofer in the Minister’s office, calling her matey and comrade. Curled up on the seat beside him, Madeleine strove not to listen. ‘Have a good one,’ he said, ringing off. ‘Yeah, well, it’s all shit this end.’ After that she closed her eyes, feigning sleep. Perhaps she really did doze because when she opened her eyes they were already passing Marulan. She could not have explained what she was feeling, though someone, Doug perhaps, looking into her bruised grey eyes and her face drained of all colour would have said she was in shock. Right now, she told herself, she was thinking and feeling absolutely nothing. Somewhere, at the base of her brain, there was a raw gaping agony, but if she simply ignored it, the wound would contract, close up like those sea anemones that sucker onto rocks. She began to examine each of her fingers, gnawing at the nails and at the hard skin around them until Doug demanded to know whether they should stop for breakfast. Before she could answer, he burst out, ‘Listen, you reckon you’re gonna handle this?’ When she hesitated, he went on, talking tough so that she knew she would never

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forgive him. ‘I mean, right now you look like a basket case, chewing away, white as a bloody ghost.’ Though the tears slid down her cheeks, she would not succumb to the self-pity his words provoked. ‘I’m okay.’ Doug grimaced with disbelief. But it was her remoteness he could not stand. She was off some place he could not fathom with the lines of communication down. He tried another tack. ‘He was a funny old codger, your dad. Pretty heavy opinions about this and that.’ In the past, in conversations about their parents, they had both said as much. Now she felt her face grow hot. ‘I’m trying to make up my mind,’ she snapped, though the tears kept coming, ‘whether to have mustard or tomato sauce with my hot dog.’ For a moment, Doug was puzzled, then his face tightened with anger. With a twist of his wrist, they were off the expressway, tossing up gravel as they bumped and skidded to a stop. Madeleine was thrown forward, then violently back against the seat as he slammed on the brakes. Cutting the engine, he turned towards her, his face now white. ‘I don’t damn well deserve that.’ She would not look at him. He grasped her shoulders as if to shake her, then with effort released her. His voice was harsh. ‘You’d think you would’ve seen this one coming, Christ, wouldn’t you? You’ve been mooning around for bloody weeks waiting for the saintly old bugger to kick the bucket. You think I didn’t notice? Is that it?’

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Madeleine shook her head. ‘It’s not that. It’s …’ What it was, she couldn’t think. Doug took a breath, determined to set her straight, clutching at straws. ‘I wasn’t one of his favourite people. You think I don’t know that? You think I couldn’t see what he was doing to you, to us? Looking down his nose at this bloke of yours. Not our sort at all, my darling daughter. And you coming back all full of it, giving me the big frost.’ Again Madeleine shook her head. ‘It wasn’t like that. He told me … he told me.’ She would find exactly the right words. ‘He said that I was … thoughtless. That … that I was behaving stupidly.’ Doug frowned, trying to imagine what she had left unsaid, what she would not explain to him. In particular, this Dr Patrick-bloody-Jones — where might he fit into the picture? Apart from being a fucking father substitute, that is. ‘And are you? Was he right?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ she murmured because she could not say otherwise. ‘Christ, you’ve lost me. It’s all too bloody complicated.’ Madeleine felt the weight of her misery pressing down on her. Doug took hold of her and pressed her head against his chest so that she gasped for breath. She could feel the silver pendant he wore round his neck against her cheek. He pulled her closer, his hand cupping the back of her head. He began murmuring to her in a kind of singsong, his succour an uncompromising threat. He was telling her not to worry, he would look after her, he would always look after her.

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At last, he drew back, though still he did not release her until she said what he demanded to hear, that yes, it’s all right, I’m all right. Finally, he let go of her and they sat in awkward silence. Side by side in the stillness, her white face stained with tears and mascara, her ragged hair, the extremity of her distress. And this other — her remoteness, like a glint of steel. He shook his head and put his hand on her knee, feeling her stiffen under his touch. ‘I’m sorry.’ Then raising his voice, ‘Look, I’m sorry.’ Lifting his hand from her knee, balancing it between her palms, Madeleine struggled with the weight of his words. ‘Me too,’ she said, more coldly than she knew, ‘I’m sorry too.’ Doug glanced deliberately at his watch. He reached for the ignition, ‘You reckon we’re going to bounce? Ride the rocky bumps?’ Again, he was pleading and could not look at her. ‘I hope so,’ she said, putting her hand to her mouth to quell her tears. Nothing at the moment seemed to her less possible. ———— The funeral service was held the next afternoon in the crematorium chapel. Madeleine could not remember the last time, if ever, any of the family had been to church. Her

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father had reserved a special scorn for bible-bashers and wowsers. He had always insisted that when it came to the Big Questions — God, whither and whatnot — what you see is what you get. And what you don’t get in this life, he’d said more than once, is The Total Picture. Just a whole lot of small ones, and by golly weren’t they enough to keep you occupied. Think of it, he had said to her ever since she could remember, all those whys and hows and whens that need answering — enough to keep you busy, well and truly. The rest was just whistling in the wind. ‘God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world,’ he had scoffed. ‘Let me tell you, if you believe that, you’d believe anything.’ Another time he’d said that he didn’t need the old Head Prefect in the white robes to keep him in line. He could figure it out for himself. Sitting there in the congregation amid the small crowd of relatives, neighbours, her father’s former work colleagues, with Doug on one side, Laney and Xander on the other, Madeleine was wretchedly aware that even the token religiosity of the service was out of step with her father’s fierce sentiments. She could not imagine what her mother had been thinking of to arrange it this way. It was like Laney to hedge her bets on the afterlife and to toe the line of respectability. ‘A godless man,’ she had pleaded, ‘do we want the whole world to know?’ And so the service began with the organ whinnying through The Lord is My Shepherd, and the straggle of voices faltering as the verses progressed until only the full-throated

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bluster of the minister prevailed. The man clearly saw himself as being in the vanguard of a revamped clergy, the type who strums a folk guitar at Christian Youth meetings, beaming the Lord’s message with charm and sex appeal. He had a good tan and a well-cut fall of beatific curls, wore hiphugging black trousers and Italian boots. The instant the hymn finished, he ordered them to pray. Madeleine did not bow her head but watched in miserable outrage this presumptuous stranger posturing in the centre of the dais with one hand raised to the heavens. In the other, he held a microphone against his chin so that his voice boomed and screeched to the Lord to receive her father’s soul unto His own. ‘Soul, spirit, spook, whatever you want to call it,’ her father had sneered, ‘well, I haven’t got one of them. No ghost in this machine. Flesh and blood and bones — right through.’ The minister now hooked the mike onto the lectern and perched himself against it, elbows jutting out like a bat’s folded wings under his black robe. There was a long pause while he surveyed the congregation, looking from face to face with calculated benignity. Beside her, Doug sighed heavily, folded his arms and threw back his head to gaze at the ceiling. His face was pinched with boredom. Laney was sitting forward, back straight, her handmade black dress arranged just so across her knees and a lacy handkerchief between her fingers. She seemed to be eagerly anticipating what was to come, grasping at every word, every nuance of

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the minister’s performance. But when she turned and placed her hand on her daughter’s arm, she was haphazardly seeking, not giving, comfort. In that frail uncertain gesture, Madeleine sensed acutely her mother’s bewilderment. Something fundamental in her had been shaken to be replaced with fearful confusion. The bitter thought came to Madeleine that, in the passing of time, Laney’s certainties would solidify again. The nice minister, the successful funeral, the flowers, so many cards from one person and another, the proper forms observed — to give new focus to the commonplace of her husband’s death. Already she was talking of her grand tour, a bus-load of oldies taking in the Continent. ‘I’m just going to have to pick up the pieces as best I can,’ she’d announced to Madeleine. ‘It takes a bit of courage,’ her father had insisted, ‘to face the fact you only get one go round in this life. And after that — garden compost is about all you’re good for.’ He had gone on about it, with a vanity wrapped with pathos. ‘The trouble is, there aren’t too many people who can take that one on board.’ ‘My friends,’ the minister began, everyone’s pal, ‘friends, we are gathered here today to make our last farewells to Leonard Arthur Henderson, beloved husband of Laney, loving father of Alexander and Madeleine …’ Madeleine would not let herself be held by the man’s words. How many funerals had he conducted that week? That day? Maybe he ran to a tight schedule, one pack of mourners shipped out on cue and the next lot put through

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the paces. She half-turned in her seat, her eyes drifting across the faces of the clusters of people on the pews behind. She could make nothing of their expressions — beyond a meek capitulation to the minister’s hackneyed sentiments. Even the chapel itself was like a function room, with its cold white walls and phone-box red carpet, its elongated windows framing an empty pallid sky. And centre stage on a mobile platform in front of a tastefully unimposing wooden cross stood her father’s coffin. Madeleine stubbornly resisted the notion that the exquisite, richly lacquered box could contain anything as unpleasant as a corpse. Here, in this well-lit room, death had been muted, civilised, given good manners. ‘A sideshow, a circus,’ her father would have sneered at such a gathering, ‘and not a very good one at that.’ And it was all over with barely decent haste. Between the final hymn and the last quick prayer, the coffin slid unobtrusively into a small window at the back of the dais. And was gone. Through the ludicrous service the hot scorn that rolled insistently across the surface of Madeleine’s emotions had claimed her father as a powerful invisible presence. Together they had judged the proceedings with a curl of the lip. But now, shuffling out of the chapel in the crowd, standing outside greeting familiar faces abstractedly, Doug leading her to the car with his hand pressed on the small of her back, it was her father’s absence that struck her forcibly, like a blow to the solar plexus. She staggered, breathless and nauseated. In the car, she began to cry,

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coughing, choking on the swell of her grief, not for him, not for her father and his dying, but for herself, to be left with nothing, nobody who really understood or cared. For ever after, all she would have was a mishmash of memories, a shrinking centre to her life. Like someone talking to herself in a dark empty room. ———— There was a book that Madeleine’s mother had shown her a year or so before. It was an oral history of the mining village outside Newcastle where her father had grown up. Her mother said that cousin Lillian and some of the local ladies had spent months putting it together, going through council and church records, making hours of taped interviews with the community’s leading lights and with the old folk, some of them survivors of the original families. And the photographs, her mother had persisted, they were priceless, like something out of music-hall melodrama: sepia portraits of great-great-grandmothers in dark taffeta skirts and elaborately smocked shirts, ethereal debutantes in pure white flouncy dresses and gloves to the elbow and serious young chaps, barely out of school, in heavy serge uniforms and slouch hats, off to the Great War. There were grainy black and white shots of the first homesteads and the main street with its two pubs on opposite corners, the shaft of the old colliery standing out in a paddock in the background. Further on were the school photographs, the local footy

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teams and the annual Labour Day picnic, held in the grounds of the brand new School of Arts. At her mother’s insistence, Madeleine looked carefully through it, and found herself drawn into the puzzle of the sketchy history and half-remembered lives. There were her own family members whom she had not known existed: a great-uncle who broke his neck falling drunk from a horse; another who came back from Anzac Cove and Ypres, only to drown two weeks later in the local swimming hole. Auntie Gwynne, Lillian’s mother, was there, a solemn, skinny 20-year-old off to the Presbyterian Church picnic in the back of an open wagon. There was a half-page photograph of her father too, a rangy young man with a badly cut fright of sandy hair and a soft optimistic face. He had won the scholarship to the city’s high school. After the funeral, family and friends gathered at the house. Bella from next door and Madeleine’s mother had made mixed sandwiches and plates of sliced tea cake. Chairs were arranged in the garden but in the wintry afternoon everyone crushed indoors. Doug headed for the kitchen and minutes later pushed through the throng with a tray held ostentatiously above his head. Duty done, he was out on the patio, walking up and down with the mobile phone against his ear, for all the room to see. Cousin Lillian parked herself on the lounge, gesturing for Madeleine to sit beside her. She held the history book on her lap. Lillian was in her early seventies, a big vigorous woman, long-limbed and freckled like Madeleine’s father.

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She lived with her mother, caring for Auntie Gwynne like a child. Her own children had long since grown up and her husband had been killed years before in a boating accident. When Madeleine sat down, Lillian patted her shoulder, taking in the puffy distracted face. ‘Good thing it’s all over,’ she announced, bluff and kindly. ‘The funeral, eh?’ She peered more carefully at Madeleine. ‘Awful, eh? God-awful — that young upstart of a minister strutting up and down like a constipated peacock.’ She clapped her hands on her knees and summoned a chuckle. ‘Your Dad would’ve had a good laugh, eh?’ ‘I guess,’ Madeleine murmured. Dead one day, buried the next, requiescat in pace, before you can even think about it. Xander too was doing the rounds with the cups of tea. Graciously, Lillian took one and placed it untouched on the coffee table beside her. She smoothed her hand across the cover of the book on her lap. She had something to say. ‘He kept his sense of humour, Len did,’ she said tentatively, riffling the pages, watching Madeleine still. ‘Not always an easy thing to do, one way or another.’ Madeleine nodded. Swiftly, kindly, Lillian put her arm around her. ‘You’ll get over it.’ She stroked the hair back from Madeleine’s face. ‘You wouldn’t go thinking it’ll happen quickly though, would you now?’ Madeleine struggled with the release of words. ‘I can’t quite believe it … that he’s not here.’

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‘No, of course you can’t,’ she said with quick sympathy. Then she changed the subject, brandishing her book. ‘Your Mum tells me you had a good look at this. Memories, it’s all in here, eh? A book of memories, a little bit of yours and mine and everybody else’s. Not finished, never will be.’ She gave a self-deprecating chuckle, opening the book at a page of school photographs. ‘But I like to try to fill in the gaps. Ah, you see here, class of ‘65, little kindergarten girls and boys, and sitting up there all prim and proper, Miss Madeleine Gwynne Henderson herself. You remember? Your father up at the Tech doing the diploma and all of you living at Grandma’s? Think you can dredge up some more of those names?’ Warmed by her cousin’s kindness, Madeleine took the book and peered at the small faces. ‘Honestly, Lillian,’ she protested, ‘I must’ve been all of five and a half years old.’ Lillian’s face softened again. ‘And a lovely little thing you were too. Hair like snow. You must’ve fallen out of heaven — that’s what I’ve always said.’ Madeleine smiled miserably because until now she had forgotten that too. She looked again at the faces in the photograph, beginning to think back, remembering disparate things — the school grounds with the low spreading trees against the fence where she and her playmates kept house; Granny’s big backyard that took her father forever to mow; her mother putting aside scraps of meat to feed the old man goanna that came to the back steps every morning; and her father swooping her up and

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tossing her in the air, swinging her round like a merry-goround. Frowning, she tried to make sense of where all this was leading. Lillian’s book of remembering was meant to illuminate the past in the soft glow of nostalgia, of sentimentality. Lives were threaded together through love and loss, good fortune and bad. After that you were simply dead — in a way that was as barely comprehensible as the rest of it. But she had been her Daddy’s little girl, his angel, his special little bundle. It was a memory to cling to and, some time later, when she could, to take comfort in. Perhaps she could use it to paper over the gap in her heart that had always been his pride of place to fill. She closed the book and gave it back to Lillian. ‘I can’t think,’ she said. She stood up, bent forward and kissed Lillian’s cheek, hugged her. ‘When I come up with something, I’ll drop you a line.’ In the kitchen, she hugged her mother too, promised to be in touch and to bring Josh up as soon as she could. She found Xander chatting with Auntie Gwynne and said her goodbyes. Out on the deck, she sat on the steps waiting for Doug to finish his latest telephone call and then to make his own flamboyant farewells. He was in good spirits, in a way that suggested the day had accomplished something. Alone together in the car, he placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her towards him, determined not to notice the way she held back. ‘It wasn’t so bad, was it? All the rellies duly assembled, spotlight on your Mum.’ His hands clenched her more tightly. ‘No, come on, really?’

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But the look she gave him could have seared metal. Doug backed off, found the car keys, jammed them in the ignition, got it started second go. Bloody electricals were stuffed. Christ, he had not meant to set her off. If she wasn’t so touchy, there was more he could have said. Like maybe now she could start living her own life, out from under the old codger’s thumb. Just the two of them, and baby Josh made three. He eased in the accelerator, felt the powerful engine respond now to his touch. Bloody engineering marvel. He glanced at Madeleine to see if she had calmed down a bit. When she looked up, all misery-guts and apology, he grinned at her, his beaten-dog smile that always brought her round. And Madeleine did feel a little sorry for him, not least because it might be her fault that it was so difficult to love him. She watched him a moment longer, fingers pressed to her lips to contain her anger and unhappiness, eyes full of guilty judgment. ‘I probably just need some more time,’ she said. To what? Come to terms, consolidate our recent separation, find a way forward? ‘Take all the time in the world,’ Doug said coldly. And hours later, when they were already past Lake George and on the home stretch to Canberra, his voice broke into the darkness as if he had thought of nothing else in all that distance. ‘You and me and Josh makes three. About right, wouldn’t you say?’ But he wasn’t really asking her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Yesterday I mentioned to my friend Maria, on the supermarket checkout, about my job looking for funnel-webs. Two local species, I said, in face of her incredulity. She wasn’t so interested in the details, just hoped we might get rid of them. I told her one of them is closely related to the Sydney funnelweb, (Atrax robustus). The other is an alpine funnel-web that is very similar to a Tasmanian species (Hadronyche venenatus). Both live in the bush around the ACT and into Victoria. Parliament House is absolutely riddled with them, she joked. As Paddy suggested, it’s one of those jokes that becomes very tiresome. M. H. Spider Notebook

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Until Madeleine mentioned the bloke’s name and described the screwball job she had gotten herself caught up in, Doug had never heard of Dr Patrick Jones. It took all of five seconds and one phone call to the CSIRO to get a line on the guy. Though his contact was careful not to come straight out with it, it was clear that this Jones character was some kind of a has-been. Looked like he was in the queue for a redundancy package in an organisation that everyone knew needed a good broom through it. Doug didn’t waste time on the details. He asked the lovely lady to put it on paper and fax it across. Soonest. He gave her the number of the fax machine in his bedroom at the flat and said he hoped she was on for lunch. Why not tomorrow? Yeah, Tuesday. Fantastic! Look forward to it. He went home at lunchtime and found the CSIRO stuff among the usual bundle of garbage that spilled out of the fax. He got a beer from the fridge and sat out on the balcony, thinking about the brief resume of the guy’s career: science degree, Sydney University, way back then, major in geology, doctorate part-time at the ANU, got himself into the CSIRO attached to some sort of fire research project, burning off up the Snowy, a dozen or so published papers on reafforestation after bushfire damage, assessments of seasonal water table alterations — that seemed to keep him occupied for a while; and descriptions of the geomorphological features of the local region (by which was meant the bloody rocks and hills and valleys). That was it — this rabbit’s contribution to the sum total of human knowledge

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at about 10,000 bucks a page. He was a fucking parasite. There was nothing for the past half-dozen years, and not a mention of spiders, least of all funnel-webs. Just to be sure, he put another call through to the CSIRO’s Public Relations and drew a blank on that spider expert, Jones, Dr Patrick. It seemed Jones was into a new tack and not telling anyone about it, going bush for the night with a young research assistant to warm his sleeping bag. Weeks, it had been going on for weeks and no one bothering to tell him about it, least of all Miss Hopeless Bloody Liar herself. Doug screwed up the sheets of paper and tossed them into a corner. For a long time, he sat nursing his beer, thinking, figuring out what in the hell he could do about it. ———— In the evening, Doug came to Madeleine’s house well before Josh’s bedtime. He said he needed to see how he was doing. He lay on the lounge-room floor, playing with Josh for an hour or more, building Duplo towers for the toddler to knock over. He was unusually subdued, contrite even, after their bleak words of the previous days. For Madeleine, who had spent most of the day tearful, grieving, it meant some kind of attempt to comfort her. She washed the dishes, tidied the kitchen, biding her time until she could swoop Josh away and see Doug out the door. But it was Doug who carried Josh to the bathroom, bathed him and dressed him for bed. He sat beside the cot

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until the child was settled. Leaning against the kitchen doorframe, waiting for it to be finished, Madeleine could hear him singing the way he had when Josh was a tiny baby — crooning the French national anthem with a slow rich accent. Did the trick, he always said. Coming back into the lounge room, he still did not speak to her, nor even look in her direction. He simply gathered up his jacket, making ready to leave. He went through the pockets and found what he was looking for. It was a flask of Napoleon brandy. He placed it on the coffee table hesitantly and paused to see how she would respond to his peace offering. In the 18 months or so that she had known him, Madeleine had never seen him so meek and miserable. The other Doug, telling her what’s what, with an explanation for everything, he was easy to throw off. Uncertainly, guiltily, thinking she owed him, Josh’s father, the gestures of a friendship, she said, ‘I’ll get some glasses, shall I?’ She should have known better. Too late, she saw the facade crack. Doug tossed his jacket over the back of the lounge, undid the top button of his shirt and flopped down. ‘Go for it, my one-true love,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a bastard of a day.’ Still and all, sitting opposite him nursing the lead crystal brandy balloon, one of a matching half-dozen he had bought for her as ‘a touch of class’, she could see that underneath he was moody and morose. It had been a difficult week for him, up all night with a sick baby, stepping in to

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help her, organising Jocelyn to babysit, driving her all that way. He deserved her gratitude. And he was sure to be brooding about what she may or may not have been up to. She drank a mouthful of brandy, feeling the liquid burn down to her stomach. She felt so empty, lonely, loveless. Her father’s accusation sat heavily upon her. She was thoughtless, self-centred. She looked across at Doug. And see the damage she had done. Doug smiled unhappily. Way back then, when she had first known him, there had been many nights like this, just the two of them cuddled up on the sofa with a bottle of good booze, but never getting seriously drunk. Madeleine had done most of the talking, her chatter braced against his reserve. There was desperation in the way she railed against what she saw as his shyness until her words hung between them with fumbling incoherence. Making love, sex, fucking, that was Doug’s answer to her on those evenings. He insisted they take their time, each step with calculated slowness. For you, he said, holding her wrists above her head with one hand, slipping his fingers under her clothing, skilfully unbuttoning her shirt and rolling her nipples gently between his fingers. He lifted her skirt, lips and tongue against her thighs. Then he stopped, holding her tightly, making her wait. He always teased her to be patient, drove her crazy. She had never before met anyone so focused on the intricacies of her body’s responses, so that as the weeks wore on, without his demands, his control, it was as if she might hardly exist. All day she could think of nothing else,

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could think of nothing, her stomach churning, sick with wanting him. It had taken her weeks to figure out what was wrong, that there was something wrong. By then she was pregnant with Josh. ———— Sitting on the sofa, with his knees spread wide and his head thrown back, drinking steadily, Doug was watching Madeleine. He was not obvious about it, just a couple of shrewd glances to see what kind of a mood she was in, where she was coming from. Since his decision to set up again on his own, to give himself a bit of space away from little brown pants and his long-faced mum, as far as he was concerned, their relationship had been looking up. He needed a well-ordered operating base, away from pisssodden nappies in the bathroom, Vegemite crusts embedded in the lounge, the bloody obstacle course of diggers, trucks, cars, blocks, Duplo, puzzles, on which to crack his bloody spine. One time Madeleine had spent most of a day pasting large black signs all over the furniture, doors and walls to develop six-month-old Josh’s ‘pre-reading skills’. This was for a little guy who couldn’t feed himself a bowl of mush without ass-ending it all over. Another time she had tacked a forest of mobiles to the ceiling of Josh’s room, and then all his stuffed toys so they hung half-strangled on pieces of string and you had to bend double to get across to the cot. To her credit, Madeleine had never argued about their

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revised arrangement, especially since the bloody rent and all the rest of it were paid, on the knocker, once a month; and more especially since, on the question of quality time with Daddy’s little darling, he, Doug, had been right in there with the best of them. Well, he loved the kid, didn’t he? The thing was that he was one of those blokes who always took the wide view. Given the right sort of distance, he could see all the angles, keep all the balls in the air, or whatever the fucking metaphor. Anyway, since his well-timed separation, Madeleine appeared to have reverted to her mega-scruff look. Her knees poked out of her jeans, her sneakers looked like something the dog had chewed and her hair was permanently tousled as if she had just crawled out of bed. He leaned forward and swiftly poured himself another brandy. He would not ask her about it, not directly. He had no intention of making that mistake again. One way or another he would figure it out — find out what she was up to with the skinny father-substitute. It was what he was here for. He caught her eye and raised his glass in mock humility. ‘To world’s best practice in fathering. A living, breathing benchmark — that’s me.’ Madeleine was hardly listening, aware only of her own aching sorrow. ‘Look, I’m admitting it,’ Doug persisted, as if acknowledging her forgiveness was out of the question. ‘I was a bit bloody rough yesterday.’ ‘There’s no need to go on about it,’ Madeleine murmured. Ducking her head, she took another gulp of brandy.

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‘Well, I’d better be going,’ Doug announced into the silence. ‘You want me to piss off, right?’ ‘Finish your drink first,’ Madeleine said, the next moment biting her lip at the speed with which she had put her foot in it. Ah, the old tension breaker, Doug thought. ‘You’re all heart,’ he scoffed and waited for her soft, rueful smile. Later on, he would brush her long soft hair until it shone, lifting and weaving it in his fingers. He would like that. ‘Just before you chuck me out,’ he said, patting the cushion beside him, ‘come and sit here. That way I won’t feel like such a useless dork.’ He held up his hands, palms outwards. ‘Left my weapons at the door.’ But the minute Madeleine sat down, he pushed her sideways and threw himself on top of her. He began biting her neck and mumbling with heavy menacing accent. ‘Eh, eh, eh, now I have you in my power, eh, eh.’ Furious, telling him it wasn’t funny, Madeleine squirmed under him. Summoning her strength, she twisted sideways and pushed, so that he fell off the lounge, pulling her after him. She hauled herself up and sat astride his chest, pressing his arms to the floor with her knees. Doug smiled. ‘You’re gonna drive me insane, you know that, don’t you?’ Madeleine let go. ‘Rubbish,’ she said tartly, though there were sudden tears in her eyes because now she was a little drunk and everything was sad and crazy. And somewhere in the muddle was her emptiness, her neediness,

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the aching sorrow in her flesh. She did not want to hurt Doug, did not want to hurt anyone. Hadn’t she hurt him enough already? ‘Hoi, come on,’ Doug said, reaching up and pulling her down beside him. They lay together, side by side, while Madeleine struggled to give form to the sway of her emotions. When Doug knelt up and began to take off her clothes, with slow care, running his hands over her in familiar tantalising patterns, she did not protest. She could not think of the right words, her body so hot and heavy. It had been weeks since he had touched her, but her body had not lost the memory of it. Meticulously, rhythmically, he strove to ride across the nuances of her resistance, her remoteness, until all at once he clutched her and cried out so that she felt the pity of it, of him. But then he began to make love to her, with the same insistent control, so that she too clung to him so tightly and cried out, her body capitulating to its own knowing responses to him. But, in the aftermath, the tears came easily, while he held her so tightly and whispered comfort as best he could. But still she could find no love for him. Only judgment and regret. ———— After a time, Madeleine sat up, wretched in the stark light. She had not meant this to happen. Pissed and spineless, she had betrayed all her days of fighting free. Her mouth and

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throat were parched, her temples aching. Doug was stretched out with his arms folded behind his head, calm now, watching her. Like the cat, she thought, her stomach tightening, who had caught the mouse. She felt his hand on her back and she twisted away, reaching for her clothes. ‘Oh Christ,’ he groaned, sitting up. He pulled himself to his feet and shuffled out of the room. Dressing quickly, Madeleine heard the toilet flush, then he was back with a glass of water for her. He handed it to her without looking at her. Methodically, he pulled on his trousers, smoothed the cuffs of his shirt in sharp creases, knotted his tie just so, while Madeleine perched on the lounge chair with her arms folded, her back straight. More than anything, she wished him away, knowing too that it would not be so easy. Dressed in his antique white silk shirt, his black Zegna suit, handmade boots, Doug bent over her, supporting himself on the armrests, hemming her in. Right on target, he said, ‘Not your scene, eh? Too much like a good time.’ His words lay between them, harsh and ugly. ‘We’re friends,’ Madeleine insisted, shuffling the cliches that she hoped might fit. Knowing her so well, Doug persisted, ‘He light your fire too, the spiderman?’ Madeleine refused to answer, bowing her head as her face grew hot with humiliation. Doug staring at her, figuring it out. Abruptly, he picked up the half-empty glass of water

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on the armrest and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and bounced unbroken onto the carpet. Frightened, angry, Madeleine scrambled backwards out of the armchair. With its bulk between them, she stood her ground. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She was shouting, distraught, ‘I’m not having it.’ But Doug wasn’t listening. He was already at the door. Hand on the knob, he turned back to her. ‘Listen,’ he said, with controlled fury, ‘we’ve got to talk about this. When you get your head together.’ And then he was gone, with the soft click of the latch behind him. ———— Doug did not know how long he sat in the car outside Madeleine’s house with his hands on the steering wheel and his forehead resting against them. The agony began around his heart and suffused upwards into the base of his brain. The idea of her betrayal seemed incredible to him. The stupid slut. And the other image of her, hair white-gold like dawn on snow, her body brown to the bikini line, breasts and buttocks glowing like silver, her face flushing, back arched, clinging to him, wanting him more than he had ever known. His breath came in gasps, the pain constricting his chest like someone suffocating. He could not make sense of her, of why she was doing this to him. God knows, he had tried while she kept him dangling. Of course she loved him. How could it be otherwise? She must see that. She couldn’t help herself.

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As this last understanding came to him, Doug felt the pain begin to ease. Starting the car, he began to understand other things too; that behind her snappy, I-can-look-aftermyself bullshit, Madeleine needed some good old-fashioned protection. Christ, with that bullying screwball for a father, who’s to wonder that she did not always know which way was up. He felt a jab of bitter hatred for Dr Patrick Jones. He must have seen her coming from a long way off and couldn’t wait to get his paws on her. Swinging out onto the road, Doug felt the sudden release of having analysed the situation with satisfactory clarity. He was going to do something about all this.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Believe it or not, very few people who are bitten by funnelweb spiders develop the horrific symptoms of systemic poisoning. Indeed, there’s been a lot of scientific speculation about the possibility that some of us might have the good luck to be naturally immune to the venom. After all, the list of animals other than humans and monkeys who have a high tolerance to it is a long one. Unfortunately, this theory appears to be extremely unlikely. There are more commonplace explanations. An overexcited spider often spills some of its venom before it succeeds in sinking its fangs into you; observers of enraged funnel-webs in the laboratory have noted that globules of venom appear almost instantly on the tips of their fangs. The spider’s age, sex, diet, physical condition and how recently it has depleted its venom sacs also affects the toxicity of its bite.

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Equally, its victim’s health, age and the quality of the first aid he or she receives are all crucial factors. M .H. Spider Notebook

The next morning, though she had slept badly, Madeleine awoke early, even before Josh. The light was grey and shadowy so she knew it was not much after dawn. She lay on her side, face in her hands, her thoughts sifting through the events of her father’s funeral, Doug, the previous night and his pointless jealousy. After her day of weeping, she had no tears left. She thought too of Paddy and his spiders, as if it were an oasis of normality in her fractured, wretched world. Today, when she got around to it, she might ring him up to see how investigations were going. His office was so close, she could even slip down and see him. She must re-read the updated file he’d given her. It contained Paddy’s own precious handwritten notes, complete with margin jottings and headings: Distribution, Description of Known Species, In Captivity, Venom, and other fragments, questions, observations, directions to pursue. She loved his singleminded enthusiasm. Tramping through the bush, digging up

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spiders, talking about them, doing her homework, just for the sake of it and there was no harm intended to anyone. She liked him, admired him. He’d been so kind to her, sheltering and warming her when she was sodden and miserable. And Doug? She drew up her knees and hugged herself with distress, with shame. He had said they should talk. Stupid, last night she had been stupid. She pulled the blanket more tightly round her shoulders. Tightly, he always held onto her, wrapping her in his web of demand and need, pity and passion. He insisted on her compliance and she had drunkenly obliged. In her chest was a knot of anxiety, anger. He was so wrong about her and Paddy and yet she despaired that she could ever convince him of it. Her father had warned her that she must watch her step. Huddled in the bedclothes, she began to sift again the previous night’s events. She saw herself on the lounge, head bowed, red-faced, as if she were the guilty one. She must talk to Doug. She would tell him he was being crazily suspicious. He had no right to accuse her of such a thing. She threw off the covers and sat up. Josh was stirring in his cot. She would tell Doug just how mistaken he was. Wrapping herself in her dressing gown, she took a breath to calm herself. She was learning to watch her step. ———— And Paddy? As he did each morning, Paddy was up and into work by 8am. For years now, summer and winter, he had

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ridden to Yarralumla along the bicycle pathway that ran beside the Molonglo River, turning before he reached Scrivener Dam and heading through the woods around the lake near the Governor-General’s grand residence. He took his time, a wiry figure, grey hair sticking out under the black pea picker that did for a helmet and wearing a luminous orange macintosh and matching trouser protectors. He would never tire of the acute pleasure of the morning, pedalling steadily past the slow brown river, across the narrow grassy valleys and down into the canopy of trees, the air misty and crisply clean, the cockatoos and rosellas swooping and squawking. He barely noticed the blokes in their skin-tight harlequin suits who whipped past him on their lightweight mountain bikes at twice his speed. Yesterday he had finished writing up his field notes on the weekend. He had lingered with remembered delight on the details of locating his likely candidate for the species of Brindabella funnel-web. He had no intention of raising his hopes that the trapped female would lure a mate and he would achieve the most difficult thing — a matching pair. This morning he must check his field notes again for accuracy before transferring them onto the computer. At some stage before the next weekend’s field trip, he would pass a copy to Madeleine, to keep her up-to-date. Madeleine. His thoughts circled warily round the confusing notions he held of her. A striking young woman, to be sure. But the other aspects — the well-dressed, arrogant young fellow in the driveway, the feverish little

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boy — it was not difficult to surmise the unhappiness of that situation. No business of his. Pushing effortlessly up the long incline of Banks Street, the last stretch before the CSIRO, he began to shuffle words in his mind: quick-witted … untidy … touchy … guileless … worldly wise … damaged — he paused, thinking of her brave wretchedness in the face of her father’s illness. On top of it all, a broken marriage and raising the little chap all alone. Warm-hearted, opening her arms to him, savouring the sweet creature comfort of it, without a second’s thought. Bad tempered! He squirmed at the recollection of his own ludicrous embarrassment over breakfast. Justifiably so, she had been dismissive of a bloke’s silliness. By the time he had chained up his bike, walked the corridors to his office and sat down at his desk, Paddy was lost to the tangle of thoughts about the young woman he had known for all of two months. Leaning on his elbows with his chin in his hands, he tried to review again the turmoil of the weekend. One thing and another. He had always counted himself among the blessed, to be married to a lovely, a clever, a sensible woman. He loved his wife, always had, always would. Never wavered, never been a skirt-chaser. He felt his face grow hot. Until now. He had tried to keep out of temptation’s way. He hadn’t succeeded, had he? He could only wonder at himself, to plan a night in the bush with a young woman, pretending to himself that he didn’t know what he was about. He shook his head, thinking despite himself of Madeleine’s quick slim body

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under him and him dreaming all along how he would hold her, cradle her like a child, soothe all her hurts away. Aarhh, but there were no excuses. Tickle his vanity and he had about as much moral fibre as a tomcat. Exasperated with himself, he alighted on a way forward. Without delay, he would phone Madeleine. They would meet for coffee and he would endeavour to reinforce the notion, in a no-nonsense manner, that he was a happily married man and their relationship, such as it was, could proceed only on an entirely professional basis. It would be unfortunate if a moment’s aberration … a moment’s delightful … No, no, he would not presume to refer to the matter. With her good reserves of commonsense, surely Madeleine would understand his intentions. In the event, Paddy did not ring Madeleine immediately. He sat staring at the phone, gathering his thoughts. He got to his feet and began to pace his poky office, coming to rest facing the window. Looking out unseeing at the forest of dirty-green pines, he began to rock on his heels, hands clasped behind his back. Now he could not have said what was on his mind, beyond an incoherent agitation that made his heart race. Nor did he sense another presence in the room until he felt a hand on his shoulder and started with a yelp of surprise. It took him a moment to gather his wits, seeing her there as he had first seen her, jeans hanging off her narrow hips, hair pulled back tightly in a ponytail, the puzzle of her face with its shifting emotions, one second soft with warmth

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and laughter, the next darkly closed like the shutters on a camera. The little boy with his blond cherub curls was clinging to her jumper. He cocked his head at Paddy, then covered his face with his chubby fists in a paroxysm of shyness. ‘Aahhh,’ Paddy groaned, then said the first thing that came into his head. ‘I was just going to ring you.’ ‘So here I am instead.’ ‘Yes,’ Paddy agreed earnestly, then felt himself blush, hot and scarlet. He thrust his hands into his pockets, then took them out again. Like a schoolboy. If Madeleine noticed his discomfort, she chose to ignore it. She grasped Josh under the arms and lifted his weight to her other hip. ‘I was going by. I thought I’d bring your file back.’ Her voice fell and she began to gnaw at her bottom lip. ‘I … I thought you might have something to add to it.’ Without hesitation, Paddy reached out and took her by the shoulder. He guided her to a chair, patting the toddler on his curls. ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he blustered, acutely aware now that she was in distress. He picked up his field notes and held them out to her. ‘From the weekend.’ He began to fuss with the other papers on his desk, busily replacing them in the file, thinking blankly how to broach the subject of coffee. With his desk tidied, Paddy cast around distractedly for something else to do. Now Madeleine was standing up and heading for the door. Flustered, he came after her so

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that when she turned to say goodbye, they almost collided. Paddy jumped back. ‘Little man, all right now is he?’ he asked awkwardly. To his relief, Madeleine smiled, though he could see the strain in her. ‘Yep, a 24-hour bug.’ ‘Ah well … ah well.’ He peered at her. ‘I suppose he’s been keeping you up at night, has he?’ So calm she was in her grief, holding her chin up, though her face was as grey as ash. ‘My father died.’ He would’ve reached out to her then, wrapped himself around her. He raised his arms then thrust them out of the way behind his back. And then she was gone. ‘See you tomorrow. Thanks a lot,’ she murmured over her shoulder. For what? He remembered the field notes. He had given her his only copy. And never mentioned the coffee.

CHAPTER NINE

Back to the business of being fanged by a funnel-web, which Paddy accuses me of having a bit of an obsession with. Doesn’t everybody? Anyway, this time it’s the good news. Until the discovery of the antivenom in 1980, the majority of bites were successfully treated symptomatically. By the late 1970s, this treatment was sophisticated and multifaceted. Thanks to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory’s researcher, Dr Struan Sutherland, a compression bandage and splint had replaced the arterial tourniqet in preventing the immediate spread of the venom. Drugs were used to sedate the patient, to treat the profuse sweating and oedema, to lower the blood pressure and so on. As one expert jokingly put it, the discovery of the antivenom ruined a beautiful syndrome.

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Those who ride through the effects of even the most severe bite will emerge in perfect health. This is not as unlikely as it sounds because severe envenomation is a temporary condition causing no long-term damage. M. H. Spider Notebook

Deliberately, Doug was 10 minutes late for his lunch appointment with Katya Kapuscinski. It was the lovely lady from CSIRO who was left sitting at the empty table, checking her watch, until Doug made a late entrance, hurriedly, like a man on a tight schedule. He sat down, tucked the serviette on his lap and fixed Katya with a look of serious contrition. ‘Hell, I know I’m late.’ Before she could answer, he sat back, stunned. ‘Christ, you look absolutely bloody smashing. If you weren’t already spoken for, I’d have to be after you. No doubt about it.’ Except he wouldn’t, would he? Wouldn’t know where to start with that creamy flesh spilling out all over the place, enough to bury you alive. The luscious Katya had crushed her body into an outrageous black bodystocking, cinched at the

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waist by a silver chain, breasts stretching the fabric round and full as beach balls. The nails of her fingernails, delicately holding the menu, were painted a day-glo pink, to match the colour of those thick pert lips. The woman was supposed to be a bloody miracle in bed. Doug hoped uneasily that might mean she was stupid too. The trouble was he could never be sure. Taking her time, Katya gave him a charming smile, curled at the corners with a hint of scorn. ‘I think you’re full of crap, Douglas.’ Doug shrugged abruptly, take it or leave it. He picked up the menu and read it with apparent absorption. The woman unsettled him. He looked around for the waiter. ‘You don’t need me to tell you what a ravishing woman you are,’ he persisted with feigned humility. Katya laughed, flattered and mocking. ‘And I am truly sorry I kept you waiting,’ he repeated. ‘You know how it is when the place is really cooking.’ Katya ignored this last statement, instead successfully signalling the waiter. She discussed various items on the menu — the soup of the day, yes, and the fish, then, with that knowing, scornful smile at Doug, ordered enough to feed a sparrow and a bottle of Grange. Disconcerted, not by the price of the wine, but by the woman’s apparent mockery, Doug ordered a dozen oysters, the soup and a large rare steak. Thinking of Katya’s eyes on him for all the long moments it would take him to consume this food, he instantly wished he hadn’t.

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As soon as the wine was served, Katya began to gossip. Adding her own spiteful twists and flourishes, she repeated the latest crop of scandals: the sexual liaisons, the financial rip-offs, the come-uppances, the opposition minister who walked into a cupboard trying to find his way out of a press conference, and the one about the MP whom no one had heard of until … ah Douglas, that man, migawd, such dissolution, face like a mauled dog … and the poor little cleaner comes in and finds him with his trousers round his ankles and that young man on his staff, you know, spread across his desk. ‘Oh, but he didn’t miss a beat, Douglas,’ Katya bubbled with it. ‘Piss off, that’s what he said, just like that.’ Doug smiled with, he hoped, the right measures of appreciation and indulgent superiority. Katya’s associations and contacts were legendary. How else would she know such things? But now she changed tack, fixing him with her piranha smile. ‘Oh, but Doug, you do not want to hear all this.’ She leaned forward with eager sympathy. ‘Your little boy, so pretty, do tell me that he is blossoming.’ ‘Josh?’ Doug conceded. ‘He’s just fine.’ He went on dissecting his steak with surgical concentration, though he could not bring himself to eat the blood-oozing morsels. And your wife, your lover, your domestic arrangements, your stuff-ups, he thought savagely, tell me, tell me everything, even though I think I already know. He pushed

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the plate aside and blotted his lips with the serviette, determined to take his time. ‘Katya,’ he said, carefully not meeting her eye. ‘I could chat like this for the rest of the afternoon, believe me.’ He paused. ‘There’s something come up.’ He looked at her then, a look that was intended to mask a serious concern, one that he must leave unspecified. Katya was genuinely taken aback. She had begun to think that this fastidious young man might be a bore. Folding her arms so that her breasts were pushed together in an impressive cleavage, she waited for him to continue. ‘That bloke I rang you about, Jones character,’ Doug hesitated because he had not thought exactly what he would say next, ‘the bottom line is he might be under a bit of a cloud, as they say.’ He glanced at the wall behind her, winging it now. ‘A few of the colleagues round the place have been taking a second look at some of his published findings. No suggestion of fraud, or whatever,’ he went on quickly, implying there indeed was. ‘It’s a question of standards, I guess. No one wants to feel vulnerable when the issue of funding comes around.’ Katya looked at him sceptically. ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at Douglas.’ He raised his eyebrows, as if unwilling to say more. Then he drew breath. ‘Not my bag of course. But I … well, the suggestion’s been made to have a snuffle around in the right quarters.’ He reached for the wine bottle. ‘Well that’s the substance of it.’

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Katya frowned, sensing that something in Doug’s pitch strained credibility. She tried to recall what she knew of this Dr Patrick Jones, this nobody. And now this sudden interest. Observing Katya’s puzzlement, Doug persisted. ‘Let me put it this way,’ he appeared to be relenting, taking her into his confidence, ‘there’s quite a bit of loose change about for the right sort of project. Hell, Katya, you know what these guys are like, pushing and shoving, when there’s some filthy lucre in the offing.’ He took her hand across the table, eyes wide and frank, appealing to her to understand that someone had to set the record straight. ‘If this bloke Jones really is a bit dodgy, then we better find out the details. Sooner rather than later.’ He sipped his wine patiently. If she did not rise to the bait, then there was nothing gained. Or lost. But when she asked her next question, he felt a surge of triumph. Hook, line and sinker. ‘Why are you telling me all this? What is the point of it?’ she demanded. He nodded judiciously, to imply it was a fair question and he respected her for asking it. ‘Damage control.’ Then with a hint of outrage, ‘Christ, you know how it is, Katya. We set up an investigation, carpet Jones and the next minute the shit hits the fan. Whatever way it goes, he’s a loser, CSIRO doesn’t need it and the Minister carries the can.’ He was silent again, letting her stew on it. With a quick look at his watch, he signalled for the bill. ‘I’m gonna have to cut this one short, matey. Damage control, think about it.’

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On the pavement outside the restaurant, he slid his arm round her waist and kissed her cheek. ‘Mmm, you smell good too.’ Then he added fiercely, letting his admiration for her shine through. ‘You’re wasted where you are, don’t I know it.’ Smiling her mocking smile, she pressed against him so he fought an impulse to recoil. ‘I’m not sure what you expect of me, Douglas.’ He hugged her quickly, leaving it deliberately vague, beyond the oblique implication that if she played her cards right on this one, there was something in it for both of them. Driving back to Parliament House, Doug went over the conversation again in his mind. It had gone better than he’d hoped. He would give it a week, maybe two, before every man and his dog knew that Dr Patrick Jones was a bloody fraud and the CSIRO was into a cover-up. He heaved a sigh at the sheer effortlessness of what he had achieved. Who, he wondered, would the wonderful Katya broadcast the news to first?

CHAPTER TEN

Every few years a story hits the tabloid headlines of some benighted bulldozer driver fleeing the hordes of funnel-webs he’s uncovered on a building site. The spiders live in clusters of anything between 50 and 1,000. In other words, if you find one secretly nesting in your back garden, there could be lots of its relatives within striking distance. They like to nest in rockeries, decaying logs, the bases of trees, anywhere that is cool and moist. Spraying the place with insecticide doesn’t help much because their burrows are either well hidden or underground. In fact, the chemicals can cause the spiders to become highly irritated and unusually aggressive. The wandering males sometimes come into the house, particularly after their retreats have been disturbed by a heavy rainstorm, weekend gardening, or a visit from a pest control company.

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They can also survive for up to 48 hours under water. The most likely explanation is the spiders’ knack of accumulating air bubbles in the hairs around their lungs. So if you scoop a limp funnel-web out of your backyard swimming pool, don’t assume it’s dead and toss it into the bushes. M. H. Spider Notebook

‘Listen, pal, listen.’ Full of a drunk’s camaraderie, Neil O’Flaherty manoeuvred himself closer to Doug. ‘Bloke like you could do all right for himself. Christ, tell you what.’ Doug stiffened, reaching for his beer. Neil had been a serious boozer ever since anybody could remember. Once upon a time, he had laid claim to the title of political correspondent for one of the metropolitan dailies. These days, he worked as a stringer for a collection of country rags. ‘No, no, no.’ Neil bellowed, shaking his head back and forth at the world’s idiocies. ‘You gotta pick ’em, if you get my drift. Look at me, tell you what. I’ll tell you something. A lovely lady is what I’ve got. No, no way, mate, she don’t live here. If you want my advice, pal, keep ’em outside the

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50-mile limit, outside and no one’s spending their lunch hours fucking talking about it.’ Neil drew himself upright, tucking his gut into his belt. ‘Another thing, while we’re on the subject. Matey, matey, it’s the older ones you gotta go for. With the experience. Knickers off and straight into it. See what I mean, eh?’ Doug made no response, especially since it would make no difference if he did. Neil had been on the piss since lunchtime, propping up the bar at the Press Club. Six o’clock on a Friday evening and there was almost no one there, beyond a couple of well-oiled real estate agents and a few scrubbers on the prowl. Madeleine was late but, then, when was she ever damn well on time? ‘I wanna tell you something, pal, I wanna tell you.’ Neil grasped Doug’s shoulder to get his attention. ‘Aaww, mate, I gotta say this. You don’t go putting the word on the likes of Miz Katya Kapuscinci.’ He rolled his hands out from his chest. ‘Tits, hell, good bum. Woman’s a bloody feral feminist. She’d be for telling every fucker and his uncle how you go about it and the size of your bloody dick. See? A bloody feral feminist,’ he repeated, pleased with the phrase. Doug’s eyes scanned the room again and came back to the door. Waiting for her. ‘What else’s Ms Kapuscinci got to say for herself?’ he asked coldly. Neil rocked on his heels, his hand on the bar to steady himself. He was trying to get his brain circuits round the

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sudden swerve in the conversation. Aware too of the chill in Doug’s question, he was momentarily flustered. ‘Aaww Christ, Doug,’ he blustered, pleading his drunken goodwill. Doug waited until he remembered the question. Neil couldn’t resist shooting his mouth off. ‘Jesus, don’t ask, pal, don’t ask. Some bloody hoo-ha down at CSIRO.’ Doug held Neil in the ice of his stare, playing him for a pisshead. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ Neil clung unsteadily to the shreds of his dignity. A lowly hack he might be, but he still knew a damn good story. ‘Who’s to know, matey, who’s to bloody well know? Some character’s been massaging the odd little digit, nip and a tuck. Or so they say. So they say.’ He took a gulp of his beer, then peered at Doug, his face childish and belligerent, daring him to ask another question so he could tell him to get stuffed. But Doug seemed to have lost interest. He looked past Neil at Madeleine shoving open the heavy glass doors then heading purposefully across the foyer towards him. For once, she seemed to have made an effort with her appearance. She was wearing the black number he had bought for her, Christ knows when, the one that sculptured the curves of her body down to her ankles. Around her neck was the porcelain cameo on a black velvet ribbon. Her hair too was just as he liked it, a fall of pale silk across her shoulders. And no make-up, just the clear grey eyes that surveyed the room, defying the way the drunks sized her up.

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Neil too had his eyes fixed on her with a look of lecherous resentment. She was way out of his league, which could only mean she was a stuck-up bitch. Hell, Doug thought, she looked a million dollars. He clapped Neil on the shoulder. ‘See you round, sonny boy.’ But going up to her, he was careful not to touch her, knowing she would be irritated by anything else in front of the onlookers. Up close, he saw she was ill at ease. ‘Had some business to finish up,’ he said softly, thrusting his hands into his pockets apologetically. ‘We can bugger off some place else if you like.’ Then, his eyes averted, hardly wanting to presume, ‘Unless you’d like a drink?’ She seemed to accept his little performance, even gave him a quick peck on the cheek. ‘We need to talk, Doug.’ ‘Sure we do,’ he assured her. Now he took her elbow for all the crowd to see. Nothing too eager, mind you, just to let the likes of O’Flaherty know that the Katyas of this world weren’t on his agenda. Ushering her down the corridor to the car park at the back of the building, he said nothing more. But when he had her securely in the capsule of his BMW, he asked, still working on the humble approach, ‘You’re on for dinner, right?’ ———— The restaurant was just as Doug liked it: unobtrusive decor, subdued wall lights, a sprinkling of ‘faces’, a clever selection

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of wines. They had arrived at coffee without much chat. At least, Doug did not seem to feel the need to talk, beyond the formalities of ordering and inquiring after her enjoyment of the food. Madeleine did not think her silences had ever mattered to him. The point was this public ritual of coupledom that was intended to sap Madeleine’s resolve to be done with their relationship. Yet she was reminded guiltily of the times when she might’ve had the heart for it. Not that there had ever been light and laughter, not much that she could remember, not enough. How many smart little restaurants had they sat in like this, Doug with his sleek executive suits and flourish of credit cards? On Fridays, Canberra restaurants were full of Dougs: the bright, tough guys, the political minders and party functionaries, who served their masters up to the precise point at which their self-interest continued to prosper. It did not matter how you played the game, only whether you lost or won. Madeleine poured herself another coffee, sugared it, stirred it slowly. She told herself that she hadn’t always been so cynical. And Doug? He described himself as a pragmatist, which at least served to distinguish him from what he called the absolute fuck-ups and the accomplished arseholes. The restaurant was beginning to empty. She sipped her coffee, feeling anger clutch her and not trusting herself to speak. Doug sat opposite, his chair tucked up to the table and his back straight. He was never one to lounge in restaurants. Like her, he seemed in no hurry to talk. ————

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Doug was well into his second bottle of Chablis and meant to stop drinking soon. It was not such a bad restaurant. All up, he felt pretty relaxed. On the other hand, Madeleine obviously did not, and hadn’t all evening. She was into shuffling the pack again — you did this, I did that, and whose fault was it really? Sitting there, with her hand on her chin, wall-eyed with recollections, she was flat out reckoning up their relationship on her personal whiteboard. She kept the past, their past, under such constant review that the various versions shifted and changed like the bloody weather. Stymied and befuddled, that’s where it got you. The way to go forward was to find the right interpretation and run with it. Then you were decisive and effective. He thought again of that Jones phoney and the way he had pulled the wool over her eyes, no trouble at all. That little drama was shaping up right on target, thanks to the timely and effective intervention of yours truly. Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. And to the invisible prosecutor, who might pointedly inquire after Doug’s love for Madeleine, there was a lot he could have said on the matter. For a start, he was one of the few people on the planet who could justifiably claim to know the real Madeleine. Behind that ice maiden exterior was a very sensual lady. Right from the start he had spotted that one. It had a lot to do with her moodiness, the way she ran hot and cold, up and down the old emotional rollercoaster. Way back then it had crossed his mind that she might not be all that tightly wrapped. She was inclined to

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be snappy, perverse for no good reason — until he figured out it was nothing a bit of quality fucking couldn’t sort out. He looked at her across the table. He had never thought of her as beautiful; almost beautiful. In an unkind light, she was scrawny, angular, her face a little too long, her cheekbones too prominent, though the mouth was full and the eyes great. He knew every inch of her, could summon like a sheaf of snapshots the different aspects of her naked body. There were images he would kill for — the curve of her long waist to her buttocks, her breasts sloping fuller than you would expect above the rib cage. She would stretch her arms behind her head and lift her body, legs wide, opening herself to him. It was amazing the way she kept him on a leash. He smiled, a small secretive smile. To have done with this little chat that she seemed to have her heart set on. And then to take her home to work some of the old horizontal magic. He drew breath and gazed at her steadily. ‘We should talk,’ he said. He touched her hand and then retreated. ‘I’m saying really talk. Okay?’ ———— The thing is, Madeleine thought, I never get enough sleep. Ever since Josh was born she had been tired. And then this week of tears and 2am wakefulness, sure she would never come to terms with her grief. Although it was only 10 o’clock, she was emotionally drained. Actually, right now she longed to scurry home and burrow into her bed. If only

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Doug knew how completely and absolutely fed up she was. Really talk? As far as he was concerned, whatever she said would be quietly ignored while he pursued his own screwball, self-serving agenda. In her bitter experience, when had it been otherwise? ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve only got one thing to say,’ she began, coldly. Then the way Doug arranged his face into careful attentiveness made her snap. She gathered up her shoulder bag. ‘I do not, will not, screw, fuck, whatever, Dr Patrick Jones.’ She leaned across the table, raging. ‘I work for him, if you can get your head around that. I like it, it’s interesting, he’s a very knowledgeable bloke. That’s the sum total of it.’ ‘I see,’ Doug said. Calmness under fire was one of his great strengths. Swiftly, her anger lost momentum. Now her face betrayed guilt and an uncertain hope that he would believe her. ‘I’m not having an affair with him,’ she insisted. ‘Why won’t you believe it?’ Doug felt a surge of pure pain. He resisted an impulse to put his hands over his ears to block out her words. They both knew that she had no talent for lying but what she was saying now was closer to the truth. An affair. To call it that was more than he had bargained on. It implied intentions, expectations, failed possibilities, a reality independent of the exclusive arena of him and Madeleine. For the second time in a week, he glimpsed the unbearable notion that all

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his tenacity, his determination, the love he had spilled onto her, might have played him for a sucker. He stiffened, sitting up a little straighter. ‘Maybe I do believe you,’ he said, deadpan, to hide his wounded pride and his distress. Madeleine’s response was quick and cruel. ‘I might have wanted to. For some reason or another you wouldn’t understand, I didn’t. Okay?’ She clutched her bag and stood up. ‘I’m gonna have to go. Before I collapse with exhaustion.’ She bent down to kiss his cheek, then announced slowly and clearly: ‘I’ll get a taxi.’ Before he could say anything, she was backing away. ‘Wouldn’t want t’be puttin ya to any trouble like, guvnor.’ Too late, Doug lifted his head and saw her stride unheedingly to the door. He could not call her back. Distractedly, he noted the ruins of their dinner — smeared plates, crumpled serviettes, a trail of sugar crystals across the linen tablecloth. He drank the last of his wine and called for the bill. He read it unthinkingly and dropped a couple of 50-dollar notes on the table. Then he went after her, though the minute he stepped outside into the Friday night crowds and saw the taxis cruising the street, he was overcome with confusion. Half a block away he might have glimpsed her, a blonde head disappearing fast. He could not be sure. With an urgency edging on panic, he began to walk rapidly in the direction she might have gone. But there was no point. He pulled up, scanning unfamiliar faces like a bereft child. She was nowhere, a phantom lady, now you see her, now you

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don’t. He stood for a moment longer, slowly retracing his thoughts, striving for calm. He patted his back pocket to check for his wallet, then located his car keys. Now where the hell did he park the car? Twenty minutes later, pulling into the driveway of Madeleine’s house, he could have wept with frustration. He was bloody distraught, that’s what. Everything was in darkness, the windows blank, the place a squat black silhouette burying itself in the night. Under the murky yellow light cast from the street, it looked strangely shuttered and lifeless. He killed the engine and checked the clock on the dashboard. At most, she was half an hour ahead of him, surely no more. He must think this one through. If she had not come directly home, it didn’t take much guessing where she might have gone. Maybe she’d even planned it that way, dumped Josh at Jocelyn’s to keep the night free. The thought of Dr Patrick Jones filled him with an overpowering hatred. Whatever the ups and downs, he and Madeleine had always got it together. He wasn’t talking about personality issues, though for the most part they rubbed along pretty well. Ultimately, she was his lady, the mother of his baby, there for him when he wanted her. He had never doubted the depth of her passion for him. It had never been a case of going through the motions. Christ, she loved it. From the instant he had first set eyes on her, Doug recognised in Madeleine the perfection of a dream. The fall of her hair, the shifting intensities of her face, the grace and

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movement and sensuality of her body. For a while, he had hardly wanted to touch her, in case she slipped from his grasp. And then each time he made love to her, deliberately seeking out the sure safe patterns, he would reach a point where he was out of control, out of his head, lost in her. And she in him. There was no denying it. He slumped down in the seat, turned the radio on softly, resolving to wait, for however long it took, for her to come home. What he would do then, he had not thought. He reached into the glove box for the flask of scotch. Emergency supplies; he felt damn well shot to pieces. But half an hour later, maybe more, when he was nicely away, his head right into the late-night golden oldies, Chuck Berry, the Doors, great songs, something happened that filled him with pure crazy elation. Abruptly, in the still darkness, a light came on in Josh’s room, throwing a rectangle of warm brightness onto the driveway. Doug flicked off the radio and listened. He could hear the child’s crying out and, faint and wavering, Madeleine’s voice comforting him with that well-known family favourite, the French national anthem. She had been there all the time. He laughed to himself, high and sharp. She had been straight down the line with him. He got out of the car and made his way across to the front door. There was no locating the doorbell, but then, when he thought about it, she probably did not have one. He rested his cheek against the cold timber, humming to himself, ‘Marchons! Marchons!’, and began to knock steadily,

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rhythmically, getting right in the swing of it, so that when Madeleine opened the door he was taken by surprise. He staggered forward and would have gone arse over tit if he hadn’t had the presence of mind to grab the doorjamb. She was angry. He saw it right away, her face clenched like she might be thinking of punching his lights out. He reached out to take her by the shoulders. He wanted to hold her, to make sure she did not get away from him. There was something important he had to say to her, though she would not let him, with that look on her face, colder than charity. ‘I want … want to tell you …’ He nodded to encourage her to take the point. Perverse, that’s what she was. He had to admire her for it. ‘You’re pissed witless,’ she said. He squared up, his expression a drunken caricature of outrage. If it was an argument she wanted, he was ready for anything. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Everything’s okay. I’m gonna look after you.’ She was smiling, hell, he had never seen her look so miserable. ‘Heh,’ he protested, then frowned, trying to figure it. She smiled again, though with a sadness that made him reach for her once more. ‘Aww come on now.’ She wasn’t really so angry. Definitely not, because she took him in tow, guiding him down the hallway to the bedroom. She pushed him down on the bed and began to undress him, briskly

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peeling off his clothes like he was a store-front dummy. But then she climbed in beside him and pulled up the duvet. He was very glad of it, snuggling up. For some hours now it had been his abiding intention to ravish her. ‘You and me,’ he murmured, ‘and Josh makes three.’ Never a truer word, he thought, with deeply drunken clarity. She did not answer. Or maybe he did not hear, his arm like lead across her breasts, his face against her hair, stuporous.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Funnel-webs have no morality beyond instinctual selfinterest. Tooth and Claw, or rather Fang and Venom. They do not share the spoil of the hunt and are definitely not community spirited. In fact, when push comes to shove, they prey on each other. M. H. Spider Notebook

Politics had never been a field of human aspiration that engaged the interest of Dr Patrick Jones. Ever since he was a very young man, he would invariably duck any discussion

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by claiming it was all beyond his ken, implying of course that his mind was squarely focused on nobler matters. When he thought about it at all, and that was almost never, he was deeply grateful that most of the appalling catastrophes of the 20th century, indeed of human history generally, had taken place on the periphery of his existence. Pestilence, cruelty, greed, above all, the sheer folly of humankind, might well shape the course of events, but, for the life of him, he had never been able to see that his personal intervention would make a blind bit of difference. So when it came inescapably to his attention that the very organisation for which he had worked for the past 20 years was embroiled in a life and death political struggle, his first impulse was to up sticks, to go bush as it were, and head for the wild blue yonder. ‘Pure’ science, the untainted pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, had long been a value he held dear. Even in these straitened times, he resolved to keep it firmly in his sights, a light in the gathering darkness. When it came to research, the goals must be wide and high-reaching. Every other day, the newspapers screamed their abuse, accusing the CSIRO of, among other things, being some kind of sheltered workshop for useless boffins. Moneygrubbing, selling off the firm, was all the fashion. Around him the turmoil raged, memos crossed his desk, protest meetings were called, letters to the editor written, a plethora of official inquiries instituted, availing nothing, beyond the sound and fury. The havoc continued unrelenting. Longstanding research projects, staff, whole divisions had been

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levelled by the Government’s scythe. As for himself, Paddy harboured no illusions. It mattered little, it mattered not at all. He would continue his researches until decrepitude or death prevented him. In the last analysis, it was of no consequence whether he was paid to do so or not. Already, he had eschewed the rigmarole of formal approval and funding for the task he had set himself. Instead, he had dug into his own pocket to pay for the necessary equipment and of course for Madeleine’s assistance. Nor did he begrudge it. Still and all, he would acknowledge with a kind of dull agony that a world that had nurtured and sustained him was coming to an end. Once upon a time, the CSIRO had gathered into its sanctuaries Australia’s best and brightest scientific minds. Their finest achievements were distinguished by years of unfettered, painstaking dedication. And ‘touched by serendipity’ — in the words of his great friend and mentor, Arthur Hadley. It was a little more than a year since Hadley and his team had been hounded out. Australian taxonomy, insect taxonomy in particular, had gone with them. Where were the taxonomists who could fill Hadley’s shoes? Who would see as their life’s work the completion of an inventory of the Australian environment, from the lowly ants to the ancient crocodiles? And the spiders, of course, Paddy’s own consuming interest? The funnel-webs were perhaps the most studied of the estimated 10,000 Australian spiders and yet so little was known for certain. Until recently, genera Atrax and Hadronyche had been lumped together willy-nilly. And

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more besides. What was the precise number of species, the extent of their habitat, their relative toxicity? Human settlement and the resultant radical changes in the ecology of the eastern seaboard could well mean that this unique and fragile spider faced extinction. Time was running out. Economic accountability, marketability, profitability, the catchcries of Canberra’s new balance-sheet brigade, were ludicrous yardsticks for the importance of this research. Such was the tommyrot spoken by politicians — and their bureaucratic henchmen. Whatever his private convictions, Paddy steadfastly kept his counsel as the drawn-out battle stormed around him. Among his colleagues at Forestry, he had acquired the reputation of being firmly of the old guard, head up to the neck in the sand. No one had any excuse to dislike him. In fact, his unvarying kindliness and his air of being above the hurly-burly had earned him an affectionate place in the scheme of things. But as time passed, and he was never a voice at staff meetings, never a name on the petitions, he also came to be thought of as a bit of a has-been. Admittedly, he had done good science, but that was some time ago. On the occasions when he enthused about his pursuit of spiders, those around him were left lamenting what made old Paddy tick. It would come as no surprise if he were positioned squarely in the line of fire when the redundancy packages were handed out. But then vicious, more insidious rumours began to be whispered in the corridors and coffee breaks. Something

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about fraud, figures fudged, a whole long-term research project undermined. No one was sure where the gossip had originated, but always it circled inexplicably around Paddy’s involvement. It seemed that broaching the issue with Paddy himself was out of the question, but as the days passed the notion inevitably took hold in some quarters that where there’s smoke there’s fire. On the Friday morning that the article appeared, reprinted from a syndicate of rural newspapers, a conference was called in Tom Wyatt’s office. Wyatt had been Division Head for nearly 13 years, the past few devoted mainly to juggling budgets and crunching staff numbers as his division imploded around him. The task ran through his life like an open wound, though these days he told himself he was beyond bitterness, battle fatigue being a more appropriate description. He was overweight, with thyroidal rolls of flesh ballooning from his face and neck. The top of his head glistened smooth and ovoid, apart from a few crinkled grey threads. It was common knowledge that his health was not good. More recently, the gossip had centred on his increasingly erratic behaviour, which lurched from expansiveness to apoplectic rage for reasons that were seldom immediately apparent. Also at the meeting was Wyatt’s assistant, Brian Franks, whose popularity in the division was tempered by the suspicion that his genial efficiency masked an unabashed ruthlessness. It had been Franks who had rung Keith Muir at

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home first thing to insist on his attendance, managing to convey in one brief conversation a situation of considerable alarm and looming repercussions. Muir, of course, carried the responsibility for overseeing the project and for Paddy’s contribution in particular. Jones himself was not invited — it was implicitly assumed that that might come later. Wyatt was determined to get down to tintacks, beginning with a close examination of the article itself. On re-reading the photostat drawn from the file Franks held on his lap, Keith Muir was struck again by its sheer scurrilousness. It was an eight-paragraph column with no byline. The thrust of it, ‘An inquiry may be pending’, ‘concern has been expressed about a longstanding employee’, ‘a source who has asked not to be named’, the Minister’s office and the CSIRO refusing to comment, implied the very worst without a shred of evidence. Muir glanced at Franks who was steadfastly shuffling the papers before him, and then at the old bullfrog, Wyatt, whose face was flushed and swollen, whether from anxiety or anger he could not tell. Muir was gripped by a mighty scorn, though he drew breath and warned himself to tread softly. ‘Not much to go on,’ he volunteered mildly. Wyatt stared him down, gimlet-eyed and explosive. ‘It won’t do. Need I say complacency, dammit, won’t do? I need some paperwork.’ He brandished the Minister’s ‘please explain’ memo, faxed across from the CSIRO’s Chief, Eric Grantley’s, office. But that was not all. ‘Senior Private, what’s-his-name, young upstart, Doug … Reynolds, on the

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phone to Grantley while you were still eating your cornflakes, Keith.’ Muir ignored the fax, raising his head and stroking his chin, deliberately thoughtful. How long had he known Wyatt — a decade or more? ‘Hell, Tom, why don’t you tell them to go jump?’ Franks restrained a smile but Wyatt, bless him, laughed outright, huff-huffing like a blacksmith’s bellows. Suddenly they had drawn together, comrades in the bunker, time to put on the tin hats and count the dwindling supplies of ammunition. ‘So, what’s to do?’ Wyatt spread his arms as if to embrace them both. With childish impatience, Muir screwed up the article and flipped it to the ceiling. ‘Rubbish, gutter journalism.’ Someone trying to hammer a few more nails into the coffin, was what he was implying. ‘Hardly the point,’ Franks observed softly. Muir thought then of the project: eucalypt reafforestation and its potential as a fuel and timber resource. Out in the field for weeks on end with a couple of research students, Paddy had done most of the dog work. Pretty much routine, though distinguished by Paddy’s systematic carefulness. But not by glory or gain. One of the spear carriers, our Paddy was, and damn valuable for all that. ‘I’ll put something together,’ Muir proffered, finally. Wyatt was effusive. ‘Good man. Come up fighting, eh?’ He came around his desk to show Muir to the door, adding

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with a hint of bluster. ‘Be quick about it, what do you say, Keith?’ Again Muir felt the glow of disdainful anger. ‘Tell them we’re thinking of suing. Won’t be the first time.’ A parting shot, Keith Muir letting off a bit of steam. Who could blame him?

CHAPTER TWELVE

So how do you identify funnel-webs? Sure, most people confuse them with trapdoors, black house spiders, in fact any large black hairy spider lurking around the place. For a start, they’re not so huge, about 5cm long. Nor are they always a sinister, shiny black, but rather shades of grey. They have massive and very distinctive fangs. They never construct doors to their burrows like many trapdoor spiders. But I’ve read enough now to know identifying families of spiders and different species isn’t always a straightforward commonsense matter. For instance, distinguishing one funnelweb from another depends on recognising differences in the sperm storage/mating organ of the male spiders, the first and

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second legs of the male, the female internal genitalia, the spinnerets that produce the spider’s silk and various measurable features on the front section of the body. In other words, the key to an accurate international taxonomy is to look meticulously for combinations of similar characteristics. Over the years, a lot of mistakes have been made, which isn’t surprising when you consider there are approximately 60,000 spiders, 1,000,000 species of insects, as well as a vast profusion of other creatures from bacteria to dinosaurs. These days, taxonomists have adopted a more revisionary approach, which takes into account new methodologies for classification. In other words, as well as morphological characteristics, instinctual behaviour, genetic analysis, evolutionary information and climatic and geological changes are considered important. But in the end, maybe taxonomists are chasing an impossible dream. Order out of chaos. Because, as our knowledge of species becomes increasingly detailed and complex, the less certain we can be that our so-called natural classifications are not arbitrary and imposed. So, a perfect biological taxonomy assumes a monumental challenge: to identify precisely every individual living

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creature and also determine where it slots into the Great Chain of Being. I wonder what Paddy will say to that? M. H. Spider Notebook

From the moment she saw it, Madeleine had been delighted with the house she and Doug had rented soon after they arrived in Canberra. It was close to the high-rises that passed as the capital’s city centre and close as well to the lake’s foreshore with its forests and the sparse sheep paddocks that people referred to as parkland. And, in a city of manicured lawns and hedges, the house’s big back garden was wildly overgrown and various. Bottlebrush and wattle trees were crammed along the side fences and at the back was a tall eucalypt, straight and thick, its trunk as grey as weathered bones. There were spreading fig, loquat and persimmon trees, probably 20 or 30 years old, that no one had ever bothered to cut back. They reminded her of the homemade pickles and jams of her grandmother’s generation. Summer and winter, the yard captured the sun

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and even when the high branches of the eucalypt were bowed by the strong cold winds that swept up from the lake, inside her garden it was calm and sheltered. Sorrowful, fretful in the period after Doug moved out and her father came home from hospital, Madeleine resolved to construct a sandpit for Josh in the middle of the grass. Over the phone, her father had embraced the project with enthusiasm, giving her lengthy and discouraging instructions. Rectangular, square, whatever she decided, her best bet was to mark it out first with string. Listen, he said, success is all in the measurement. Take the time, think about it. She must cement in the corner posts for extra strength — there wasn’t much to it, she could get a bag of readymix from any hardware store. And the sides: she must use dressed hardwood and self-tapping screws — nails would not hold. Twice he rang her back. Bevel the corners, he told her, it will give a better finish. Had she thought of marine lacquer to preserve the timber through all kinds of weather? She had not the heart to tell him that she lacked the wherewithal for such a construction. He would have had the tools to her by express post. In his mind’s eye, he saw so clearly a solid and exquisitely finished creation for his grandson. It was touching, but onerous too, the way he demanded that Madeleine carry out his precise directions. When had he been any different? For his sake, she sat down one evening and drew a diagram with set square and protractor, just as she had seen him do many times. He sent it back to her with careful corrections and specifications.

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But that was as far as it went. In the event, she had ordered a load of sand and had it dumped in a mound on the lawn. In spite of her father’s aspirations, she and Josh spent happy hours making tunnels and castles and dams. They used the garden hose to sculpt the sand into increasingly ambitious structures that often subsided chaotically by the next day. In answer to her father’s persistent inquiries, she had finally announced that the sandpit had been completed. ‘You should come and inspect it,’ she said, because by then she was beginning to understand that he would never make the trip. Still, she aroused his suspicions. ‘Little bloke pleased with it, is he?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. She didn’t trust herself with more expansive lies. So why did she not simply do what he wanted? Thoughtlessness? No doubt. Afraid she would disappoint him? That too. She hadn’t wanted to be shackled by his expectations. Her father would have said her perversity was nothing new. Nevertheless, she believed what distinguished this paternal drama from all the others was her tactfulness. She could acknowledge his good intentions. But in the end something of his underlying, unstated despair seeped into her and she could see no point, she couldn’t be bothered. She would go her own misguided way. The sloppy mountain of sand spreading across her yard would stand as her reminder. ————

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As usual on Saturday mornings after breakfast, she and Josh headed for the sand pile. Madeleine carried his precious box of cars and earthmovers. At this time of the day, before her night of broken sleep caught up with her, her optimism often surprised her. The excitement of a new day was Josh’s gift to her. The little boy crawled headlong onto the soft sand, then scrabbled to the top and rolled over and over down onto the grass. When Madeleine knelt down with the box he squirmed into her arms and kissed her, smacking his lips then pressing them against her cheek with his funny endearing lack of coordination. She hugged and rocked him, her beautiful child, though the next instant he was wriggling impatiently. The serious work must begin. Using the diggers, they smoothed a labyrinth of roads across the sand on which cars were placed at strategic intervals. They shaped Josh’s house and the local shopping centre. At the top they pushed up a hillock and marked Parliament House with a makeshift flag. Creating the lake by spreading a sheet of plastic over a hollow and filling it with water, was Josh’s favourite part. When the child’s absorption could be counted on for a few minutes at least, Madeleine stretched back on the long grass. Inside, in her bed, Doug was still sleeping off his hangover. In another hour or so, she would wake him so that there would be plenty of time to hustle him out the door before Paddy was due to pick her up. Unwillingly, she thought of Doug’s behaviour the night before, a witch’s brew of emotions: resentment because he would never leave her be; scorn for his self-

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centredness; and, worst of all, he made her feel so guilty. Beside her, his arm up to the elbow in the sand, Josh was singing to himself in a jumble of sounds. She reached out and gently caressed his back. With him, love was pure and unselfconscious, as simple as can be. Of course, as far as she and Doug went, her baby’s birth had been the last straw. She sat up and leaned back on her arms. The spring blossoms on the fruit trees were already falling. Frail, tissuethin petals littered the grass, starkly white and pink against the green. The wattle too had turned brown, dusting the garden with a thin coat of earthy decay. The flowers hardly lasted any time at all. Even in the late stages of pregnancy, Madeleine had been as thin as sticks. It was only her stomach that protruded like a large basketball. She was not particularly focused on her ‘condition’ and saw no good reason why she should be. She had not planned to have a baby, but she had refused to take the contraceptive pill. To anyone who might ask, she said she had no intention of becoming ‘a guinea pig’ for the multinational drug companies and probably end up with cancer or worse. Nor had she countenanced having an abortion. She had been in love or at least deeply in lust. Babies were meant to be the exquisite flowers of passion. No one really thought so, and nor did she. But right from the start it was as if the baby made an indisputable claim on her physical being. It was unthinkable to sluice it away like a tumour. Moreover, she took for granted her continued independence. The few women she knew with

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children sent them off to childcare centres and pursued their careers. If it was not as easy as it sounded, she would face the problems when she came to them. On the nights when she did not see Doug, she lay in bed in her flat stroking the tightening skin of her belly, beseiged by an aching longing for the child she carried. And in the morning she rolled out of bed and went to work at the TV studio as usual, right up until her muddled decision to move to Canberra. Once Doug had accused her of composing versions of the past to suit the present. He was not questioning the accuracy of her memory but her motives. There she was: independent-minded, with an average science degree and a reasonable sort of job, carrying off her prospective single parenthood with just the right mix of pleasurable anticipation and level-headedness. Add a light dusting of romantic passion. She hadn’t told him of her pregnancy immediately. How to explain her hesitation? When she did tell him it was with an abruptness that deliberately implied nothing and demanded nothing. She’d seen how glad he was and then, just as quickly, that he was unsettled by her matter-of-factness. ‘Is that good?’ he asked, cool as you like. Is that good? ‘Yes.’ The way they talked, they might have been referring to a bowl of spaghetti. But she’d seen his relief, the faintest flicker of it. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked. Neither of them had the sense to play it straight. Be joyful, she should have said, tell me this is the best thing in your life. A love child, you and me.

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‘Oh, you know how it goes,’ she said. ‘Take out a mortgage, buy a house in the suburbs, join a lawn bowling club.’ Nothing in his response indicated she might be joking. Perhaps the spectre of such a life was suddenly all too real. Had the good old boys like his father warned him that before you knew it women had you hogtied? In bed, he held her as if her body had become a puzzle to him. For the rest he was as polite as ever. It had taken him days to come out with it. ‘Getting hitched — thought crossed your mind at all?’ It was Sunday evening. They were sitting on the balcony of her flat. Doug was nursing a can of beer with his feet propped against the balustrade. Madeleine was reading. A snapshot of coupledom. ‘Why?’ she asked, more wounded than she cared to admit. He seemed at a loss for an answer. He had been posing a hypothetical question, that was all, to clarify in his own mind the significance he should place on her pregnancy. Thinking back now, it was easy to see how stupid she had been. She crossed her legs, brushing the sand from her jeans. Josh was slopping water into his bucket from the hose; in another minute he would be completely sodden. She began to wash the sand off his toys, in preparation for packing up. All her energies had been focused on fencing Doug’s words. Not on their import. He had been intent on staking his claim to her and the baby and he was figuring out how to proceed.

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Maybe it was his confusion that was the biggest offence. Maybe it wasn’t easy to negotiate an emotional minefield when all the regular signposts had fallen down. She laid Josh’s cars and diggers in rows on the footpath to dry in the sun. Then she swung him onto her hip and headed indoors. To wake up Doug. ‘Don’t say I didn’t ask — about marriage, I mean,’ Doug had answered her finally. He had lifted his head and cast his eyes over her. It seemed so strange to her, even then. A fierce look, full of pride of possession but adrift somehow, as if she was hardly even there beside him. ‘I won’t,’ she’d said. She was close to tears. Now she thought of his drunken pleading the night before. Except when he was pissed, and that was almost never, he was better at bluffing than she’d ever been. It struck her with a dreadful clarity and she was filled with a sick, overpowering anxiety. Still clutching Josh, she pressed her forehead against the backdoor to steady herself. She made her way inside and lowered herself onto the lounge, with Josh beside her. Doug had followed her home, waited outside. What had he said? He was going to look after her. Whatever her response to the issue of marriage, he had made it clear to her that the agenda was set. It appalled her that in all these months she had somehow chosen not to see all that this might imply. Whatever she did, he would be there, circling, watching, so that the more she struggled, the tighter the bonds. She did not know how long she sat on the lounge, her fingers pressed to her mouth. Josh crawled into her lap and

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began to pull at her clothing. He was wet-through. She roused herself, rummaged through the washing basket and set about changing him. She thought he had sensed her anxiety. He was quiet now, watching her face with his thumb in his mouth. She tickled him, blew on his tummy, making him chuckle, her golden baby, so that by the time he was dressed and warm, her panic had subsided. Of course, she must confront Doug, as she should’ve done already. She sat Josh opposite her on the lounge, crossed her legs and began to sing ‘Patty cake, patty cake’. She clapped her hands together, then right against Josh’s, clap, left, clap, trying to draw the little boy into the game. On the third time around, Madeleine sensed, rather than heard, another presence in the room. She had no idea how long Doug had been observing them. Picking up Josh, she got quickly to her feet, thoroughly unnerved by Doug’s silent watchfulness. He looked haggard and ashen-faced. She had so rarely seen him like this — dishevelled, hung-over and … and so watchful. ‘You’re awake,’ she said. Josh, bless him, broke the tension. He stretched out his arms, demanding to go to his daddy. Madeleine gasped as Doug took the little boy and pretended to drop him. Josh shrieked and threw his arms around his neck in fright and joyful greeting. Doug hugged the child, though with a glance at Madeleine. Don’t you see, his expression said, how he belongs to me, his boisterous affection my right and proper due? Madeleine fought to quell the anxiety that clutched her. ‘Shall I make some coffee?’

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‘Sure,’ Doug answered her slowly. In the kitchen, she measured the grains into the percolator and placed it on the hotplate. She told herself not to be ridiculous. Hurriedly, she began to rinse the breakfast dishes so that when Doug came softly up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders she almost screamed. ‘Don’t,’ she said, twisting away to face him. Doug pushed his hands into his pockets, his face shadowed with irritation. ‘Let me try and figure this one out. One minute you’re crawling into bloody bed with me, the next minute you’re telling me to piss off.’ In spite of everything, she saw the justice of his complaint. ‘You were so drunk.’ ‘Stoned witless,’ he announced to show he remembered. ‘I …’ she began placatingly. Doug interrupted, smiling indulgently. ‘You don’t have to get your knickers in a twist. It’s okay, everything’s gonna be all right.’ Madeleine put her hand to her forehead. Perhaps she really was ill. Doug was watching her with superior amusement and she could not quell the sensation of the malignancy behind his watchfulness. Drawing breath, she tried again. ‘You wanted everything to be clear?’ Doug nodded encouragingly. ‘Yep.’ His seeming calmness was all that spurred her to say what came next. ‘I don’t want you to look after me. I don’t want to be lovers, not that.’ I’m like a little girl pleading, she thought, because now her courage had deserted her.

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Doug shifted his weight on the balls of his feet, a boxer’s dance. She sensed his frustration and his fury, though the next instant she was reeling sideways, her hand to her cheek where he had slapped her. She thought it incredible that he would do this and then, as the sharp agony suffused her face, oh God, that he might hit her again too hard. He meant to do her serious harm, his hands grasping her shoulders, shaking her. In a blind gasping panic, she twisted and struggled to be free of his hold. But already he was letting go, dropping his hands to his sides, in control of himself again. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ He raised his head, his gaze adrift from her. Quietly now, though his eyes held his private agony, ‘I’m not gonna take any more of this shit from you.’ She nodded stupidly, aware only of the need not to provoke him again. Josh! What had he seen? She could not bear it. The little boy was nowhere in sight. But Doug was one step ahead of her, ducking out of the kitchen to find him. The baby was lying tummy-down on the floor with his head resting on an outstretched arm. He might have been asleep though Madeleine saw that he was intent upon his tiny toy cars arrayed in a line across the carpet. The intensity of his concentration wrenched her heart. It was as if he had deliberately closed himself off from the storm around him. She hoped it wasn’t so. Doug picked him up swiftly, possessively. Over his shoulder, he told Madeleine to get his stuff together, the kid was ready for a nap. She saw that Doug was seizing on the

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diversion of familiar routines. While Madeleine packed the overnight bag, he carried the sleepy child to the car. But when she came out he was leaning against the door, waiting. He’d already thought what he would say to her. ‘You want to sock me back?’ He tapped his chin. ‘Go on, right there.’ Madeleine looked away, not trusting herself to speak. As always, Doug chose to ignore whatever he might have guessed of her thoughts. He slid his arms around her and kissed her forehead. She could smell the stench of his sweat and boozy breath. She shrugged him away from her. He mustn’t touch her. ‘Whoahh,’ Doug said, in mock alarm. Madeleine picked up Josh’s bag and shoved it into the back seat of the car. She stroked Josh’s head, said he was Mummy’s precious little boy. To Doug she said, ‘I want him back here by eight o’clock this evening, you understand? And I’m ringing Jocelyn to make sure she gives you a hand.’ Then, hunching her shoulders, she simply turned and headed back into her house. ———— When Saturday came round at last, Paddy passed the morning in considerable impatience. To fill the hours until it was time to pick up Madeleine he tinkered with the Land Rover, emptying the radiator and filling it with antifreeze —

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something he had been meaning to do all winter. He set to and cleaned the spark plugs — wasting time, he soon realised. Then an inspiration struck him and he retrieved some equipment stored in the garden shed, among it a couple of miners’ hats with torches mounted on the front. Trudi’s sudden appearance in the driveway just as he was making the final checks startled him. She was brandishing a newspaper. ‘What is it?’ he demanded, irritability being a recent feature of their long partnership. Ever one to fuss, his goodly wife. Daughter Susan had just rung, from Sydney, she announced. But he must read the report for himself, and he did, though the first time his irritation grew. What on Earth? Hadn’t he always avoided the burblings of a thoroughly dishonourable profession? But noting the severity of his wife’s expression, he tried to read it again. Fraud, longstanding employee, Forestry, spider project. Trudi watched his face alter in a drift of emotions — puzzlement, pain and then, just as she expected, a staunch indifference. Without a word, he handed the paper back to her. Still Trudi persisted. ‘What do you think it might mean, Brush?’ Years before Paddy had seen fit to grow a riot of black whiskers which, according to the family consensus, made him look like a toilet brush. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ Paddy replied, pedantic as always.

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Such an aggravating man! ‘Someone’s been cheating!’ she said, tartly. Paddy appeared to consider this, though really he was thinking of his wife’s barely disguised distress. He gazed past her at the tall pin oak that dwarfed the house. In another week or two, it would drop the mess of dead brown leaves that had clung on, curled and squalid, through the winter. It was one of the more unattractive exotics, each year tainting the spring with its refuse. Despite Trudi’s admonitions, he had stolidly refused to rake up. Ah, but hers was a determined nature. She had long ago resolved she had worldliness enough for both of them. In the manner of hitting someone over the head with a log when a stout stick would do, it was her job to raise the alarm. ‘It seems someone’s being accused,’ Paddy corrected her, abstractedly. Trudi dismissed this, leaping onto the other issue. ‘But who?’ she demanded. It came to Paddy then, though in the same instant he realised he had known all along. He turned away from her, like a man confronted with more than he had the stomach for. ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ She stood erect, shoulders thrown back, a forthright spirit for all the years of their marriage. ‘Oh, Brush, what are we going to do?’ Only on his behalf was she distraught and Paddy’s heart beat painfully with affection for her, with love qualified by the shame that besieged him. He thrust his

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hands behind his back like a child caught pilfering the lolly jar. What had he been thinking to betray her constancy? For all the preceding days it had been Madeleine who wrapped herself around his waking thoughts. Like an adulterous old fool. ‘Ah, what’s to do?’ he repeated jauntily, though underneath he felt the logic of that statement defeat him. Now it was one of her looks, the scorcher, as his elder boy called it. ‘What, in heaven’s name, could they be thinking of?’ ‘They’, he knew, referred to the world at large, outside the laager of home and hearth. He shook his head. So many questions, the Kitchen Inquisition at full bore. He fought an impulse to give a full account of himself, confession and absolution. Would she know how to forgive him, when he himself had no idea why or what for? But she mustn’t take on so, her face so pale with outrage. To comfort her, he put his arms around her, this feisty, soft-hearted wife of his. He pressed his cheek against her hair, the fine luxurious titian of the poets. Red-brown like the country’s heartland, the earth beneath our feet. As a young fellow at university, he had wished for the words to describe this incomparable girl he pursued across the coffee bars and cloisters. He told himself that he was deeply grateful for their endurance together. Holding her, he hoped too to divert the renewed onslaught of her concern. ‘I know you,’ she railed, though with more affection than anything else, ‘head up there in the clouds while the

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world falls down around you.’ She drew back as her anger rose. ‘You must defend yourself!’ Paddy couldn’t help but look askance at that. Over the battlements, boyo, gun at the ready, and then you mow ’em down. After that it was victory crosses all around. For her sake, he said what he could. ‘There’s nothing, not a single thing. They can look till the cows come home.’ She frowned with frustration. ‘Your own good name …’ She did not continue because she thought that his pride had been hurt. Understanding her hesitation, Paddy felt more acutely his shame. An excellent, admirable woman, his wife. With effort, he kissed her quickly. ‘I’ll talk to Keith — the first thing Monday morning. We’ll see what comes of it.’ It was a counsel of patience. To his relief, she had the great good sense to accept it as such. No point in going off half-cocked. For the moment at least, nothing more need be said, though in the immediate aftermath Paddy felt his spirits plummet towards despair. Clutching at straws he was, like a drowning man. But, good Christ, he must be off, mustn’t he? There was work to be done. He patted her again, saying she must not worry if he was a bit late this time. Trudi stood in the driveway while he made his escape. He did his level best not to notice the look of ferocious anxiety with which she acquiesced in his departure. ————

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Paddy’s day did not get any better. Perhaps the surliness with which he greeted Madeleine had something to do with it. She too was decidedly down in the mouth. It was only when they had passed through the last of the brutal housing developments and the quiet hills closed in around them that depression loosened its leaden grip. Deliberately, he took a deep breath. Beside him Madeleine was abstractedly chewing her ravaged fingernails. For the life of him he wished she would not. ‘Don’t,’ he said, suddenly. Then, in as fatherly a way as he could manage, ‘It’s a terrible thing to do to those lovely hands of yours.’ To his embarrassment, she simply gazed at him with mystified resentment. He grasped the steering wheel more tightly and accelerated. Madeleine appeared not to notice. Now Paddy was unsettled by the silence between them. Perhaps in the intervening days she had arrived at a low opinion of him. He felt the pangs of remorseful loss. It would appear that, in contrast, his estimation of this sensual and unhappy young woman had risen considerably. ———— Madeleine stood close at hand while Paddy knelt to investigate his funnel-web spider trap. He put aside the iron sheeting and slipped the funnel out of the pineapple juice tin. Peering down he noted that the captured female was nestled into an entrance hole of a mess of web she had spun

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to one side of the tin. And that was all. It was just as he had left it, empty of all but his solitary precious prisoner. He kneaded the flesh of his cheeks, trying to think. Now then, no male had come a-courting. But there was another possibility, of course: that this little lady had dined very well. He looked again. If she had, there were no leftovers. Madam Spider had wiped her platter clean. His disappointment was acute. Working quickly, he took a series of snapshots, including a wide-shot of the locality and close-ups of the trapped spider. Then he reassembled the trap and stood back to survey the results. It was just as it should be. He stretched: his bones were stiff from crouching. Ah, no matter, he told himself. It was a question of patience, like everything else. He glanced at Madeleine and found himself smiling with sudden shy pleasure. She had been standing at the ready with a glass Vegemite jar and a piece of cardboard. Like him, she wore an expression of dashed expectations. ‘Ah, no matter,’ he said aloud for her benefit. There were no words to express the other awkward emotions she provoked in him. He led her back to the Land Rover by a circuitous narrow track that an hour later brought them to the banks of Gibraltar Creek just below the waterfall. Here the scrub was thick and the rocks covered in lichen and shaded by wispy ferns. The air was heavy with misty spray and they lingered in the soft greenish light to watch the rush and tumble of the water swollen from melting spring snow. It was cold,

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though in a way that was cleansing and soothing. After a time, they went on, leaping rocks and mud puddles, following the rushing creek down to the camping area. Almost immediately, Paddy set about making a camp fire. Tea for himself and coffee for the young woman. Madeleine produced a packet of chocolate biscuits from her kitbag, which now bulged with spare clothing, a sleeping bag, aluminium camp utensils and a first-aid kit. She had come prepared. Perched on a rock, Paddy leant his elbows on his knees, the warm mug cradled in his palms. For once, he felt no urgency for further explorations. Not that he had lost heart. Not a bit of it. Above him, the sky was a cloudless grey. Despite the spring, there was no warmth yet in the pale lemon sun that seemed diminished above the high canopy of trees. The sharp breeze still held the chill of nearby snow. In the subdued light, the bush had darkened to blackish-green. As always, the peacefulness, the untainted purity of his surroundings, comforted his troubled spirit. After a silence, he began to talk, needing — for reasons that weren’t clear to him — to explain himself to this young woman. ‘Feeling a bit out of sorts, I suppose.’ He gestured dismissively towards the track that led to his trap. ‘You can’t be in a hurry with these things.’ He plunged on. ‘It’s all these shenanigans at the CSIRO to unsettle a chap.’ Putting it like that, he felt a little better. But then it occurred to him that she had no idea what he was talking about. ‘The world, as I know it, is falling down around me.’ His wife’s words, but repeating them now sounded ludicrously melodramatic.

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‘You’ll have to explain yourself, Paddy,’ she said, after what he hoped was a considered pause. ‘You’re not talking about all the work you’ve done? You’re going to have to ditch the whole project?’ ‘Me,’ he burst out, ‘I’m to be ditched, knackered, hung, drawn and quartered.’ ‘Why?’ she demanded. For a moment, Paddy thought there was something wonderfully therapeutic in her matter-of-factness. He wanted to put his arms round her, to feel again her lean fragile body, the gift of her youth, when one has hardly begun to understand how unforgiving life can be. He ran his fingers through his hair; he was 54 years old, a weight of years in which to lose the hard fight for optimism. Ah, poor fella me, he thought, shrugging off such self-pity. He would say no more. Madeleine touched his arm. ‘Come on, out with it.’ ‘Well, now,’ he hesitated, retrieving an unsteady dignity: he’d gone and been accused of fraud. ‘A nasty little snippet in the paper was what it was all about, without a skerrick of truth to back up the allegations. Call it mere vanity, but a bloke’s reputation is a mighty lot to lose.’ Ironically, he turned up his empty palms to indicate the professional desolation that confronted him. Madeleine held her breath, his words a cold chill under her skin. ‘Which newspaper was it?’ Paddy shuffled. ‘Good Christ. The wife came across it.’ Madeleine hunched her shoulders and brought the hot coffee to her lips. I’m going to look after you. Everything’s going

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to be okay. Looking away, she spoke with bleak comfort. ‘Hell, Paddy, that doesn’t sound like such a big deal. The newspapers are full of garbage, everyone knows that.’ Drawing breath, she asked, ‘Who wrote it?’ As was his way, Paddy replied with all the pomposity he could muster. ‘That I certainly couldn’t tell you.’ Madeleine held her tongue. Even out on the sidelines of the political bloodsports you have to know these things. As Doug said — who’s screwing whom, who’s up each other for the rent. Paddy, of all people, would be easy pickings. She hugged herself, rocking forward. She mustn’t leap to conclusions. She looked again at Paddy, hunkered down, and thought suddenly how she’d squirmed whenever Laney referred to her father as the big baby of the family. Her mother looked upon masculine self-pity as childish. Women wanted heroes and had to put up with cowards, liars, cheats, wimps, the whole smear. But Paddy was better than that, with his determination to be above the fray. He was a gentle soul without the heart for lies and intrigue. She put her head in her hands. Sitting opposite, Paddy too seemed selfabsorbed. He had no choice. He must be a fighter. And yet, maybe he was right. There was nothing to be gained by getting involved. While she struggled with the turmoil of her emotions, Paddy stirred and stretched. He gave Madeleine a wink, his face softening, his eyes sharp with self-mockery. ‘Keep your head when all around you is trouble and strife, eh? When it’s all said and done, young woman, I don’t give a tinker’s toss,

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do I now.’ He was making ready to go. ‘There is work to be done, young lady.’ Now he meant to tease her. ‘A special treat.’ Madeleine too roused herself. ‘I am sorry, Paddy.’ Her next words were meant to reassure him, though she couldn’t bear to think that their work together was over. ‘I could still give you a hand. The money’s not important.’ ‘Aahh, yes,’ Paddy murmured, colouring a little, ‘might be jumping the gun a bit. No use letting that kind heart of yours get the better of you.’ Madeleine fumbled with her backpack, stung by the generosity of his words. Kind? Confused and wimpish seemed more like it. Thoughtless, her father had called her, as if the word should be emblazoned in scarlet on her forehead. Paddy was moved to pity. ‘Well, you can’t go feeling sorry for someone who doesn’t feel sorry for themselves, if you follow me.’ He resisted that aching longing to touch her. Madeleine hoped he wasn’t patronising her. ‘So, we should be counting our blessings?’ ‘I don’t think God’s got anything to do with it,’ Paddy swooped, for once feigning pompousness. Like fingernails on glass, Madeleine thought. Still, she smiled at his stupid joke. ‘Okay, enough said. I get the message. Give the world the old two-fingered salute.’ She raised her head, squared her backpack on her shoulders, game for whatever came next. ‘You mentioned a special treat?’

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‘That I did,’ Paddy said earnestly. Despite himself, he felt his heart swell with emotion. She was a sensible spirit with a better opinion of him than he deserved. Or so it would seem. Deliberately, he turned away from her and began to gather up the gear. ———— It had always been Paddy’s way to make a virtue of necessity. Why throw money away when, with a bit of careful thought, you could make do using whatever came to hand. Knocking up tools and equipment out of the clutter that filled his garden shed was his great pleasure and pride. Sunday afternoons he would spend rummaging through the local rubbish tip until the professionals took over and set up a roaring trade in recycling. His wife described it as his Gyro Gearloose approach to life and there were plenty of family stories to go with it. A few years back he had wired up an old dressing gown like an electric blanket to keep him warm on winter nights in the unheated shed. Another time he grew square tomatoes for sandwiches by fitting a series of plastic shapes around the growing fruit. He mounted lawnmower blades to the tub of an old washing machine and ran it as a leaf mulcher. It was slow but effective, though the racket could be heard streets away and brought a deputation of protest from the neighbours. Less the cause of mockery was his trip-lever possum trap, which caught the pesky animals nesting in the roof without injuring them. Then he

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took them up the bush and set them free. Mostly though, his inventions were ugly, low-tech widgets that only ever worked in fits and starts. Undeterred, he would continually make design adjustments. Who would have thought there could be so many uses for chewing gum, was the running joke. When things disintegrated due to their unwieldy, patched-up complexity, he would simply start from scratch with new improved models. Still, he was a fervent believer in the ideals of order and organisation, which were the only sure-fire way of keeping at bay the chaos that always hovered on the threshhold of your life. Needless to say, as Trudi observed, he didn’t always succeed. But as a scientist to his bootstraps, the challenge was always to try a little harder. It explained his interest in taxonomy — that ambitious and never-ending human endeavour to classify all the living things in the natural world. A place for everything and everything in its place. Now in the gathering dusk, he rummaged through the back of the Land Rover and brought out an assortment of his homemade gadgetry. As far as Madeleine could make out, there were two of everything. She must hold her horses, Paddy announced over his shoulder, while he sorted this lot out. She wandered the short distance to the edge of the clearing. Through the shadows of the overhanging foliage, she glimpsed again the narrow tumbling stream that divided the valley. Paddy’s revelations had distressed her more than she cared to admit. First, the turmoil of her relationship with

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Doug and now this. She wished for Paddy’s strength of mind, his talent for shrugging off the cares of the world. She was grateful for their Saturday jaunts, when the rest of her life seemed remote and unimportant. She couldn’t bear the prospect that they would end. She must bring Josh here. Together they could potter around, the child would love it, and she could show him something of what she was beginning to learn. Looking up, she sensed that a strange muted enchantment had descended on the bush; the world was holding its breath in expectation of night, which fell into the valley with the abruptness of a light being switched off. Now, in the brief twilight, the breeze had dropped and all was still and clean and cool. The tall trees were framed starkly against a silver-yellow sunset sky. Even as she watched it deepened to luminous clay-orange. Looking across at Paddy, she saw that he was standing motionless, surveying the darkening severity of the bush and the inflamed earth colour of the sky. The strange silent beauty, neither night nor day, had stolen up on him too, so that for a long moment the two of them were lost to the unreality of the harsh ancient landscape. Paddy broke the spell, murmuring something she could not make out and waving her over. In another 10 minutes or so, it would be dark as coals. Fussily, he demanded she try on the miner’s hat with the bicycle torch mounted on the front ‘to keep the hands free’. Paddy clamped his hand on the crown and shook it unceremoniously. Satisfied it was

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a snug fit, he slipped around her neck a piece of cord to which were attached two short lengths of plastic tubing partially telescoped together. ‘Pooter,’ he said. When she held it up for closer examination he added, ‘For sucking up the small spiders.’ Madeleine smiled uneasily. He wasn’t kidding. With a look that suggested her amusement was beyond understanding, Paddy explained that he had inserted a small circle of gauze at the point where the two tubes joined. ‘Look here, I can’t have you swallowing our precious specimens.’ Trusting she had taken the point, he added, ‘A gentle puff’ll tumble the tiny chaps into the waiting bottle, you see?’ Next he handed her a small insect net, a hefty walking stick handcarved from a tree root and a day-pack clanking with small glass bottles. ‘I don’t need to tell you most spiders are cannibalistic, do I?’ Paddy was similarly equipped though with the addition of a calico tray tucked under his arm, ‘to catch the ones that fall out of the trees’. Lastly, he hooked to the side of the Land Rover a hurricane lamp that cast a diminutive circle of yellow light into the impenetrable darkness that now surrounded them. Flicking on the torch mounted on his hat, he set off with sure strides across the clearing to the start of the narrow bush track. Madeleine made her way across the uneven ground, stumbling because the angle of the light on her head was no

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help at all. Keeping her sights firmly on Paddy, she decided to do her best to be more than a mere observer in what apparently was to be an evening of rampant spider collecting. Forget your cares and worries for a night of funfilled entertainment. Of course, spiders rated low on the lovable stakes, somewhere between leeches, snakes, blueringed octopi and scorpions — funnel-webs especially so because of their unfortunate potential to murder you unexpectedly. But not everyone felt that way. There was that fellow from Sydney, the funnel-web expert Paddy had mentioned, who thought someone should set up eco tours to the spiders’ known habitats. He had found a colony of a thousand or more. Build a viewing platform and tourists would flock to see them, particularly at feeding time. They could set up a stall selling little bags of dead blowflies to flip at the webs and entice the spiders out. Except, she thought, they preferred live victims to sink their fangs into. Hell, why go spider-hunting in the pitch dark? She took off her hat so she could use the torch to better see where she was going. Spiders had some very unendearing characteristics. They leapt out from corners and crannies — it was hideous to feel them scuttle across your bare skin. Or they spun invisible webs across garden paths and bush tracks so that your hair was entangled with sticky threads and you were in a panic to know if the spider itself had crawled down your shirt. They predigested their prey by soaking them in juices, then they sucked them up like a milkshake. Get a grip on yourself woman, she told herself, as insects careened out of nowhere

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into the light from the torch and she shook it wildly to get rid of whatever creepie crawlies had landed on her. If Paddy had any inkling of her apprehensions, he did not let on. Coming up to him at last, she saw that he had focused his light low on the rough bark of a gum tree. It took her a moment to make out the large flat spider, so precisely did its mottled grey colourings and markings mirror the tree. It was the eyes she noticed first, all eight of them in two tidy rows of four, glowing greenish-yellow in the light. Swiftly, Paddy scooped it into a bottle and secured the lid. ‘DeBella,’ he murmured, obviously savouring the name. ‘Huntsman to her friends. Social lady, likes to live in colonies.’ Taking his time, he swung the beam of light up the length of the tree trunk. ‘Hundreds more where she came from, no doubt about it.’ Catching Madeleine’s grimace, he smiled engagingly. ‘Come on, have a good look. The koala bear of spiders, this one — hanging about the larder delicately digesting all those pesky insects. A real beauty, too.’ As offhandedly as she could manage, Madeleine took the proffered jar. The spider was spread-eagled at the bottom, its eyes black now with absurd, bulbous expectancy. Up close, she could see that it was covered with a sleek matt of brown and grey fur. Its extended legs had neat black and white stripes. Only in Paddy’s soaring imagination would you describe it as ‘beautiful’. Certainly, it looked very bright and alert, a picture of vibrant good health.

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Paddy handed her a stick-on label covered in his chook-scratchings scribble, then he crouched down for her to slip the bottle into his backpack. Standing up, he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘How we doing, eh?’ Perhaps his little jokes were really not appreciated after all. But Madeleine tossed her head and smiled with that familiar mix of self-deprecation and mockery. ‘I’m just fine. I love it. Very character-building.’ Into the awkwardness she’d provoked, she added earnestly, ‘Actually, it’s more interesting than I thought. It’s only the venomous ones that get me going.’ And the malevolent ones too, she thought, the ones that stalk you, that prey upon you, that won’t leave you be whatever you say and do. Paddy had no truck with such nightmares. Let the world do its worst. Again, she summoned her smile, disarming Paddy with its hint of subdued misery. Keep busy was Paddy’s uneasy response. To this end, they spent almost an hour circling the clearing in quiet dedication to the task at hand. Deliberately, he did not go very far afield; always they kept in view the beacon of light on the Land Rover. To Paddy’s delight, they collected a dozen huntsmen, weathered pale-brown ones, greys and blackish browns, some half as big again as a 50-cent coin, others the size of a saucer. Each was strikingly different from the last. ‘Amazing number of species in such a small area,’ Madeleine observed importantly. ‘Different genders or different species, eh,’ Paddy corrected her, his attention diverted by a monstrous wolf

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spider, strikingly patterned in greys and oranges. ‘Not something you see every day, now is it?’ It was labouring through the ground litter in ungainly panic. On its back was a stew-pot of black spiderlings, a tangle of legs and knobbly heads simmering and seething. The spider looked bravely overburdened by the mass of its family. Though he tracked it for some minutes with his torch, Paddy made no attempt to catch it. But they did gather a selection of greenish striped lynxes, as well as the ubiquitous, foliage-dwelling jumping spider. Paddy explained that these last were the easiest to recognise because of their box-shaped heads and their lively movements. They had 360-degree vision and could leap about the place, forwards, backwards and sideways, pouncing on their prey with uncanny accuracy. Not surprisingly, they weren’t easy to catch. It was Madeleine’s job to rake the bushes with her insect net and Paddy’s more difficult one to position his calico tray for whatever specimens fell out. When this wasn’t entirely successful, Madeleine thumped the branches with her walking stick. If Paddy was unperturbed by what landed on him unseen in the darkness, Madeleine was equally undaunted when he directed her to carefully suck the tiny ones from the tray into the pooter and distribute them into his small bottles. After the first experimental effort, her only relief was that Paddy’s slip of gauze between her and a mouthful of spiders held good. Some were barely the size of her little finger nail and curled up tightly in terror. There were a

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couple that even she could acknowledge transcended arachnophobic stereotyping. They too were very small but sleek enamel black with an extraordinary star-shaped abdomen crisscrossed by patches of bright yellow and white. Lovely glowing gems. ‘Gasteracantha minax,’ Paddy informed her. ‘ The jewel or Christmas spider, likes to live near water. What do you think, pretty as a painting?’ When he called a halt, he was in high spirits. By golly, he announced, rich pickings indeed! And when he’d secured the bottles in the specimen trays and repacked the equipment into the Land Rover, his great good humour overflowed so that he gathered Madeleine into his arms and hugged her firmly. It was meant as a friendly, companionable gesture. Her body pressed the length of his and her breath was warm against his neck. He did not release her but instead slipped his hands under her sweater. Gently, soothingly, he began to knead the bones of her vertebrae with his fingertips, then downwards over the cool smooth skin to cup her buttocks in the spread of his hands. He heard the catch of her breath, felt her arms about him and could think only of the compliant sweetness of her thin brave body. What could be the harm in it? Good Christ, but he knew better. He gazed into the night, raising his eyes to the black sky with its cold pricks of light. Dropping his arms, he drew back. He shuffled, thrusting his hands into his pockets, a dithering old goat. For the life of him, he could not meet her eye. What would

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she think of him now? Ah, but he reached out again, grasped her by the shoulder. ‘You mustn’t think badly of me,’ he pleaded. ‘A silly old fool, eh?’ Her reply was like a sharp thump to the solar plexus. ‘I like you well enough, Dr Jones.’ Over her shoulder, climbing into the Land Rover: ‘The other — it really doesn’t matter.’ Heading home, for once negotiating the winding narrow road with slow caution, he struggled to fathom what she might have meant. So level-headed were her words. By George, they were bleak and comfortless too, a cold-bath cure for all the romantic twaddle blokes might go on with. He gripped the steering wheel more firmly. It seemed his desire for her was inconsequential, pointless. In the wash-up he could only wonder at such an attitude. The sadness of it. He shook his head to shift the ache in his heart. She was right, of course. Tenderness for her welled up in him and he longed to hold her. She stretched, lifted the weight of her hair from her shoulders and threaded it in her fingers. ‘All I mean is,’ she said, tartly, ‘haven’t we both made our positions clear?’ It was her way, he told himself, to brazen it out. He did not know if there was any bitterness in what she was saying. Gently, he eased the Land Rover off the road and came to a stop. ‘And your position, what might that be exactly?’ he asked.

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‘I said I liked you,’ she said angrily. ‘Isn’t that enough?’ ‘I understand,’ Paddy murmured. ‘I’m sorry to have annoyed or distressed you.’ Ashamed, wounded, he must do his best. ‘As my behaviour has already indicated, I think it most unwise to share my sleeping bag again with such a fine young woman.’ Madeleine felt her anger seep away. She leaned across and kissed him gently on the cheek. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ In his pain, Paddy knew he would not touch her again. He checked his watch. It was high time they were on their way, to home and hearth. Until that moment, he had pushed aside Trudi’s anxious revelations. With swift clumsy effort, he started the Land Rover, over-revving the shrieking engine. Madeleine might almost have read his mind. ‘And this newspaper article,’ she asked, ‘what do you really mean to do about it?’ The question exasperated him, though he wouldn’t show it. In the upshot, there wasn’t a lot a chap could do that would make a blind bit of difference. When there is mud-slinging, a good measure of it will always stick. The worthless opinions of others had not deterred him in the past. That at least was not about to change. Trudi, and now Madeleine too, it would seem, had some risible notion that if you fought tooth and claw, like a ferret down a rabbit hole, you would emerge triumphant. As before, he said what he could. ‘I shall see Keith — Keith Muir — bloke who runs the show, on Monday. I expect we’ll hammer something out.’

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‘I see.’ On Monday she too would make a few careful inquiries. After all, that’s what friends were for. ———— Doug had parked the BMW in a side street under a spreading tree and well clear of the streetlight. The beauty of it was that he had an unrestricted view of Madeleine’s driveway. For half an hour, with Josh rattling round refusing to go to sleep, he waited for her. It was the noise of the Land Rover he heard first, from half a block away, as a matter of fact. It was obvious the muffler was shot and so too was the timing, because the engine over-revved on the gear changes. Hell, the guy was driving like a maniac, swerving into the kerb and braking at the last minute, tight enough to put you through the windscreen. Then the two of them were hopping out, doors slamming. They were at the back of the Land Rover now, standing close together while the bloke opened it up. There was no way Doug could have missed the moment when Madeleine embraced the lecherous old goat, standing on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Doug shut his eyes and massaged his temples with his fingertips to drive the image of them from his mind. Opening his eyes, he willed himself not to look again. Instead, he began to gabble at Josh, his little man, his darling, because his son must not see them either. But he was alert to the sound of the Land Rover starting up and this Jones bastard roaring off. And when he could no longer hear it, he edged the BMW out of

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the side street and headed into Madeleine’s driveway to drop off Josh.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Surely Australia can do without its funnel-webs? On the contrary, the point is we know alarmingly little about them. Consider, for example, the Illawarra funnel-web. It’s a unique species that has taken refuge in the disappearing remnants of New South Wales’ southern coastal rainforests. This spider and another unique mygalomorph, Kiama lachrymoides, were discovered only in the past decade. What is clear is that biodiversity, the profusion of interdependant species, is a key environmental indicator. Like frogs, spider populations provide information about the basic fragility or ecological health of a region. In particular, the ground-dwelling spiders depend on the rich diversity of insects found in undisturbed and unpolluted bushland.

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As the argument goes, we’re haphazardly destroying the natural habitats of creatures before we’re sure of their importance. M. H. Spider Notebook

It was 10.30 before Doug made it into the office on Monday morning. During the whole of the previous two nights he had been unable to sleep. He did not really want to think about the reasons for such miserable damn insomnia. No doubt Madeleine would’ve been quick to point out primly that he was suffering all the symptoms of stress, as if he had no one to blame but himself. Like a kid who forgets a warm jumper and ends up with pneumonia. About midnight on the second night, he had completed his bedtime rituals, including a last-minute tidy-up, surfaces wiped shiny and cushions puffed. He had laid out his clothes for the morning, rinsed his face with an astringent cleanser and cleaned his teeth for the requisite four minutes by the bathroom digital clock before swilling his mouth with antibacterial solution. But, stretched out in bed, he was besieged yet again by an inexplicable agitation, a hot itchy

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torment in his limbs and body that made settling comfortably absolutely impossible. Over the hours of tossing and turning, his sleeplessness gradually erased all sense of rational thought. The darkness, blank and impenetrable, seemed to envelop his whole being. Anxious and fearful, he got up and began to pace the rooms of his flat. He moved with a militaristic compulsion, measuring the distances and turns by the length of his stride. Deliberately, he did not turn on the lights. He discovered that he could negotiate the spaces from any point he designated to any other with the uncanny agility of a blind man. At sunrise, he found himself sitting motionless on his balcony in intense anticipation of the process by which the daytime world shaped itself out of the thick pre-dawn mist. All his concentration had been absorbed by the slow materialisation of the surrounding buildings, the parking lot, the construction site across the road. He had never felt so alert to the basic geometry of the world. At first light there were only the opaque diagrammatic outlines; then the wash of sunshine brought texture and colour, and, finally, a recognisable three-dimensional solidity. He chuckled a little at the thought that his expectations had not been disappointed. Then he stopped, struck by the puzzle of how these things emerged into existence out of the emptiness of the night. Abruptly, he got to his feet and walked the length of his balcony, running his fingers along the metal railing. He was distraught; he had not had enough sleep. Crazy ideas popped into his head, his mind playing tricks on him.

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By the time he had changed, tightly laced up his hightech runners and stepped outside, the fog had completely lifted. Now everything was vibrantly illuminated. It was too bright, too stark, so that his eyeballs ached. He began to jog, crossing the street at the corner into the murky shadows of the trees. He was following the strip of parkland that led down to the lake. As he did every day, he would run the five-kilometre bridge-to-bridge circuit before heading for the office. This morning he did not make it beyond the park. Belting along, his knees raised high as he had taught himself to do, he had been surprised by the exhilaration that surged through his limbs like an electrical charge. Once he was used to it, the morning was just fine. He’d had too much energy to sleep. When any other guy would be dead on his feet, he could run like the wind. Madeleine had never seen him like this, except maybe that time, in the beginning, at the zoo. She had no idea what he was capable of. Madeleine! During all the time of formless darkness, she had hovered on the edge of his consciousness. Now her image came to him with aching clarity. Nursing Josh, her face soft with tenderness, half-hidden by the fall of her hair, her hands cupping the baby, her fingernails gnawed to the quick. Getting his gear off, pulling him into her bed and the next thing he knows she is pissing him off. He could not make her understand what she was doing to him. He speeded up, thinking and thinking of her. Yesterday, when he had delivered Josh home to her, it had been more of the

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Big Chill. It had really thrown him so that he had backed off pretty quick, though he’d half-wanted to wait around for some of that famous honesty she talked about; like what was really going on with Dr Patrick Jones. She wasn’t talking, no way, still had her knickers in a knot about the clout he had given her. Even though he’d had a demon of a damned hangover and there he was, down on bended knee straight off to apologise. Christ, in all these months he had always tried to do the right thing. She never gave him any credit for it. He shook his head as self-pity swelled his chest and stung his eyes. Jesus wept, what more could a bloke do? Again, he began to speed up. His lady love had a real talent for raising his stress levels, right through the ceiling as a matter of fact. All at once he gave a high sharp laugh at the sheer brilliance of the thought that jumped into his mind. He would take her on a holiday! They had never done that. Get away from it all to somewhere exotic, a resort island up north, full of empty beaches where all you needed were your togs and a couple of litres of suntan oil. Just Mum and Dad and Junior, getting along as sweet as apple butter. And then he went down, a full-length, flat-on-yourface sprawl. One second he was flying along, the next he had tripped and gone over like a ninepin. He lay stunned and then, with an almighty effort, he hauled himself into a sitting position. His body was in agony but he could not pinpoint where the pain was coming from. He might have broken something — his knee maybe, his wrists, his bloody

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back, for all he knew. He staggered to his feet and stood swaying through waves of nausea and weariness. Shuffling, stumbling, he made his way back to the flat and curled up on the carpet hugging himself, his knees drawn up to his chest. Hours later, he woke, shivering and aching as if he had been beaten all over with a rubber hose. Except the bruises were already beginning to show. Shuffling across to the phone he punched out Madeleine’s number and counted the rings before he was cut off. He lay on the floor again, until his panic began to subside. It was becoming clear to him that he was probably not seriously hurt. In slow motion, like some arthritic old codger, he brewed himself a couple of mugs of coffee, then he stood under a hot shower. Shaved and dressed, he examined himself in the mirror and was amazed to observe that there appeared to be nothing much wrong with him. His head was throbbing, his stomach was knotted with anxiety. The spruiced-up, be-suited stranger in the mirror stared out at him, with no more than a bruised cheekbone and a frown creasing his brow. The phone was ringing, a disembodied, insistent shriek into the silence. It was Louisa from the office, politely inquiring after his absence. He watched the stranger in the mirror answer evenly that something had come up, that he was on his way. Drawing breath and focusing on Louisa’s Miss Efficiency voice, Doug answered more firmly, explaining that he had had a small accident; no, no, there was no cause for alarm, he would tell her about it when he

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got in. Hanging up, he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles to clear away the tears of relief. In another minute, he would be snuffling like a schoolboy. ———— For the rest of the day, whenever the compulsion took him, Doug rang Madeleine’s number. After lunch, there was an engaged signal so that finally he figured she had taken the phone off the hook. He felt a surge of rage. There wouldn’t want to be a bloody emergency. He felt like hell and today of all days he had a lot on his plate. With Louisa and anyone else who cared to ask, he had bunged on the old heroics. He had been knocked half-unconscious by some loping clown while he was out jogging. He had the marks to prove it: a swollen inflamed area across his right cheek. If he managed to make the incident sound somewhat sinister, he was rather pleased with the effect. But it did not help when Louisa dumped the day’s newspaper clippings on his desk. ‘CSIRO TO SUE’, ran the identical headlines. Two of the afternoon tabloids carried third-page stories declaring the intention of the CSIRO to seek legal advice after unsubstantiated allegations against one of its employees. ‘One of the organisation’s most dedicated scientists’, Jones was claimed to be ‘a victim of the most scurrilous and vicious innuendo’. With horrified fascination, Doug carefully read every word of the attached CSIRO press release. Then he cupped his palms round his

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eyes to force himself to concentrate and read it again. He was struck by a sense of nightmarish incredulity and might have groaned audibly. The statement ran to two closely typed pages, beginning with the gibberish about intended legal action, followed by an inflated precis of Jones’s career. Page two reached the sort of exalted heights of lunacy that had made the CSIRO the half-arsed relic it was today. ‘CSIRO stands by its record of excellence in scientific research,’ he read, ‘and its unswerving commitment to improving the quality of life of every Australian.’ The attack on Jones was alleged to be part of ‘the protracted and orchestrated campaign to discredit the organisation’. The press, the Committee of Review of CSIRO Funding, the Federal Government itself were lumped together for a good slap around the ears. The final paragraph expressed confidence that the Minister would affirm his public support for Jones and for the organisation. Indeed, the shit had hit the fan. Laying the papers carefully in front of him, Doug noted that it had been late morning before anyone had bothered faxing across a copy to the Minister’s office. What else would you expect from those paranoiac hicks? As an absolutely stupid piece of vituperative overreaction, the press release took the trophy. In the kitchenette off the Minister’s suite of offices, Doug threw some ice water from the bar fridge onto his face, then blotted it with a paper towel. He made himself another mug of strong black coffee. He touched the wound on his cheek with his fingertips and winced. His head still

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felt as if he had been hit by a house brick. The boss was due in about three o’clock and he, Doug Reynolds, had better have something to say well before then. Minister Cunningham would not take too kindly to being told by the CSIRO how to do his job. George ‘Run-the-Bastards-Down’ Cunningham — a sobriquet he had earned after an incident that was part of political ancient history — had left school at 16 ‘to devote himself to the political cause’. Or so he liked to tell anyone within earshot when he was pissed enough. Pushing 18 stone, he was known less than affectionately around the Parliamentary Press Gallery as the Minister for Long Lunches, and, more recently, as Jabba the Hutt. The point was he had never felt comfortable with the CSIRO boffins who, he suspected quite rightly, might have more brains than he did. Back at his desk, a strategy began to shape itself in Doug’s aching head. Actually, it was pretty straightforward when he got going with it. In fact, now that the old mindfog was lifting, he was filled with an intense sensation of clarity and purpose. ‘Take the middle path’ was the venerable Buddhist adage. According to Doug’s understanding, this translated near enough into ‘play each side against the centre’. In short, Cunningham’s statement would pander to the CSIRO’s bluster and to press hyperbole. Recent reports, which appeared to impugn the integrity of the CSIRO were deemed by the Federal Government, namely himself, to be ‘extremely serious’. While it was common knowledge, Doug wrote, that the organisation had

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been through a difficult period of restructuring and downsizing, the Minister continued to endorse its commitment to achieving greater efficiency, relevance and accountability. Digging into the files, he tapped in the blah blah about fostering links with industry and focusing on marketable research; hell, he could not have been too specific, even if he had wanted to. As far as he was concerned, the real damn scandal was how the CSIRO had managed to achieve so little with X squillion dollars of taxpayers’ money. Moreover, he went on, it was the Minister’s firm belief that the CSIRO’s role in the future of Australia’s research and development was a continuing and vital one. As for the allegations against Jones, Doug gave them two lines at the bottom to the effect that the CSIRO, at the Government’s request, was conducting its own internal investigation into the matter. He was particularly pleased with this touch. It appeared to downplay the issue while keeping Jones and, by implication, the organisation for which he worked, right in the line of fire. The press would be on the phone pronto to follow that one up. He considered putting a call through to the CSIRO. Instead, he asked Louisa to simply fax the chairman his press release together with everyone else on her list. Two could play that game. If the opening shots were any indication, the CSIRO was not much of an opponent, shooting its mouth off all over the place. Any idiot could figure out in five seconds flat who the loser was going to be. Doug checked his watch. There was time to grab some lunch

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before he began fielding the first of the phone calls from the handful of journos on whom he saw fit to bestow a private briefing. The rest of the pack would have to content themselves with the few morsels tossed out by Mr Press Officer over there. In the event, he made the mistake of answering a call that whistled through on his mobile. To his dismay, he heard the grating drawl of that pissant O’Flaherty. ‘How do, Comrade? Nice to find you at home.’ Doug drew breath. Short of cutting him off, there would be no easy way of getting rid of him. ‘Make it quick, sunshine. I’m out the door.’ Like all drunks, O’Flaherty was a belligerent whinger. ‘Jeesus, there’s no need for that, now is there, matey? You upset about something? Let me guess, it’s those eggheads at CSIRO shitting in the nest. Am I right, or am I right?’ Doug affected patience. ‘You been down to check the boxes recently, Neil?’ ‘So?’ ‘Because when you do you too will learn the Government’s right behind CSIRO on this one.’ ‘The hell it is.’ O’Flaherty might be blustering. On the other hand, he might not. Doug answered slowly, propping his head in his hand. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard about it.’ He paused, as if resolving to take a punt on O’Flaherty’s shrewdness, his ludicrous claim to insider’s knowledge. ‘Off the record, comrade, this fraud caper hasn’t taken anyone by surprise. As you of all

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people would know …’ He paused again for O’Flaherty to make what he could of that. ‘… you can’t keep these things under wraps forever. If there has to be an inquiry then all we can hope for is that CSIRO does a comprehensive job of it … Believe me, Neil, we wouldn’t have it any other way.’ He gave O’Flaherty 20 seconds to think of a response, then jumped in, as smooth as butter. ‘Hell, pal, I’m not saying these guys are making it easy.’ He heard Neil chuckle gleefully, mockingly. ‘Nice pitch, Dougie.’ Then O’Flaherty was talking again, a whining, loony voice that might never leave him alone. ‘I’ve been doing some homework, pal, I’ve been real busy and I couldn’t wait to tell you about it. Dr Patrick Jones hasn’t written a big heap of stuff, but it’s all there, available, y’know, over at CSIRO, with a bit of help from my friends. You wanna know what I’ve discovered? The bloke’s as clean as a whistle. Yep, I reckon that’s about right. Straight as a die. It left me wondering — about who’s been cooking up this fraud caper. You got any theories about it, Doug?’ Tenderly, Doug stroked the wound on his cheek. He felt exhausted, ill. ‘Theories?’ His voice was harsh, distraught. O’Flaherty might not have heard. ‘And another thing. The good Dr Jones is heavily into spiders these days, kind of drifted out of the action somewhat, spends most of the time up the bush. He’s got a researcher from outside, some woman or other, blonde chick, bit of class — Jones pays her out of his own pocket, so I’m told. Jones isn’t talking, but she

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might. You reckon it’s a good yarn, full of human interest, comrade?’ Doug could bear it no longer. His response betrayed a savage irritation, the beginnings of a rage that might overwhelm him. ‘You listen to me, you sleazy little pisspot, you keep your gutter-sniffing theories to yourself, you hear me? And fuck off. Just fuck off.’ Hanging up, he could not think clearly. Distractedly, he began to pace the room, unaware of the others in the office. He counted the steps, murmuring the numbers to himself, though his knee had stiffened up and hurt like hell. When Louisa touched his arm, he twisted away and limped to his desk. He pressed the redial button on his telephone and waited until the engaged signal came. It was only then that he remembered, shaking his head with impossible, desolate knowing. She had taken her phone off the hook. ———— Paddy saw nothing for it but to avoid his office for the rest of Monday. The meeting with Keith Muir at 9.30am had done nothing to allay his apprehensions. The matter had been taken out of his hands, if indeed he had ever had any say at all. Keith, of course, had been all strokes and pats on this fraud malarky, shaking his head and expressing deep sympathy for Paddy’s undeserved, nay entirely unwarranted predicament. He even went so far as to inquire how Trudi might be taking it. As Paddy’s annoyance grew, Muir went

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on to explain that a statement had already been released to the press, from Chief Grantley himself protesting against the allegations in the strongest possible terms. Reading the copy of the statement thrust upon him by Muir, Paddy was deeply appalled. He handed it back in silence, holding it between his fingertips as if it were tainted. Kneading the flesh of his cheeks, he was beset by a despairing sadness. Ah, but a wiser man might have seen it coming. He was but a mere pawn, an excuse to go off half-cocked. ‘What do you reckon it’s going to achieve then, Keith?’ He had not meant to sound scornful. ‘I’ll say one thing,’ Muir warned. ‘No one’s happy about all this.’ He leaned forward, speaking more patronisingly than he intended. ‘You’re not alone, you’ve got a mighty lot of support around here.’ Paddy shook his head; maybe so, maybe so. The thing that had baffled him most deeply ever since Friday was why he had been singled out. It would seem that Keith here, and the blokes upstairs too, had already drawn their own conclusions and were hell-bent on blowing the issue sky high. Really, it was absurd that he, of all people, should be cast in the role of sacrificial victim. He might not be a political animal, but it was as plain as the nose on your face that nothing would be gained from it. Except he could look forward to being gunned down in the crossfire. ‘You know what I’m thinking, Keith?’ he announced wearily. ‘I’m thinking we might win the battle and lose the war. That’s the way it usually goes, eh?’

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Muir would have none of it. ‘I don’t see why so.’ He was almost pleading. ‘It’s a good organisation we work for, Paddy. It’s got good people. Worth putting your shoulder against the wheel.’ He suppressed a jab of annoyance; these blokes who leave all the dirty work to someone else. Now his voice was colder. ‘I don’t for the life of me see there’s any other way.’ Paddy got heavily to his feet. It was time to go. He shook Muir’s hand and thanked him with as much bravado as he could muster. ‘We’ll see what comes of it, eh?’ ———— Back in his office, Paddy’s phone was ringing. Picking up the receiver, he heard a voice drawl his name. With admirable presence of mind, he assured the bloke on the end of the line that he had absolutely no idea where Dr Patrick Jones might be. The grating voice persisted. ‘What about his researcher … Miz … aahh, could ya give me the name again?’ Without another word, Paddy hung up. As quick as maybe, he gathered up his macintosh and bicycle helmet. Disappearing down the corridor, he heard his phone baying again. There was no doubting it. The hounds of the press were after him. ————

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Madeleine was in the middle of giving Josh some lunch when Paddy knocked on her door. The baby was determined to feed himself, squashing the mush in his fist and aiming for his face — with the result that he looked as if he had fallen smack into his dinner plate. At her father’s ever-practical suggestion, Madeleine had cajoled him into wearing a plastic garbage bag with holes cut for his head and arms. Paddy had not intended to visit her, nor had it occurred to him to warn her not to talk to the press. For an hour or more, he had ridden energetically around the entire 26-kilometre perimeter of the lake. Back at his starting point, he was at a loose end. He decided to drop in for a quick cuppa. Madeleine might be interested to know he was thinking of erecting a low fence of stick and hessian along the back of their funnel-web trap. It might help in directing the males towards it. A bit later on, when he knew Trudi would be off to one of her meetings, he would head for home to have another look at the weekend’s collecting. He had no wish to upset his wife by turning up unexpectedly. Nor would she be long in asking the reason for it. Indeed, with a bit of luck on the home front, this business might slide into the background. Most of Sunday he had managed to spend hard at work in the shed. Mind you, there was still much to do. It was something to think about — that Madeleine might like to give him a hand with the task of producing a scale drawing of each specimen they had gathered. He would hardly need to explain that such drawings were essential to any responsible approach to spider taxonomy.

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Her smile of greeting delighted his heart. What an endearing young woman she was, with her scrubbed-clean face and clear eyes. She was dressed in an oversized shirt that fell to her knees so that she might have been wearing nothing else. She held open the door for him and he found himself surveying a scene of warmth and domestic disarray. Toys were scattered on the floor, a basket of half-folded washing was balanced on the lounge. On the coffee table amid the litter of newspapers and magazines was a large purple vase of spring flowers. Sunshine from a bank of windows taking up most of one wall flooded the room with a joyful light. The little boy too was pleased as punch to see him. He thumped his plate on the tray of his highchair in sheer delight. Beaming, Paddy stroked his curls. ‘Now what’s the story here, tiger? You’ve gone and got that dinner of yours from apex to fundamental, eh?’ When Josh’s arms shot up in anticipation of a cuddle, Paddy took it as a cue to help him wriggle out of his food-smeared plastic bag. ‘My goodness, what have we got here, must be an old dog bone.’ He lifted the child into his arms so that Josh wrapped his legs around him and laid his head against his shoulder. Paddy patted and rocked him. ‘Sleepy are we, off to the land of Nod we go, who’s a tired soldier?’ Within minutes, Josh had slumped into his afternoon nap. Soothing a child to sleep was a skill Paddy believed he’d developed when his own child was young and he was absurdly pleased he could still do it. Nothing to it, his

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expression suggested, sure Madeleine was more than a little impressed. With her help, he lowered Josh into his cot and covered him with a blanket. Together they stood watching him. For the life of him, Paddy could think of nothing so beautiful as this small sleeping child. Finally, Madeleine drew him away. Not saying much and busying herself in the kitchen, she made some cheese sandwiches. Paddy parked himself at her kitchen table. ‘A cuppa wouldn’t go astray.’ It wasn’t the sort of demand he usually made and he blushed a little. She made him the tea and they sat in the lounge room, Madeleine cross-legged on the floor by the windows in a shaft of dusty sunlight, Paddy more sedately on the sofa, his plate of sandwiches carefully on his knees. Without the distraction of the child, he was struggling with the schoolboy shyness this woman provoked in him. ‘Affectionate little chap,’ he murmured. Madeleine gazed at him, direct and earnest. ‘He likes you.’ She thrust out her arm, flapping her hand in a queer theatrical gesture of emphasis. ‘He knows a good man when he sees one.’ With more composure, Paddy smiled away the embarrassment of her flattery. ‘Bit of beginner’s luck, eh.’ Still, he thought she might contradict him. Instead, she ducked her head and began picking the crumbs from her lap with the tip of her finger. It took Paddy a moment to realise she had something to say to him. Whatever it was, he’d rather she didn’t.

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‘Quite a to-do down at our place this morning,’ he jumped in. ‘Muir and the suits up above have gone and fired off a statement to all and sundry.’ The way he described it, he might have had no role in the unfolding drama. He wanted her to see how little he cared. Madeleine sat up. ‘What did they say?’ He hadn’t intended to go into details. ‘Well now, not a great deal, not much at all. They’re spoiling for a fight, I’d say that’s the gist of it.’ His next words were threaded with anger, with bitterness, and, just as quickly, with deliberate indifference. ‘Let me put it this way: CSIRO, it’s a bit like motherhood; can’t have anyone casting slurs on the sacred institution.’ He hesitated. ‘As you know, I don’t have the stomach for all this claptrap. Can’t see the good of it.’ Then haughtily: ‘I’ve more important things to do with my time.’ Madeleine came and sat beside him. ‘So how’s it feel to be the meat in the sandwich?’ Paddy chuckled humourlessly. As always, her talent was for the bald statement. ‘Of course, I see what you mean.’ ‘There are two things puzzling me.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘One … why you, why have you been targeted? Who’s got it in for you? Two: why are you so hellbent on doing nothing about it?’ For once he was forthright. ‘One — don’t know. Two — don’t care.’ ‘Uh huh,’ Madeleine answered. After a moment, she shrugged. ‘And why should you, for god’s sake? Why in heaven should you?’ ————

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With the phone off the hook and Josh blissfully asleep, she and Paddy passed half the afternoon together. Neither of them had intended to do so. Sitting beside him on the lounge, Madeleine put her arms around him, slipping her fingers under his shirt to touch his warm flesh, to comfort him. Though his breath quickened, Paddy made no response. After a time, he shifted away from her with a look of such tenderness and longing that Madeleine understood at once how much he wanted her, seeing too how this might torment him. She could not meet his anguished gaze. The moment passed and Paddy roused himself. ‘Good God, young woman, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ He raised his head, spoke out: ‘Something else for you to fret about, eh? Bit like a bad toothache. Nothing more or less.’ Madeleine could find no words to answer him. She knew she did not deserve his high opinion. Hesitantly, elliptically, she began to talk to Paddy about Doug. It was only fair that she tell him what she suspected. In the library that morning with Josh making a nuisance of himself, she’d managed to find the original article in a Western Australian newspaper. She knew the guy, Neil O’Flaherty, who wrote it; well she didn’t exactly know him. But Doug certainly did. Beside her, Paddy began to fidget, rearranging his limbs, plucking and twisting the hairs of his chest. With effort she went on: ‘I saw them together, you know, having a beer … It’s a link, a connection that explains what’s happened.’

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To Madeleine’s consternation, Paddy got to his feet. He began to roam the room, then he sat down in an armchair with his elbows perched judicially on the armrests. ‘I’m afraid,’ he announced with a cross-examiner’s severity, ‘I’ve no idea what you’re implying.’ Madeleine thought she understood what he meant and reddened with shame. Until now, at least in the mind of Paddy and his CSIRO cronies, here was some grand interplay between ethical science and those philistine cruds in government. Her explanation was much grubbier. She was tainted with it and Paddy would have a fierce contempt for such a tabloid drama. Distractedly, she gathered up the tea cups, while Paddy continued to observe her, coldly and inquisitorially. Or so it seemed. She began to plait her hair with agitated fingers. She couldn’t look at him, could think only of the scorn that must lie behind his stare. But it was right to tell him what she knew. Standing in the middle of the room, arms folded across her breasts, she was a miserable but determined plaintiff. For his part, Paddy was thoroughly unsettled by Madeleine’s obvious distress. Despite his incredulity, he could not abide the brave unhappiness that now besieged her. ‘This bloke of yours, Doug, you believe he’s had a hand in the business, eh?’ Backtracking, Madeleine explained that Doug, Doug Reynolds, was George Cunningham’s minder. In other words, he was a pretty powerful apparatchik, the word described

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exactly what he did all day, wheeling and dealing, trading one kind of horseshit for another. The newspaper article was his way of getting back at Paddy for … for all this. ‘Believe me,’ she finished, ‘it isn’t as wild as it sounds.’ ‘You have talked to him,’ Paddy asked in wonderment. ‘No!’ Now she was becoming irritated with his literalmindedness. ‘I don’t need to tell him. He thinks he can figure it out for himself.’ Paddy seized upon this thread. ‘Why? What sort of fellow is this Doug Reynolds? ‘He’s … he …’ Madeleine began. Paddy’s bemused expression was almost comical. ‘He weaves elaborate webs to catch you up when you don’t expect it,’ she announced. ‘And he’s got an armourplated exoskeleton.’ Now she was sounding idiotic. Paddy was prepared to concede her this monstrous metaphor, though with some important qualifications. ‘Adaptive behaviours — marvellously successful, eh? Tough little critters when it comes to filling up the larder and procreating the species.’ He clapped his hands on his knees. ‘I might have a bit of trouble holding that against him?’ He was making fun of her. She tried another tack. ‘The thing that’s bothering me is whether attack might not be the best mode of defence.’ A predictable point; for one reason or another during all his life the answer to it had sprung glibly from his tongue. ‘When the odds are against you, you sound the retreat. Take yourself off to surer terrain.’

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Now Madeleine was exasperated. ‘And if there’s nowhere else to go?’ Paddy yawned and stretched. He too had had enough. Trudi, Madeleine, these roosters at the office, between them they could worry a chap into an early grave. Still, it was plain enough that Doug Watchamacallhim was a pretty nasty piece of work. Certainly, this distressed young woman deserved better. He put his arms around her. ‘For blokes like me,’ he said, his cheek against the fragrant softness of her hair, ‘there is always somewhere else to go. We’re the lucky ones.’ Then, in parody of all those Dougs who kept the world spinning: ‘Young woman, we’re armour-plated, all the way through.’ It was enough to make her smile a little.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Maybe Paddy has got to me but I’ve a lot more to say in defence of the lowly funnel-web. Firstly, there’s its venom. It’s a mix of chemicals, which includes a powerful neurotoxin with a very distinctive molecular composition. Such toxins appear to target key gateways in nerve cells with an unrivalled precision. As a result, they are proving invaluable for learning precisely how the brain works and might provide pharmacological benefits for victims of stroke, epilepsy or brain seizure. Secondly, it might be a bizarre accident of nature that the funnel-web’s venom is so devastating to human beings. The chemical component of the venom that kills insects is quite different from the neurotoxin that kills us. Such analysis has led Australian researchers to patent the potential use of genetically engineered funnel-web and other spider venoms as natural insecticides.

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As I’ve said, it’s too soon to dismiss the significance of a fascinating and dangerous spider, which is also the only known one of its kind on the planet. M. H. Spider Notebook

If asked, Trudi Jones, would have described herself as a realist. For instance, she did not believe marriages were made in heaven. No one, she admonished herself wryly, who had been married to Paddy for as long as she had, could possibly believe that. He could be the most frustrating of men, ridiculously unworldly and vague, at worst, inclined to be more than a little, well, self-centred. At least she could not help but think so during these past months. She was an activist, never one to brood on life’s injustices and miseries. Still, this business with the newspaper had upset her. And so too, in its way had her husband’s response. In the aftermath of Paddy’s abrupt Saturday departure up the bush chasing his damned spiders, she had made a circuit of her overgrown garden, trying to make sense of what had occurred. Unwilling to go back into

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the empty house, she set to work with the secateurs, shaping and pruning here, there and everywhere. She spent most of Sunday too in the garden. Paddy buried himself in his work, the door of his shed firmly closed. Of course she should’ve been more tactful. Brandishing the article under his nose, demanding he read it there and then. He had been deeply hurt by it. She’d never harboured any illusions that he was destined for greatness, nothing like that. Nor had he. Between them they had simply counted it his great good luck that he had made a career of what he most enjoyed doing. No one, not his family, nor his colleagues of so many years, could doubt his commitment to his science. On Monday morning, he was off to work early, with a quick peck on her cheek. And still nothing said. Again, she retreated into the garden. There was still so much to be done and now the yard was littered with her cuttings. Last night in bed when she had begun her apology, he had slipped his arms around her and held her so tightly, insisting it didn’t matter, not a bit of it. He’d made love to her, wordless and distracted. She had never known him like this. She paused in her snipping and looked around: one side of the yard was clipped and neat as a pin, the other was a wild tangle. She must pick up all the rubbish of course. But not yet. Inside, the phone was ringing but she did not bother with that either. Instead, she continued steadfastly with her cutting and shaping, the whole garden to put in order. His indefinable, silent distress was more than she

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could bear. What was he protecting her from? What didn’t she understand? She thought of him, shamed and wounded, anxious to be away. He had not told her everything. There was something he did not want her to know. The pesky phone was ringing again. Taking her time, she went indoors, washed her hands. And still it rang. When she picked up the receiver, she heard a male voice. ‘Mrs Jones? Mrs Patrick Jones?’ It was a confident voice, overenunciating syllables, ever so polite. ‘What can I do for you?’ she asked. ‘Neil O’Flaherty, Western Australian Courier. Like to talk to you, if I may?’ ‘What about, Mr O’Flaherty?’ He did not hesitate. ‘Well, for starters, about your husband’s involvement in this alleged fraud case.’ Trudi’s response was swift too. ‘What involvement? Absolute rubbish.’ It was going better than O’Flaherty could’ve dreamed. He spoke softly now. ‘And the rumours?’ Already, Trudi was back-pedalling. ‘I’ve said enough!’ He might not have heard. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m talking about rumours, gossip, if you like. And I’m talking about how we can set the record straight.’ When she did not answer, he persisted, grating and provocative. ‘Your husband, Mrs Jones, and a young woman who works for him. Am I to take it this is rubbish too?’ Trudi was silent, a wretched, unflinching moment. ‘Of course. Goodbye, Mr O’Flaherty.’ ————

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In the immediate aftermath, Trudi was oddly calm, taking up the secateurs and returning to the garden. But she did not resume her task. She simply sat on the bench in the shadows of the trees. She thought how strange it was that in one brief moment the situation had clarified itself. A piece of the puzzle had slotted in. Paddy’s abstraction, an aggrieved lover, a smear campaign — it went together so tidily. Hugging herself, she closed her eyes, trying to think. Now the pain was beginning, seeping into the tissues of her body, filling her with a grief that felt like a death in the family. Rocking slowly, she fought back tears, knowing she could be swept away by the keening sorrow that swelled in her. She pressed her palm against her chest and drew breath to calm herself. It made absolutely no sense to her. Of course, she and Paddy had always loved each other. She could not believe anything could change or undermine that. She put her palms to her face like someone testing a fever. She must think clearly about what he’d done. Certainly, he had been foolish. But not malicious — she could never bring herself to believe that of him. Her husband would never want to hurt anyone, least of all his wife. She stood up and began to wander the yard, meaning to continue her clean-up. She thought of other friends’ fractured marriages — the litter of bitterness and recrimination. Now she too had been singled out, with nothing to be gained, except muddle and distress. Her own daughter, Susan, married at 24, divorced before she was 30. They had been difficult years for one so young, full of late-night tears and

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stubborn pride. Of course, in time, she had found someone else, a new partner. So what had it all achieved? Another marriage, Mum, another life, had been Susan’s response. Was that cynical? Hopeful? Trudi had no idea. The point, Trudi told herself, was to keep level-headed against the tide of hurt and confusion that had taken hold of her. Understandably so. It was the same the world over. She folded her arms, shoulders hunched, to hold back the pain. In all these years, it seemed she’d misjudged her marriage, taken for granted their intimacy. Maybe so; it was hard to believe she was so mistaken. She sat down again, holding herself, huddled under her wayward trees. She loved her husband. Now she knew she was close to the source of her agony. She thought of Paddy’s shame and wanted to shake him. For his betrayal, his disloyalty, above all, for his sheer stupidity. She began to pace the garden, hugging herself still while her anger unfolded. His shame? And his male vanity; in his fifties and, my goodness, the women can’t resist him. He had always been an attractive man. He’d looked after himself. Mid-life crisis, they called it. She’d always hated the phrase: an excuse for adolescent foolishness. This young woman, his assistant, Madeleine … Henderson, he had talked of her, though not for weeks. A wounded bird, a lost soul, looking after a baby on her own, not much money, nor too many prospects — that was how he’d described her. Trudi felt the tears start. He felt sorry for the girl. Because her Paddy was a kind-hearted man. Too soft-

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hearted, he had never been one to take the world on. That had long been his wife’s job. He was a carer, a nurturer, not a fighter. But she was. She must, she would, find a way to guard and protect her marriage. She must not lose control of herself. She thought of one of her mother’s stories about her own father before he retired. In middle-age, he was a restless man, often frustrated, angry. He began to talk about becoming a crew member on a sailing ship. He would roam the Pacific, island-hopping, battling the elements, taking life as it came. In the end, her mother had found him a job on a cutter and waved him off. Three months later he was back, bubbling, full of plans for the two of them — and mighty pleased to be home. It was one way to settle the issue, her mother had said. Trudi blotted her tears, took a breath and went inside for some garbage bags. She would tidy up the mess, everything as it should be. For the time being, at least, she must find strength of mind. And do whatever she could to sort out the muddle. ———— On Tuesday morning, Madeleine was out of bed the moment after she awoke. She pulled back the curtains and looked into the back garden. It was so weirdly, mysteriously beautiful; overnight, her familiar world had been adorned and bejewelled by a spring frost. The grass was ice-crusted

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and silvery; the air was milky with mist that drifted in smoky streaks through the bushes and trees. In one corner, between the big eucalypt and the wattle, a spider web glinted with tiny frosty diamonds. And, in pride of place in the centre of the yard, Josh’s sand mound was a lovely crystalline palace. The child too was awake, chatting away to himself in his cot, though the minute she appeared he was bouncing on his mattress. She dressed him, diverting his feisty impatience with her ‘where’s your toes, where’s your nose’ routine. In the lounge room, she remembered to draw back the curtains and watched him gaze in amazement at the transformed world outside. He slid across the floor to press his face against the glass. Crouching down, she hugged him. Jack Frost, she said, had come tiptoeing in the night with his bottomless bucket and his brush to paint their garden. Josh scanned her face in bewilderment. She shrugged, smiling, so that he heaved his shoulders in a endearing imitation of her shrug. In the kitchen, making breakfast while Josh played with his toys on the floor, she began to sing snippets of blues numbers, Beatles songs, making up the words whenever she was stumped. ‘Nobody wants you,’ she moaned, in her best Nina Simone imitation, ‘when you’re down and owwtt.’ For the first time since her father’s funeral, she was not enveloped in misery. ‘Been down so long looks like it’s up to me,’ she sang. Paddy had a lot to do with how she felt. He had made it clear that he cared for her, liked and admired her. She

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leaned on the sink, bracing herself. What she’d said to Doug was true. Paddy was her friend. Of course, he could be pompous and aggravating. But impulsively, intuitively, he was kinder than anyone she’d ever known. And she found him charming in unexpected ways. He would look her over with a shy delight, more flattering than mere words. It was endearingly funny that on the few occasions he’d cuddled her, he’d massaged her vertebrae, kneaded her flesh with the hesitant concentration of someone appreciatively assessing her skeletal and muscular structure — this bit the span of one hand, backbone fully intact, hip bones geometrically aligned, limbs angled for appropriate agility. He held her protectively, almost paternally, with his arms wrapped around her so that they were pressed together in a capsule of warmth. They were friends, as light and free as gossamer on the wind. Maybe, maybe so. Suddenly agitated, she began to rinse the dishes. She was dreaming of course. Unrequited love, lust, whatever you called it, never did anybody any good. And there remained the spectre of the fraud allegations. Throwing on a jacket against the near-zero temperature, she nipped outside for the morning newspaper. Halfway inside, she went back and picked up the Sydney paper from the garden next door. She could always roll it up again and return it after a quick look. Both newspapers carried articles beneath the appalling headlines, ‘CSIRO Scientist Faces Fraud Inquiry’ and ‘Cunningham Confronts CSIRO’. Mostly, they rehashed the previous day’s reports,

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though the political weathervanes seemed pretty unanimous that here was yet another skirmish in the continuing battle. The relationship between the CSIRO’s chairman, Eric Grantley, and Cunningham was described as ‘acrimonious’ and ‘irreparably damaged’. To Madeleine, it made sense of the shenanigans Paddy had described. And, despite his protestations that in his heart of hearts he would remain untainted by the mud-slinging, she wished someone would trumpet the innocence of Dr Patrick Jones from the rooftops. She was just coming in the door after tossing the neighbour’s newspaper back where it belonged when the phone rang. It would be Doug; no one else would ring so early. She didn’t want to talk to him, not yet. She needed more time. She must put him off, before he came looking for her. It was a woman’s voice, a friendly, confident voice, announcing herself, ‘Trudi Jones.’ Paddy’s wife! We must have a coffee, together, brunch perhaps, just the two of us, the woman went on, politely insisting that she had been so much looking forward to meeting her; they had so much to talk about. Flustered, Madeleine hesitated. ‘But, at such short notice, somewhere close by,’ Trudi said firmly. ‘Would that be a problem for you?’ ‘No … I don’t think so.’ ————

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Trudi was nothing like Madeleine’s expectations. From Paddy, she had gained the impression of a battleaxe wife, a nag who kept him under the thumb. As she searched the cafe’s crowded tables, with Josh on her hip, Madeleine thought her an unlikely candidate. She was a slight woman, lithe like Paddy, with an extraordinary bush of long red hair in splendid curls and tangles around her face. Where Madeleine had half-expected homeknitted twin-sets and sensible skirts, the woman was dressed in jeans and a scruffy roll-neck sweater. Up close, she had a weathered outdoors face covered with a mass of pale-brown freckles and amazing indigo-blue eyes that peered shortsightedly from behind steel-framed spectacles. She was quite agelessly, eccentrically lovely. And, despite her untidiness, the sloppy clothes she was wearing, she looked so spirited and selfassured. She and Paddy are two of a kind, Madeleine thought with reluctant magnanimity, a matching pair. Trudi greeted her warmly, patted Josh on his curls, then went off to find him a highchair. That settled, she focused on Madeleine. For a moment, Trudi gazed at her, a quick frowning scrutiny that ended with her best smile. ‘I’m making a nuisance of myself,’ she said. ‘Dragging you out with a baby.’ She paused. ‘Delightful little man.’ ‘Actually, I don’t mind,’ Madeleine countered. Trudi sighed, then mentally rolled up her sleeves. Unlike Paddy, she was alarmingly direct. ‘Perhaps you know why I asked you to come? Perhaps you do?’ She sat up straighter, beset now by fierce indignation. ‘My husband has been accused of fraud.’

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Distractedly, Madeleine spun a fork on Josh’s highchair tray, to keep him occupied. It’s in her voice, she thought, the glint of steel. Underneath her graciousness was granite determination. ‘He mentioned it,’ Madeleine said. Trudi waited for her to continue. ‘He … he seemed intent on not letting it bother him.’ Trudi pressed her lips with her fingertips and looked away as if her suspicions had been confirmed. Madeleine stared at her in bleak apprehension. ‘Maybe,’ Madeleine spoke up, ‘it’s a good thing … his indifference.’ She hoped that didn’t sound trite or unsympathetic. She wouldn’t want Trudi to think so. Nor, it seemed, did she. ‘I know what you’re saying.’ She leaned forward as if she and Madeleine were allies, with Paddy’s best interests at heart. Again, Madeleine was uneasily aware that she might know a great deal more than she was letting on. ‘My husband,’ she said, ‘has a wonderful talent for friendship.’ She waited. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’ It was an ambiguous question. ‘Yes, he does,’ Madeleine murmured. ‘He’s been very kind to me.’ Trudi was silent. Those pauses, Madeleine thought, holes in the drama to be filled in as best she could. ‘You know,’ Trudi said directly, ‘in all these years he has not been one to stray. Sometimes, at times, we’ve have had our difficulties. He finds me …’ Trudi was sitting with her back straight as a broomhandle, palms flat on the table.

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‘I know he finds me overbearing. But he has not sought other women. I wouldn’t have thought that.’ What had Paddy said to her? There was no appeal for sympathy in her words. She was simply pondering, half to herself, a deep and complex puzzle. It was more than Madeleine could bear. ‘Paddy? A womaniser?’ Madeleine scoffed. ‘I don’t think so.’ She sensed Trudi listening to every nuance. ‘I’ve never seen any evidence of it. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more thoroughly married man.’ Trudi expelled breath. Madeleine was completely unprepared for what came next. ‘Well,’ she said briskly, ‘tell me how, in God’s name, did he get himself into this mess?’ So Madeleine did, weaving her story of the lies and nonsense behind the fraud allegations. ‘It’s just, you know,’ she pleaded, ‘the wrong person has … has jumped to the wrong conclusions and is out to get even.’ And when she’d finished, she did not know whether she’d convinced Trudi of the truth of her account. And if she had, would Paddy’s wife, with her stern, anguished face, blame her? Trudi simply glanced at her watch and looked around for a waiter. ‘Shall we eat something? I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.’ Then she added in her forthright way: ‘After that we might take that patient little boy of yours for a walk, shall we? Along the way, we can turn our minds to solving my husband’s muddle. What do you say?’ ————

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As Madeleine had all those weeks ago after her first interview with Paddy, she and Trudi wandered the tree-lined streets in the direction of the lake. Josh was perched in his carry-pack on Madeleine’s back. It was still unexpectedly cold. The morning mist had lingered so that the day was overcast and still, the sky a sunless blanket of cloud. But there was little moisture in the thin spring air. It seemed to seep up from the chilled earth, until her limbs and face were red with cold. There was never enough rain in this high inland city. The grass on the nature strips was a bleached stubble, dead or dying. Even the hardy eucalypts seemed bowed, their leaves curled and brittle. She turned up the collar of her parka and thrust her frozen fingers into her pockets. She was glad that Josh at least was well-wrapped against the weather. It was enough to make a person long to be back on the coast. It was where she belonged. Despite Paddy and his Great Outdoors, she would never get used to this place. In all the time she had lived in Sydney, she could not remember ever having been really cold. Even in the depths of winter there, the air held the promise of warmer weather and most days you could find a patch of sunshine. Here, in the harsh foothills of the Snowies, the winter had to be endured for months on end before it swung into a brutal burnt-out summer. Trudi and Paddy had lived here for years. Probably, you learned to put up with the climate, along with everything else. Ambling along beside her, Trudi was wearing neither hat nor coat. She might’ve guessed Madeleine’s thoughts. ‘It’s one of the things I love about living here,’ she said, ‘the cold, you

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know, and the drama of the seasons. I’m constantly reminded of the cycles … of decay and renewal. There’s a comforting predictability about it.’ ‘It’s one extreme to the other,’ Madeleine suggested. Overdoing it, she swung her arms as if to pump some heat into her body. Josh was strangely quiet and she worried how he might be holding up. How far were they intending to walk? Trudi touched her arm. ‘It’s really that I don’t notice it any more, not so much anyway. I think somewhere along the line I’ve got used to … to defending the indefensible.’ Gently, deliberately, she chatted on. ‘For the first couple of years when our children were small, I thought I would never stand it, you know? I honestly believe it was colder then — there was always a fall of snow, right here, everything turned to whiteness.’ She waved her hand towards the mountain that rose steeply from the far shore of the lake. At its summit, Black Mountain Tower pencilled skywards like a bizarre futuristic spaceship. ‘One year I remember we were all up there on the lookout when it was snowing. You could put out your hand and catch the flakes, make little piles of the crystals on your palm.’ She spread her empty hand like a supplicant. ‘Paddy had come prepared with a thermos.’ She darted a glance at Madeleine. Was this young woman familiar too with this aspect of her husband’s character? ‘At home, we all queued up to look at them through the microscope. Such exquisite things, each one completely different!’

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Madeleine was more moved than she cared to admit. Such memories, as cousin Lillian had tried to tell her, were like family archives. They were threaded together with love and enabled you to endure through time and change. In her own family, her father had been forever thinking up scientific tricks ‘to keep them on their toes’, as he put it. He too had a microscope to unveil for them the invisible structure of common sugar crystals, salt, insect wings, bacteria. And he had other things to show and tell them, such as immersing the stems of leaves in red dye so that, after a while, their veins stood out blood-red against the green; or his explanation for the homing instinct of bats (a primitive radar system); for where blowflies disappeared to in the winter (they all died, of course, to be replaced the next summer by another pesky lot blown down on the wind currents all the way from Queensland); for why dinosaurs were extinct (no one knows, do they? Might be that a whacking great comet smacked into planet Earth and obliterated them all in one go); or how to make a flute by the precise mathematical placement of the holes along a piece of copper pipe. To demonstrate, he played them Waltzing Matilda. It was her mother who had pointed out that not one single note was in tune, a fact that her father dismissed with the comment that he was just giving them ‘the general idea’. Music and mathematics went ‘hand in glove’. Her mother had never laughed, then or now, with fond pleasure at her father’s ways. ‘An excellent, admirable woman, my wife’; those were Paddy’s words. And it was plainly true; it might have been

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easier if she were not. If she had ranted and accused. From her own mother, from Laney, who made a point of never forgiving or forgetting even the smallest slight, Madeleine knew how these situations usually went. With bitterness and destruction in all directions. But without malice or special pleading, Trudi was simply staking her claim to Paddy, a claim born of their mutual love and memories. Madeleine would have liked to tell her she needn’t have bothered. How to explain Paddy’s innocence? ‘It was lovely this morning,’ Madeleine said, with effort. ‘The mist and the frost all over the garden. Just like snow. Josh couldn’t believe his eyes.’ She struggled to find the words. ‘You know, Paddy’s been like a big brother to me.’ There was more she wanted to plead: she was lonely, her relationship with Doug was so loveless, her father was gone. Trudi was silent, thoughtful. She tucked her hand into Madeleine’s arm to draw them closer together. ‘I’m wondering what you think should be done.’ Madeleine looked at her with dismay, with shame. Trudi might not have noticed. She plunged on, as if she were musing to herself. ‘From all you say, it’s a difficult situation. No easy solutions on the horizon. This young man of yours, not pleasant, eh? And the chaps at CSIRO, good heavens! Between a rock and a hard place — that’s the only way I can describe it. Now what if I were to go along to Keith, the section head, you know, Keith Muir, with our little story. Truth will out, as it were. Do you think it would

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help?’ She clutched Madeleine’s arm more tightly. ‘What do you think it might achieve?’ ‘I honestly couldn’t say,’ Madeleine hedged. ‘Well, this Doug fellow,’ Trudi prompted, ‘could well find himself out of a job?’ From all she knew of Doug, it seemed the least likely outcome. What would Trudi’s word count? ‘I wouldn’t underestimate him.’ Trudi nodded. She had already considered that possibility. ‘It’s up to Paddy, isn’t it?’ Madeleine said quickly. ‘It’s his decision, what should be done?’ ‘Of course, it isn’t,’ Trudi said with sad scorn. ‘I’ve no reason to think the meek shall inherit the Earth. Have you?’ ‘The whole thing’s so complicated,’ Madeleine stalled. Trudi smiled humourlessly, fiercely. ‘Yes, it is.’ Madeleine said nothing and they wandered on. For all the injustice committed against him, she was tempted to take Paddy’s option and remain loftily uninvolved. She tried to think it through. It was true what she’d said about not underestimating Doug. And, for all his venom, his rage, she had no wish to punish him. Where would it lead, what would it achieve? When it came to Doug she had a habit of being passive, like a formless lump of Josh’s playdough for him to poke and batter into shape. Her father, and now Trudi, wanted her to be an activist. Paddy, of all people, deserved as much. Beside her, Trudi was patiently holding her tongue. Madeleine felt a surge of affection for this kindly, well-intentioned woman.

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‘There might be another way,’ Madeleine said, at last, ‘something we could try.’ Trudi squeezed Madeleine’s arm in swift congratulations. ‘Well, you better tell me about it, hadn’t you?’ ‘Even though you’ve figured it out already?’ Madeleine asked. Trudi was embarrassed, though she squeezed Madeleine again. ‘First a hot drink, warm our tails.’ She stroked Josh’s head, angled uncomfortably in sleep. ‘Your place or mine?’ ‘My place is actually quite close by,’ Madeleine suggested. But Trudi probably knew that too. Oh, hell, for Paddy’s sake, for Trudi, for herself, she’d better do her best to get this one right. And quickly. ———— At home after her meeting with Madeleine, Trudi huddled alone in the lounge room through the darkening evening. Only once did she rouse herself to light the gas heater and close the curtains. The light was on in Paddy’s shed. He too was hiding himself away. Despite the young woman’s assurances, she burned with anger and hurt. Of course she’d told Paddy at once about the phone call from the press and saw in the way he averted his face, shoulders hunched, his pain and guilt. She could not hold her tongue. ‘How long?’ Soft and yellow as butter, he was. ‘How long what?’ ‘This woman, this girl,’ she said, sharp and tearful.

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He was speechless, raising his hands to ward off her onslaught. Shoulders squared, she waited. He did not answer her, not immediately, but simply turned tail and left the room. She followed him into the bedroom, accusing, standing her ground like a harridan, until he could bear it no longer. Then he grasped her shoulders as if he wanted to shake her, telling her there was nothing, not a thing, just a lot of filthy muckraking. Now, curled up on the lounge, Trudi knew better. Oh, she believed him. There was no affair. He wouldn’t lie to her. She knew him as well as she knew herself. That’s what marriage was like, to live half the time inside the skin of another, loving them, feeling what they felt, absorbing them into your spirit. There was no affair. She got to her feet and stretched her hands over the heater. Beyond the circle of light cast by the table lamp, the room was dark and closed. She knew better, understood what was behind his defensiveness, the ache in his eyes. Despite everything, he had yearned for this girl. She shook back her hair, tried to shake away such thoughts. What do you do if you have spent your life loving someone and then your heart is fractured? She knew the answer. You knit it together again. What other option did she have? She blew her nose, dried her tears and continued to stand by the heater until its warmth seeped into her body. Paddy came to find her there, treading softly across the carpet then wrapping his arms around her. He held her so

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she could hardly breathe, gabbling in her ear, jumbled words of apology, of fright and love so that she finally told him to hush. She poured them both a scotch and they cuddled up together on the lounge, talking softly of inconsequential matters, summoning a lifetime of mutual comfort.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Many spiders are chameleons. They camouflage themselves among bark and leaves. The more bizarre ones disguise themselves as ants or wasps or ladybirds. A huntsman on a gum tree has the texture and colouring of the trunk. A tiny crab spider has the delicate yellows, pinks and whites of the flower petals where it hunts its prey. The bird-dropping spider looks for all the world like limey excrement. Perhaps it’s only because they are weak that they resort to guile and disguise. Almost blind, web-weavers are utterly dependent on their webs. Gently pluck a strand and watch them scramble, leg over leg, to catch their meal. Though their sight is good, the hunters, the funnel-webs, trapdoors, wolf and jumping spiders also stalk their victims by their vibrations. Paddy loaned me a video of a female funnel-web, immobile as the dead, waiting in ambush for an

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unsuspecting cockroach to trip the guy lines of her web. The uncanny speed and accuracy of her attack was a horrifying moment. Still, Paddy’s probably right when he says spiders are more sinned against than sinners. More preyed upon than preying. Birds, lizards, cats, baboons, monkeys, frogs, toads, wasps and rodents all eat spiders. Cousin Lillian’s blue heeler would throw himself up a wall to catch a huntsman, then crunch it in his jaws. Fly and wasp larvae and ants dine on spiders’ eggs. The ground-dwellers fall victim to fungi, mermethid worms and mites. Parasites can even puncture their exoskeleton and slowly consume the spider from the inside. M. H. Spider Notebook

Drugged on pain-killers and a couple of sleeping pills that Louisa had slipped him, Doug fell into bed straight after work on Monday night. He was awoken in the blackness before dawn by a throbbing agony in his knee. His head felt as if it were stuffed with polystyrene chips. He lay there for several

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minutes in distraught bafflement at the severity of the pain. Gingerly, he shifted off the duvet and sat up. Examining his damaged knee under his bedside light, he was filled with nausea and panic. Overnight, it had become swollen and inflamed, reminding him of the grotesque, kidney-coloured bladders inside footballs. Other of his body parts were hurting as well: his back, his elbow, his damned head. He began to sweat, his breath coming in gasps. He might have broken something, done permanent damage. He wouldn’t be able to jog, walk even, drive his car. He would be a figure of ridicule and pity, to be pushed around in a wheelchair. Except Madeleine wouldn’t be bothered with that. She would consign him soonest to some muscular dyke who would shove him from pillar to post like a rag toy. Edging back onto his pillow, he was overcome with self-pitying anger. In some undefined way, he was certain Madeleine must be implicated in his pain. He needed to talk to her. Not on the phone, that wasn’t the way. From his sick bed, hah, from a position of strength. Her face would soften with sympathy. She would fetch him an invalid tray and make sure he was comfortable. And she would agree with what he would tell her — maybe a little reluctantly to begin with. Hadn’t she looked out for him the other night when he was pissed as a newt? Didn’t she always come round to his point of view? Didn’t she? He was cold, his body trembling. He would get up and take a hot shower. It might do the trick. Instead, he hefted the duvet over his shoulders. He was so tired. In a little while, he would sort it all out.

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When the alarm woke him three hours later, he decided that he was feeling a little stronger. He manoeuvred himself out of bed and hopped, gasping with pain, to the bathroom. Propped against the wall, he took a double dose of painkillers. By 8am, he was showered, dressed and waiting for the taxi that would ferry him to the casualty section of the hospital. Pulling up outside the hospital outbuilding, he realised his mistake. He should’ve waited and gone to the local quack. The place was a disgrace, the sort of decaying knocked-up joint that belonged upriver in central Africa. Limping, he managed to follow the makeshift signs down a deserted corridor to the waiting room. Supporting himself on the doorjamb, he surveyed the weird scene that confronted him. The place was crammed with people, on a Tuesday morning, would you believe it. They were sitting on rows of benches arranged around a square of squalid yellow carpet. The room was windowless and, under the dusty light, it had the cavernous aura of perpetual night. On the dark-green walls, some clown had taped a series of garish travel posters of tropical resorts. Along one wall sat a couple of blokes wrapped in tartan woolly blankets who might have been from the local rugby team lined up for their weekly X-rays. An elderly drunk, eyes wide and accusing, was stretched out on the floor next to the water cooler. Next to him sat a woman with tousled hair and ragged clothing, her fists clenched across her breasts. No one took any notice of Doug. There seemed to be no

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hospital staff in attendance, no one behind the admittance desk, nor anywhere for Doug to sit down. Balancing on one leg, he picked up a small metal bell from the counter. It gave up a hollow clank that instantly buried itself in the silence. As if in response, the wailing of a child erupted from somewhere close by. He looked distractedly round the room. There was nothing, nobody had moved. He might have been the only person listening to the monotonous cry that seemed to bounce off the walls right into his skull. Then, with a kind of relief, he caught sight of a woman’s shoes shuffling inside one of the curtained cubicles. Abruptly, the sound stopped. Looking around again, he was amazed to see that a place had been made for him on one of the benches. He was certain that it had not been there before. He sat down heavily, only because he couldn’t have stood much longer. He wanted to flee this place, though the will to do so eluded him. As if infected by some contagion of malaise, he stretched out his legs, rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. But again something was amiss. Even before he opened his eyes, he sensed it through his skin as he imagined a blind person might. Beside him, only centimetres away from his shoulder, a baby was staring fixedly at him. He shifted his limbs and grunted, looked the child directly in the face and frowned; but nothing shook the powerful, crazy concentration of the child’s gaze. It was about Josh’s age, standing in his mother’s lap with his cheek resting against her body. He might go on watching him, and

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Doug was sure he could not bear it. In a way he couldn’t have explained, he reached out and pressed the child’s face with the flat of his palm like a magician or a healer breaking an enchantment. And it worked. Doug was rewarded by a wide gummy smile, as if there was nothing in this world the child had wanted more than the attention of this stranger beside him. Then he slumped down in his mother’s lap so that the woman cradled him and stroked his forehead with weary anxiety. Now it was Doug’s turn to stare because the plight of the mother and child filled him with a brutal, fearful longing. He’d been there, in that other windowless room, when Josh was born. It had gone on for hours through Madeleine’s intensifying agony, until she had become unrecognisable to him and he knew he was in a nightmare. And when finally it was over and he laid eyes on the blood-smeared, frog-like creature, hardly human at all, he’d felt overcome with a fearful dread. Madeleine too had been right out of it, crying and grasping him so tight. But he had taken the baby in his arms, just as he was expected to do. No joy, no sense of the miracle of birth filled him. Rather, he felt as the survivors of a horrific car accident might feel. They had come through, but at what cost? Thinking about it now, he closed his eyes. Was that really how he had been — useless, ridiculous, frightened by the moment when his child curled against him; and Madeleine’s pleading eyes seeing it all? He groaned, shaking his head. Later; it might have been different later in the hospital ward. Was it so much to

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ask? He had done his level best to fold away the guilt of the previous night. Showered and shaved, he had tripped into her room with a single red rose between his teeth. For a minute, he couldn’t believe his luck. Josh had looked a picture, a perfectly composed little being all spruced up in his brand new smock and Madeleine as sexy as all get out with her hair spilling across the pillow, her breasts bursting out of her nightdress. She’d been waiting for him. Thinking about her question, delivered up to him while she smoothed the counterpane, it was clear what a fool he had been. But more sinned against then sinning, for Chrissake. ‘It was awful, wasn’t it?’ He’d known straight-up what she meant. She’d cut him off at the knees just when the going was good. ‘Come on,’ she said, deceiving him too with her carefully arranged neutrality, ‘you looked like you were going to vomit or pass out or something.’ He’d smiled, a bright idiot’s smile, to placate the little mother. ‘Not at all,’ he said, their child a glory nestled in her arms. ‘Actually, I was a pillar of strength.’ Then making it worse: ‘Go on, admit it, I was bloody terrific.’ She was unforgiving, untouchable, slipping up the barricades of her bloody ego and humbug — sheet metal half a metre thick. He’d wanted to slap her. ‘I’m just sorry,’ she said, ‘the experience wasn’t more meaningful for you.’ Was that right or fair? On his feet, circling the bed where she lay, the avenging Madonna, pale and pure in her

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self-righteousness, he ranted. ‘Meaningful, you want to know meaningful? You know what’s really great? When we’re all closed up in a dark little room and someone you might really care about is under the spotlight right there under your bloody nose. And this person starts sweating and clenching her teeth and howling and I think, oh wow, this is gonna go on for a long time. You know, I reckon that’s very meaningful.’ She’d stopped listening to him. ‘I think you’d better go and get some sleep.’ Miss Prim from somewhere way behind the barricades. He’d come back later, empty-handed, thinking now he would make it right. But he couldn’t get her attention. Her eyes were for Josh, for the point on the wall above his head. ‘Listen,’ he said, a hint of pleading, ‘you going to hold it against me forever?’ She considered it, weighing him in the balance and passing sentence. ‘Don’t be silly, Doug. You can’t help how you feel.’ But he had kept his cool, stiff upper lip all the way. ‘I feel good, really great. You know what? I’m very happy.’ ‘That’s good,’ she said. So he sat there like a dork until some time later, across the chasm cracking open between them, she said, ‘I’ve been wondering how my Mum and … Dad are going.’ He’d been angry about that too. The way she was always thrusting the spectre of the old bastard between them.

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‘They’re okay, just fine. I’ve already rung them with the glad tidings, all right?’ He hadn’t, of course, though he hadn’t expected her to find out he was lying. She had beaten him to it, putting a call through from the hospital before he made it into work. ———— Doug shuffled stiffly, wincing only a little because the pain had dulled from the medication he’d taken. He straightened his tie and adjusted the creases in his trousers. But still he sat on in the waiting room, marshalling the wayward drift and turmoil of his thoughts. Beside him the woman stared blankly while the child slept on her lap. He must pull himself together, be cool, in control. Nothing had changed. If he was sporting a few bruises and was somewhat cautious in his movements, these were certainly minor injuries. So why did he feel he was up to his eyeballs in some kind of madhouse? He was okay, apart from a touch of the old delayed shock from his accident. He hauled himself to his feet, then swiftly sat down again because now he was almost overwhelmed by a stronger, more deep-seated pain. It began at the base of his skull, coursing hot and aching through his chest and stomach. It occurred to him that it had been there for days. It had robbed him of sleep, made him angry, damned near crippled him. He buttoned his jacket, smoothing the lapels so that it sat just right across his shoulders. But he could not staunch the agonising

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compulsion of his thoughts. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself in a cell-like room, crowded with damaged suffering people. The words of an invisible interrogator would cut through the shadowy silence. How do you know? To stop patching and polishing the husk because inside is empty as air? To know that whatever was precious has fled. He put his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes. There were answers but he could not think of them. Not now. He got to his feet and made his way slowly out of the room, down the corridor and into the grey chill of the day beyond. ———— By late morning, Doug was back in bed waiting for Madeleine to arrive. Christ, it hadn’t been easy, but he’d managed to find a taxi to take him from the hospital direct to work. One look at him shuffling through the door and Louisa had swung into action. Doug had gone along with her. Actually, he’d been damned grateful. The girl was a saint. She had organised him to see an old quack who she swore was terrific. For himself, Doug had not been so sure. The bloke had looked like a whippet, thin as a bean, with a narrow pointed face and closely cropped grey hair. And kind of grey all over — from all those hours stuck in his surgery. Doug was in and out in about five seconds flat, no prescription, no miracle drugs, just the doctor scribbling on his file card and telling him without looking up to take some pain-killers and get some bed-rest.

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Afterwards, driving him to his flat, Louisa had asked about the diagnosis. Doug did not really mind her bothering to inquire. ‘Internal derangement of the knee,’ he announced, implying can you believe it? As if that wasn’t appalling enough, he added, ‘In other words, strained cruciate ligament and possible cartilage damage.’ He ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of petulance that was meant to indicate some deeper anguish. ‘I get the impression there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.’ Louisa grimaced sympathetically, though she was already working on her story for the office. The bit about derangement might be worth a giggle. Maybe not. She glanced at Doug. She was not the only one who took it for granted that this guy was really up himself. Really big on his own self-importance. He was the last person she would’ve expected to feel sorry for. He looked as pale as a ghost and right off the pace. Like someone had just told him he had six months to live. Or a little boy who’s lost his mummy. Dropping him off, she even offered to stop by after work to see how he was going. With a shrug of her shoulders, taking the risk, she reached into the glove box and handed him a bulging hand-rolled cigarette, her last but one. ‘For purely medicinal purposes, comrade.’ Madeleine’s brief message asking Doug to ring her was on his answering machine. Doug played it through while he lit the joint with his kitchen matches and struggled to inhale the acrid resinous smoke. Finally, he stubbed it out. It appeared to have no effect on him apart from the near-

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incineration of his lungs. He could see where Bill Clinton was coming from. Fiddling around, he pressed the replay button on his answering machine a couple more times, listening to her voice. He could find nothing for himself in her mechanical tone. Then he punched in her number and was greeted with the same monotone, like a recording from remote space: ‘They told me at your office you were sick.’ But then she surprised him by saying that she would bring Josh and ride her bike over to see him. It was only then he caught the edge of anxiety in her voice. ‘Great, just great.’ Hearing the clunck as she rang off, then the amplified burr of the dial tone, it occurred to him that he mightn’t have said that. Also, that he could have told her to take a taxi. He thought about it for a long moment before he replaced the receiver. On the other hand, maybe she had already stopped listening to him. ———— To begin with, she didn’t say much. When Josh had finished sitting on his chest and smooching all over him, she sat him on the carpet with a pile of cars and blocks from her backpack. Then she said she might make some coffee, if that was okay and did he want a cup? All somewhat offhand, he thought. He found himself watching her intensely while she parked herself on the end of the bed with the mug between her hands. Today there was something different about her. Not the rawness of her face from the cold, nor the straggle

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of her hair, plastered to her head like a ferret in a wind tunnel from the bicycle helmet. As usual, she had dressed out of someone’s garbage bin in rumpled dungarees and a hideous Fair Isle jumper with the elbows out. With sharp clarity, he understood that this was a posturing and calculated insult to himself. She had always sneered at his Italian suits, not saying anything directly, mind you, but with that secretive scorn of hers. With his usual amazing perspicacity, he observed the way she ducked her head to sip the coffee, her face tightening. Right now, Princess Madeleine had something else on her mind. ‘First, I want you to explain to me exactly what you’ve done,’ she said, brutally. ‘Then I want to know how you’re going to fix it up.’ Hell, what was this about? ‘Come on,’ he protested. But he still could not believe her aggro. ‘I’ve bloody crippled myself, that’s what I’ve done.’ She dumped her mug on the bedside table, slopping the coffee all over. Then she leaned over and slapped him. Right on his bruised cheekbone. Right in front of Josh, who, from his perch on the floor, was gazing at them like they were specimens in a jar. Pain and astonishment swelled in his brain. He made a useless effort to grab her, raising his clenched fist. Then he let it drop. Her face was white, shocked. All at once, he was tired, tired of the shit, tired of her. He probed the swelling on his face with his fingertips, then turned away from her. ‘I know what you’ve done to Paddy,’ Madeleine’s voice tried for menace.

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So there it was; the moral majority on the rampage. ‘You been talking to that sleazebag, O’Flaherty?’ he asked. Then he wished he hadn’t because in one cloddish nosedive he had confirmed her accusations. He saw in her face that she had wished for his innocence. He could have told her she was being outrageous, paranoid, that the whole thing could only be a conspiracy of circumstance. It was one of the golden rules. Deny it loud enough and long enough and you can convince anybody of the truth of what you’re saying. Even himself? Shift a few of the pieces around and bingo, you’ve made a new reality. Except he couldn’t be bothered. ‘No, I haven’t talked to Neil O’Flaherty,’ Madeleine said, earnestly. ‘So?’ he said. She bowed her head like someone checking her cue cards. ‘I’m not the person you think I am. I never have been.’ Now her eyes squeezed out a tiny tear, and she was blotting her nose on her sleeve. He didn’t care for the performance. ‘Don’t you see?’ she said, coming at him from somewhere on left field. ‘You made me up. A fantasy in your head.’ Move over Sarah Bernhardt. ‘You can’t blame Paddy for what’s gone wrong.’ Paddy, her friend, that is the guy who was getting into her pants, all day yesterday while her phone was off the hook. When still he wouldn’t answer, just lay there impassively, she became irritated. Blowing her cool. ‘Can’t you see what I’m saying to you?’

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He gazed at her with a kind of wonderment. This scrawny, snotty nosed woman who looked like Mick Jagger on the wrong end of a bad night. He gave a sharp, humourless laugh. Love, lust, whatever, he could no longer imagine it. She was nothing like he remembered her. And somewhere in the pit of his stomach he felt the stirrings of release as if he had glimpsed a window of freedom and any moment now he might make it through to the other side. He needed a clear run before she dragged him down again. If his luck held he would be able to rid himself of her presence soonest. ‘It’s pretty obvious, you reckon?’ He couldn’t help smiling because for the first time in all these days he felt light as a dancer. Madeleine too summoned a smile. She had never seen him like this. Uneasily, she kept to her script. ‘You have to find a way to make it right.’ He circled warily back to square one. ‘What makes you think I’ve done anything?’ He had exasperated her. She began to gather her things, not looking at him. ‘Has it ever occurred to you what a crazy damn lunatic you are?’ Then the thought struck her and suddenly she was nobody’s fool, looking at him with her ferrety eyes and bunched-up mouth. ‘You’re stoned, aren’t you!’ She came towards him, arms folded. ‘I’m surprised, I really am.’ Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. But now she was on the move again, backpack on one shoulder, Josh on her hip.

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‘I haven’t talked to your friend, O’Flaherty, yet. But I might.’ She came back to him, stood beside the bed, waiting. ‘Now why do I think you’d do that?’ he asked. She ran her fingers through her hair, lifting it so that it coiled loosely across her shoulders. Now he found himself absorbed by her confusion, which assaulted his senses like serial images from a time-lapse camera. She was a stern child, a bum-waggling adolescent, the gauze over the lens for the mother-and-baby shot, and then the bravado. There were tears in her eyes again — of pity, for the character stretched out on the bed like the war wounded. ‘Heh,’ he called to her, ‘it’ll be all right. Read my lips. It will be all right.’ Again, he felt a weightlessness as if he had slipped his anchor lines and was beginning to float, high and free. She touched him, her hand a leaden heat on his arm. ‘You keep getting stoned, I’ll have to revise my opinion of you.’ She paused uncertainly. ‘I’m sorry I slapped you.’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, shaking her off. ‘You okay?’ ‘Yep.’ How to get rid of her? ‘So … so what next?’ she asked. ‘I know, I know,’ he said, with a kind of triumph, ‘we’ll continue this conversation tomorrow, when I ring you up.’ He blew Josh a kiss. ‘Bye, fat pants.’ Shoulders hunched, she took forever to cross the room to the door. And then she was gone. ————

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At once, he rolled out of bed to put his place in order, straightening the rugs, rinsing the dishes, wiping the coffee slops from his bedside table. Taking his time, he remade the bed with crisp sheets that filled his nostrils with the acidic fragrance of lemon soaker. That accomplished, he took his second shower for the day. Drying himself, he consoled the sorry-looking bloke in the bathroom mirror with the assurance of better things to come. The only way was up. Settling back in bed, he re-lit the butt of Louisa’s joint, this time smoking it down to the burning tip while his thoughts drifted like balloons in the breeze. When Louisa herself turned up some time later, he was really away, stoned goatfaced.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Like most of us, spiders are very vulnerable when they struggle to grow and renew themselves. About a dozen times during their brief lives they cast off their rigid exterior cuticle and replace it with a larger one that has grown underneath. The first step is fairly straightforward. The shell cracks along the spider’s sides, so that it extricates the bulk of its body. But the legs are more difficult. They are encased with the firmness of moulded leather thigh boots and it can take up to 600 pulls for the spider to free itself. It takes a few days for the new shell to harden and the spider is as unprotected as a newborn and much more delicious. One more thing: funnel-webs are slow to change and develop. The males take three to four years to reach maturity. M. H. Spider Notebook

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Human beings, Madeleine decided, were a self-deceiving lot. They were capable of passing entire lifetimes clinging to the wreckage. Clinging to chimeras, fantasies, dreams, baseless convictions and hollow truths. Doug was seriously self-deluded. But today was a new beginning in which she’d at last shucked off their screwball relationship. She was initiating changes. Doug’s world would no longer hem her in, bring her down. Meeting her for the first time, Doug would have been struck by the calm ease with which she saw through his manipulative lies. Nothing he did would ever surprise or distress her again. Despite her threat, she had no intention of talking to Neil O’Flaherty. Not directly, maybe not ever. But she must set to work quickly. With a bit of luck, Josh might cooperate. She spread some newspapers on the lounge room carpet, meaning to cut out letters from the headlines. Little Mr Fumbleknuckles himself was soon crushing the paper in his fists. Patiently, she fetched him the box of treasures that she had salvaged from her mother’s spring clean. ‘Such a good idea, darling!’ her mother had whooped. It was the sort of collection of interesting rubbish that Madeleine would’ve loved as a child — bits of coloured giftwrapping, paper ribbons and rosettes, old Christmas cards encrusted with silver snow, strings of red sequins from the time she was a waratah flower in the school play, snips of velvet, silk and satin, wallpaper samples and a fold-out paint chart to colour coordinate all the rooms of your house, huge mock emerald, ruby and diamond glass buttons. It was all wasted on Josh.

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She stared at the clock. He’d napped in his bicycle chair all the way back from Doug’s and it would be hours before he would sleep again. She lifted him into her arms and placed him on the kitchen floor in front of the open saucepan cupboard. Crashing around with the pots and pans might keep him going for a good 10 minutes. Seconds later, he was back, crawling across the floor faster than a sniffer dog. She shook her head in frustration as he tumbled into her lap ready to muddle the letters she’d managed to cut out. She wanted to have everything ready for a late-afternoon delivery. With impeccable timing, there was a knock at the door. It was Trudi, just dropping by with something for that gorgeous little man. ‘Well, I can’t keep away, can I?’ This time she was dressed in hiking boots and an oilskin raincoat as if she’d been out walking. ‘I’ll just come in for a bit, shall I?’ she asked, catching Madeleine’s eye with a look that was direct and kindly. But as she stepped through the front door, Madeleine saw that she paused and drew breath. It had been the same earlier; Trudi willing herself not to imagine her husband in this cosy, sun-flooded room with this young woman. Then she was smiling, a real smile, that determinedly dismissed her private disquiet. She held up a gift for Josh. It was a pale-blue cotton-knit tracksuit with a fine yellow earthmover printed on the front. Just the thing and Josh pounced on it with instant presumption of ownership. Together, the two woman fussed over him until he was resplendent in his new clothes. Trudi lifted him up and

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settled him on her hip as if the child belonged there so that Josh, bless him, rewarded her with one of his squashy kisses. Watching them, Madeleine felt a kind of joy. She’d never met a woman like this, for whom kindness, no matter the exigencies, seemed the most important thing. Could anyone really be like that? ‘Now, what say I take this chap for a walk?’ Trudi asked, bossily. ‘Your Mum’s a busy lady.’ ———— With Josh out of the way, Madeleine dispensed with the time-consuming idea of pasting the black newsprint onto a sheet of white paper. Instead, she typed two versions of her letter. They would be anonymous, of course, in the timehonoured tradition of the Canberra leaks Doug had showed her. Her first letter was for the CSIRO chief, Eric Grantley, written with the sort of gossipy, did-you-know outrage that he might assume could only come from an underling in his own organisation or some other sympathetic insider. ‘Dr Patrick Jones is a fine man and a good scientist,’ Madeleine announced, ‘who has done nothing to deserve the public slurs on his reputation. You do not have to look far to see where they were coming from. Did you know that the woman employed as a research assistant by Dr Jones is the de facto wife of the Science Minister’s principal private secretary, Doug Reynolds?’ Whew! It went on to assure Grantley that ‘it was common knowledge that Reynolds was

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a bitter man who had recently separated from his wife. I am writing this because I believe that something should be done to stop people like Reynolds who abuse their positions of power to attack an innocent man.’ Reading it over, Madeleine decided that it had just the right pitch of revelatory conviction. She smoothed the letter with the palm of her hand, thinking of Doug the day before, white-faced, gazing at her as if she had just dropped in from Mars. Another image rose unbidden; Doug’s body over hers, his face slackened and shining with sweat, his eyes clenched shut like a man riding the current with the wind at his back. She began to thread her fingers through her hair, remembering his touch, familiar and intimate, for her alone. Was that possible? But she could not bear the way he always strove for a well-mapped sexual operation, all his concentration focused on the stage directions written on his own internal autocue. What was the point of it, for God’s sake? She lifted the weight of her hair in her hands and shook it loose to shift the burden of her thoughts. She knew the answer. Of course she did. How could she not know? All the effort was to hide his vulnerability, to keep his soft underbelly from exposure so he could struggle through unscathed. He hadn’t succeeded because you never do and she could only pity him for it. As her father’s daughter, she’d taken it for granted that Doug’s love was not worth having. And she was right, wasn’t she? Above all, she must not waver. Slowly, she folded her letter and slipped it into an envelope endorsed ‘private and confidential’, ready for

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Trudi’s personal delivery. What she had written, what she was doing, was fair and just. The other letter was more difficult, not least because the chances were that Doug would be the first to read it. She and Trudi had discussed that probability. The woman, Louisa Something or Other, a quick call would find out her name, seemed more or less to run the office. She would address the letter to George Cunningham, c/- Louisa. If that didn’t work, it seemed certain that the CSIRO would fax across their copy to the Minister’s office, demanding an explanation. Equally, there was a chance that Neil O’Flaherty would find himself with a copy before the day was out. Madeleine resolved to be short and businesslike. Science Minister Cunningham, Doug had told her, never read beyond the first two sentences of any paperwork that crossed his desk. He said the bloke was next to illiterate, but he remembered every last detail of anything anyone told him. ‘This is to advise you,’ she wrote, ‘that a senior member of your staff, Doug Reynolds, is undermining your standing as a federal minister.’ Surely that would grab his attention. ‘Reynolds,’ she went on, ‘is responsible for the false allegations of fraud against CSIRO scientist Dr Patrick Jones. Ask CSIRO who Reynolds’ wife works for. Ask Reynolds who he has been talking to and why.’ This time she signed the letter, ‘A loyal constituent’. She placed the letters side by side on the coffee table ready for Trudi’s return. She went to the kitchen, stepping over Josh’s mess of saucepans and put on some coffee.

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Waiting for it to brew, she told herself that she should feel justified in what she had done. And pleased that at last she was ridding herself of Doug. But she didn’t. ‘Listen to this,’ he’d said to her. It was just after they came to Canberra when the house was littered with stacks of books on federal politics, magazines, policy documents, briefing papers and he spent most weekends ‘boning up’. It was a quote, she couldn’t remember from whom: ‘In Victory, Revenge; In Defeat, Malice.’ Doug read it to her, shaking his head. He was like a schoolboy, nose pressed up against the windowpane of a magic and fantasy shop. Inside were all the tricks and gadgets and games for creating the illusion of power and he was fascinated by them all. ‘I don’t know what it means,’ she said, tartly, ‘and if I do, it sounds appalling.’ Doug gazed at her, as he always did, trying to weigh up the significance of her remark to hide the insult he felt. ‘I guess it means a whole bunch of things.’ ‘Like never forgive or forget?’ she suggested. ‘Or never give a sucker an even break,’ he said. ‘Give your enemies no quarter,’ she said. ‘If someone betrays you once, they’ll betray you twice.’ He was maybe enjoying their game. ‘Show no mercy,’ she said. ‘You’re repeating yourself,’ he said. ‘What about, it’s not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose? That would be right up your street, wouldn’t it?’

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‘And here’s me thinking it was just the opposite,’ she said, irritably. ‘Well then, power corrupts, and you know the rest.’ ‘Oh, I do so wish that everyone would be nicer to each other,’ Doug scoffed. ‘The world would be a much better place if everyone was nice and good.’ ‘Oh, I think we should all be ruthless and unprincipled. It’s my macho theory of politics.’ ‘You sure you don’t mean naive and totally ineffectual?’ She’d refused to go on arguing with him about it, huffily presuming the moral high ground. Maybe she was still clinging to it. Why couldn’t you believe in political ideals and do your level best to put them into practice? Doug would’ve dismissed that as another of her ‘motherhood’ statements. Now she would be tossing her grubby little letters into the arena and watching the dirt fly. It was the best she could come up with, even though they would not necessarily, as Trudi hoped, salvage a good man’s reputation. The damage was already done. Doug too had told her that he would make it right. She saw no reason to believe that he would or could. She was getting her own back, ‘In defeat, malice’. In the end, there wasn’t much to distinguish her position from Doug’s. Except to ask who was the better player. ———— Madeleine was muddling about in the kitchen when Josh and Trudi came bouncing through the front door. The boy

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was carrying something to show her in an opaque plastic container pressed high against his chest. Touched by his eagerness, Madeleine crouched down beside him while he struggled unsuccessfully to unscrew the lid. Gently, she took the container. ‘Get ready. Get set.’ She paused for dramatic effect while Josh clasped his hands together and chuckled. ‘Eureka!’ She held out the container in one hand and the lid in the other. The three of them huddled closer and peered expectantly inside. There was nothing. It was empty as air. Madeleine glanced awkwardly at Trudi who was frowning as if something quite impossible had occurred, then at Josh’s small bewildered face. She felt embarrassed, idiotic, as if she might be responsible for magicking away more than she intended. But the next instant the little boy spotted it. The spider was tidily spread-eagled on the underside of the lid in Madeleine’s hand. Slowly, she turned it over and laid it gingerly on the floor. She and Josh drew closer to inspect the pale-brown creature with its striped legs. ‘DeBella,’ Madeleine announced, recalling Paddy’s delightful description of their night-time find. When Josh reached out a chubby finger to poke the motionless creature, Madeleine pushed him aside. ‘No, it’s frightened.’ Trudi kept her distance, arms folded. Looking up, Madeleine spoke with a tactlessness that she would never forget. ‘Paddy told me you didn’t like spiders.’ There it was again between them — Paddy, her friend. Really, all she meant was, so how did you steel yourself to catch one?

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Trudi’s response was sharp. ‘Like spiders? Of course, I don’t like them. My husband’s quite right about that.’ ‘He thinks we should all learn to love them,’ Madeleine said, disingenuously. Something of Trudi’s fierceness ebbed. ‘I don’t think anyone should argue with him about that.’ She gave a mock shudder. ‘Now, why don’t you put that revolting creature outside before my arachnophobia gets the better of me.’ Despite Josh’s protests, Madeleine did exactly as she was told. ‘And for heaven’s sake, stop looking so worried,’ Trudi called after her. ‘I’m a bit tougher than I look.’ ‘So am I,’ Madeleine shouted back, liking this forthright, motherly woman who had elbowed her way into her life. ———— When Louisa came calling about eight o’clock in the evening, there was no way Doug’s doorbell could be heard above the racket of his sound system. Ravel’s Bolero reverberated into the street. There was nothing for it but to let herself in the unlocked door. The flat was in darkness except for the blue light of the television. Doug was flat on his back in bed, clutching the remote control and gazing at the soundless screen. He actually seemed pleased to see her. Not that he would say so directly. Men seldom did, poor lambs. With a flick of the button he killed the music,

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then switched on the bedside lamp, transforming the room into subdued austerity. Even in his neatly made invalid’s bed, he managed to look sleek and well-brushed. Louisa eyed him calmly. Not a bad-looking chap, if you liked the Fletcher Jones type. It was only his inflamed eyeballs that suggested he might be as stoned as a goat. ‘So how did it go?’ she asked. He stretched, cradling his head in his arms. His face assumed an expression of comical earnestness. ‘Very good.’ Louisa glanced again around the room, thinking vaguely of its miserable characterless tidiness. Doug Reynolds, thirty-something and never been stoned before. She gave a small wry smile. Probably didn’t know what hit him. ‘Well, I hope you’re into Chinese,’ she announced, shrugging off his loopy stare, ‘because I’ve brought heaps.’ She set to work. First she hung her suit coat over a chair so it wouldn’t crush. Pressing a lacquered fingernail to her lips, she surveyed the kitchen, a bachelor’s pad, but she’d come prepared. Dinner parties, presenting dishes, was something she really enjoyed. Discarding the plastic containers for plates, she laid out the food on a tray. She decorated each serving with the vegetable roses, carved Chinese-style. Next she arranged a couple of white linen serviettes she’d brought from home. She broke open a bottle of chilled chardonnay. She held Doug’s wine glasses up to the light, then rinsed and polished them before she filled them. Tucking the sleek bob of her hair behind her ears, she

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surveyed the results. It might be take-away but this restaurant was usually worth the effort. ‘Bloody terrific,’ Doug assured her, bolstering himself up on the bed so she could place the tray on his knees. They ate together in the silence of strangers, Louisa with her serviette spread on her lap delicately picking morsels from her plate, Doug with the gratifying enthusiasm of a man with a serious case of the marijuana munchies. For her part, Louisa did not care much whether or not they chatted. At 24, she’d decided some time ago that people did not always have to be talkative. A little later she would broach the subject of the anonymous letters. When the meal was finished, she cleared up the dishes and put the kitchen in order in a way that Doug could only find impressive. That done, she stood by Doug’s bed rummaging in her bag. She drew out the faxes. ‘Your copies,’ she said, making it clear that she had played this one by the book. Doug plucked them from her fingers and scanned them quickly. If what he read angered or upset him, he did not show it. ‘I’m going to have to talk to Cunningham about this crap.’ He pointed his finger between his eyes and made a sound like a pistol exploding. ‘Not easy.’ Seeing her quizzical gaze, he added: ‘You done good, pal.’ He patted the duvet beside him. ‘Come on, you don’t need to go rushing off.’ She thought he seemed less stoned now, just trying to be nice and show his gratitude. The look he gave her was kind of supplicating too. So they finished the wine, then she brewed some coffee and they smoked some more dope, while Doug

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skipped across the channels in search of something to watch. Some time later, sprawled together on his bed, Doug slid his arm around her. As always happened after a joint, she felt the heat rise in her body, her breath catch. Gently, experimentally, he began to kiss her, hardly moving, just cupping her face in his hands like a chalice. It was enough to drive her mad. She could not help it; she began to giggle at his queer reverential intensity. Then he was sulking, arms folded across his chest, face all pouty. She rolled off the bed and began to undress, taking her time, inviting him to watch her because she liked this part of it. She lifted her breasts, the nipples erect, arched her back, running her hands over her hips and thighs. Doug groaned and reached for her but she did not want that — to be cuddled and nuzzled and petted, to smell his sweat and breath. Instead, she sat astride him and slipped his cock inside while he lay pinioned beneath her, whispering over and over that it was incredible, she was incredible, an angel. Even as she rocked over him, feeling the control slip, laughter welled inside her again, at the big-kid way he scrunched his eyes shut, concentrating, out of his brain. And so polite, telling her how good it was, very nice, thank you. A tough guy, all corn syrup underneath. In the event, lying soberly side by side, he asked, ‘Do you usually find it so funny?’ ‘You were fantastic. Really great.’ Under the circumstances, it was the best thing to say. He stared at her incredulously while she nodded slowly. ‘Really good.’

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‘Yeah, right.’ She patted him placatingly on the tummy, one of the mates, as straight as a die and you had better believe it. ———— For the moment at least, Doug was in Louisa’s hands. It amazed him that he hadn’t noticed her in all the months they had worked in the same office. She ran her own show, this little lady. Some time in the night, he broke out of a black trough of sleep. Though he was some minutes figuring out where in the fuck he was, it was probably because he was on the wrong side of his bed. By concentrating in the darkness, he succeeded in orientating himself to the layout of his flat, the window framed by silk taffeta curtains, the rectangular gap of his open bedroom door and through it the squat bulk of his sofa. Tentatively shifting his limbs, he discovered his injured knee had subsided to a barely perceptible ache. He smelt her perfume first, mingled with the scent of freshly laundered linen, and, just faintly, of sweat and sex. Switching on the lamp, he contemplated this stranger sleeping serenely beside him. She lay flat on her back with her arms across her breasts. She was wearing the most extraordinary get-up of black lace and satin arranged precisely down the generous curves of her body to her ankles. With her face scrubbed of make-up, she looked younger, the freckle-faced neighbourhood tomboy in dressups. Her composure, the depth of her sleep, her vampish

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costume (what else did she carry around in her voluminous handbag?) struck him as mysterious. She would not have been out of place on a sarcophagus in a Hollywood horror spoof — the drugged and despoiled innocent. Hang on, he thought, that was hardly the way of things. He hadn’t needed to ask twice before she had her gear off. She sighed in her sleep. Then she too was awake and looking at him, as calm as you like. He smiled overbrightly. ‘I was just thinking what a knockout you are.’ ‘Great,’ she said. She rolled onto her side, with her back to him. He reached down and drew up her negligee, pressing his cock against her bare buttocks. She slid away from him and wrapped herself up again. ‘Some other time,’ she said, so clearly and loudly he did not immediately think she had spoken at all. He lay listening to the even shush-shoosh of her breathing, felt the heat of her body. Wide awake, he punched the pillow, tried to get settled again. Tough lady, called the shots. He told himself he didn’t mind, why should he? Maybe it made a welcome change from you-know-who. ———— He awoke to the smell of percolating coffee and hot pastry. He threw off the blankets and sat up, marvelling that Louisa’s side of the bed appeared to have already been made;

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at least the sheet was smooth, the pillows puffed. He ran his fingers through his rumpled hair, felt the day’s growth on his face. He remembered everything of the previous evening: the gourmet food, inviting her into his bed, her body twisting and turning in the light as she stripped for him. It was impossible that he’d imagined any of it. Now he could just make out the murmur of her voice on the telephone. He heard the click of his bedroom extension as she hung up. Standing up, he tested his weight on his knee. Not so bad, not bad at all. A couple of Panadol and he would be as right as rain. He was filled with curiosity to have another look at her. But halfway across the room, he went back for a bathrobe to cover his nakedness. There she was, a notebook in her hand, dressed to the nines, with her hair a sleek bob and her face precisely made-up. A breakfast table was already set with tablecloth, teacups, a vase of early spring daffodils. It was all of 7.32am. Leaning against the doorjamb, he smiled, really working at it. ‘Good morning.’ He felt her scrutiny, that sidelong, shrewd glance, cool as you like. She too smiled, ever so politely, so he could not help staring at her. ‘Good morning.’ She tapped the notebook, very businesslike. ‘I’m glad you’re awake, I really am. You should hear today’s schedule.’ Well, all right, Doug decided. He pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Tell me about it.’ He watched her face in a kind of amazement as she explained that he and Cunningham were on the 9.15am flight to Sydney, just time to pick up the briefing papers from the office. Her self-possession, her

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impersonal efficiency, impressed and puzzled him more than he cared to admit. He ate a croissant, drank the perfect coffee she’d brewed, grateful that the folds of his bathrobe covered his erection. The way things were going there would not be a spare five minutes. But there was. When she remembered to ask him about his knee, he was deliberately low key, just the hint of a wince. ‘I guess it’ll be okay.’ She was checking her watch, frowning. ‘I’d better have a shower, hadn’t I?’ He had not meant to ask her permission. She said nothing. Instead, she was on her feet, clearing up. Her fingers stacking the dishes were long and tapered, her fingernails immaculately manicured ovals. Madeleine gnawed hers down to the quick. He was standing in the bedroom in his underpants and shirt-tails when she appeared with a couple of pain-killers, a glass of water and, wonder of wonders, a pressure bandage for his knee. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ If she thought he was being unduly aggressive, she did not let on. Her response was firm, matter of fact. ‘Would you believe, a chemist?’ She took his elbow like a head nurse. ‘Why don’t I put it on for you?’ Propped up on the bed, he watched her bend over him, tucking a lick of hair behind her small white ear, binding his knee with her quick elegant fingers. He felt the heat in his groin, his cock stiffen so that he could have groaned with the intensity of it. Delicately, she

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drew down his underpants and placed her mouth over him. He wanted to kiss her, to hold her breasts, to run his hands down the lines of her body but the flat of her palm on his stomach was a weight to hold him down. And when it was over he wanted to say something to her, though his voice sounded rasping and strange, even to his own ears. ‘You can do that any time you like.’ She smoothed the hairs on his chest like someone fondling a favourite pet. ‘Come on, sonny boy, you’d better get a move on.’ Just for a second, he caught a glimpse of it, in the downward curve of her mouth at the corners, the slight toss of her head. It was a look of triumph. He dressed swiftly in his grey suit, pinstripe shirt, Pierre Cardin tie. The clothes were his uniform, his armour, so that he felt almost his old self. Coming out of the bedroom, he saw that she was balancing her compact on an outstretched palm and intently painting her lips a rich maroon. He suppressed a surge of gawpish helplessness. Whore’s lips, dark and sensual on that soft full mouth. But he kept his cool, saying goodbye to her as they went their separate ways at the door of his flat. Briefcase in hand, car keys jangling in his pocket, his focus was already shifting to the day ahead. It was easier than he thought, not to suggest seeing her again. Strange woman. She had kissed his cheek, turned on her heels and strode off without a backward glance. Fun and games. Still, heading for work, he felt depression clamp into his spirit. Now in the backwash of the night’s events, he saw himself as going

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through the routines while Louisa jerked his rope. Like a performing monkey. The image of her naked body, of her beside him in his bed tricked out like some under-age hooker, filled him with an ill-humour born of self-disgust. ———— ‘What in the name of Fuckall have you been up to Reynolds, my son?’ Science Minister Cunningham waited until the plane was over Lake George before he bothered to speak to Doug. With his bulk spread over two first-class seats, he leaned across the aisle, beetle-browed, eyes watchful and sly in that squashed face. Not for the first time, Doug thought it was as though the skin had been stretched and wrenched. It was the face of a boozer, a bar-room brawler who had made his way with cunning and bluster and the odd necessary kick to his opponents’ nuts. Doug faced up uneasily, his stomach churning. ‘Some loony gets it into his head to dump a load of shit on me. Anyone can write a letter.’ ‘Two letters,’ Cunningham drawled. He had them right there for Doug to look at while he watched him. The typeface of each was identical, written on the old IBM electric the stupid bitch had insisted on lumping down from Sydney. Doug handed them back. ‘Two letters, one nutter.’ Cunningham grunted. ‘You got anything against this Jones rooster? Your lady friend been spreading her legs for him?’

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Doug’s chest tightened, thinking of his fist crushing into the Minister’s face. He kneaded the flesh on his knuckles, breathing slowly. ‘My ex partner says no way. You get a look at this bloke, he wouldn’t know where to put it.’ Cunningham shuffled the letters then slipped them into a manila folder, taking his time. So what’s got your wind up, young Reynolds? Doug knew he had to try harder, not sound so confused, lost. ‘CSIRO’s got its hand out. What else is new? If they can make some mud stick, it’s a fucking godsend. All in a day’s work for those low-life bastards.’ Cunningham did not think so. Placard waving, letters to the editor, the usual hoo-ha, but not this. Not this hamfisted, grubby scrap of muckraking. Which brought him to the question of why one Douglas Reynolds was so hell-bent on lying to him. He looked at the red-faced young man, angry enough to explode and tried to bring to mind the wife. Blonde, if his memory served him, racy little body, no tits to speak of. Sulky, fuck-me-if-you-can look. And Reynolds shuffling round her like the ground might give way any tick of the clock. He grasped his bottom lip between finger and thumb. It wouldn’t do any harm to let his underling stew for a bit. But not too long. In the courtesy car from Sydney Airport, Cunningham clapped Doug on the shoulder with sudden bonhomie. ‘Leg all right, is it?’ Doug nodded, frowning miserably. ‘Yeah sure, pretty much.’

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Cunningham’s hand still lay heavily on Doug’s shoulder. ‘Young woman … Louisa, been looking after you, has she?’ Doug fought the need to shake off that hand. ‘Christ, yes.’ He half-turned, trying for a smirk, man-to-man. ‘She knows how to take advantage of a bloke.’ Cunningham chuckled, dry as dust. ‘Just after your body, is she?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, he drew back, arms crooked, fists clenched. His words were like a snake uncoiling. ‘You’ve been on the payroll, how long? Six months? Maybe less. Never mind. Long enough to know I don’t take kindly to being stuffed around. Am I getting across to you? So, we’ll talk about damage control. It’s a term I seem to have heard bandied about. So, here’s how it goes. You get on the phone to that CSIRO bugger, Grantley, and talk about a meeting tomorrow morning. He wants to talk about funding, it’s on the agenda, it’s on the top of the list. Might be it’s the only item on the list. You have a think about it. Like whether this Jones joker’ll go with a redundancy package and an honorary life membership of CSIRO and no one’ll have to bother about him forever after. Oh and tell Grantley to shut the fuck up in the meantime or we might find ourselves with nothing to say to him. You got that? Your partner still working for Dr Patrick Jones?’ ‘Ex,’ Doug snapped, ‘Ex-partner.’ ‘Whatever,’ Cunningham shrugged. Again, he swerved abruptly into expansiveness. ‘We’ll see what happens next, what do you say? I like to think there’s always room for improvement. That a bloke can learn from his mistakes.’ ————

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At lunchtime, with the morning’s business completed, Cunningham directed the driver to an address near the William Street end of Hyde Park. It was a wedding-cake terrace house and the tout at the brothel door greeted the Minister like a long-lost friend. Cunningham brushed past him, eager for what awaited him inside. With an hour to waste, Doug too hopped out of the car. He wanted to get away, find a way to shake off this crazy leaden confusion that besieged him. He felt a jab of hatred for Cunningham. He, Doug, could do better, sure he could. Unbuttoning his coat against the spring humidity, he crossed the street at a swift clip. His knee had stiffened a little during the morning so that he swung along like a man with a wooden leg. Now he was outside the imposing sandstone facade of the museum building. He pulled up because all at once he was uncertain where he was going. This part of Sydney seemed to be constantly changing, though it was difficult to pinpoint the subtle alteration of detail: new roadworks, buildings demolished or refurbished, something straightforward perhaps. The air was smoky, the light sombre and alien. Above him, the sun was a flat yellow disk, a child’s drawing on sepia-tinted clouds. Madeleine would have told him the sun had no chance in this filthy atmosphere of the CBD. He felt his chest constrict as if he might begin gasping for breath. He wondered whether he would miss her, and whether it mattered if he did. He thought he would like to bring her something, a parting gift to show he understood that she had finally cut him adrift.

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All around him, office workers were heading for the park to eat their lunch on benches under the spreading trees. He was tempted to follow them but he shook his head to warn himself that this was not a good idea. To be alone in a public place was to be conspicuous and, above all, he did not want to be noticed, witnessed. For the time being, he did not have the strength to cope with it. He needed to be calm, to get his bearings, get back in the driver’s seat of his life. He massaged his forehead gently — crazy thoughts again, his brain going like a bloody How To manual. He spun on his heel and went up the steps into the museum. He skirted a cluster of schoolkids and began to browse along the display shelves of the bookshop at one end of the foyer. Madeleine would have spent an hour here and come away full of proper indignation. The books were an in-your-face check list of environmentalist ideology beginning with high-gloss, tabloid-sized picture books of Oz, to sections on marvels of the deep, including whales, dolphins, dugongs, a hefty tome in defence of sharks, another on the ecological importance of venomous sea creatures, on to native flora and fauna, cuddly koalas, wombats, the Easter bilby with wooden carvings for the kiddies, to endangered species with photos of rabbit and camel devastation, rainforests, national parks, a whole wall on Aboriginal oral history, land rights and arts and craft. Insects took up a relatively small section and next to it there were only a couple of books on spiders. Doug picked up a slim monograph on funnel-webs but found himself unable

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to concentrate on the text. He stared at the cover with its stark photo of the spider, trying to gather his wits. The guy who had written it worked for the museum. As he slipped it tidily back into its place on the shelves, the idea struck him to go see the bloke. Personally. Have a chat about that selfstyled spider expert, Dr Patrick Jones. He shook his head, smiling, then glanced quickly around. Something about paranoia being the true perception of reality. He asked directions from an attendant, implying he had an appointment and located the office almost immediately. It was down a poorly lit lift to the building’s basement and along a labyrinth of narrow deserted corridors lined with grey steel filing cabinets and frosted glass cupboards. The bloke’s office looked makeshift and decrepit. There was no one there, though the door was wide open and he saw two half-full cups of coffee beside a steaming kettle. He glanced carefully around, trying to make sense of it. It was as if the place had been evacuated minutes before. He noted the magazine open on the desk, the light flicking on/off on the console beside the telephone, the graphics flashing on the monitor. And other things as well. Next to the desk encased in a glass fish tank was a live cricket colony with about a thousand crickets leaping about. An elongated pair of tweezers hung by a hook on the side. He knew what they were for and wondered if the guy fed the spider himself. Whether he took pleasure in dropping the live squirming insects into the spider’s waiting fangs. Because there on the bench in pride of place was a glass jar containing a sleek

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black funnel-web. Amid the cotton wool and dirt at the bottom of the jar were the beginnings of a meshy web. Drawing closer, Doug tapped the bottle with his fingernail and watched in wonderment as the spider sprang to life with ferocious menace. It was an absolute classic, the way it became so instantly enraged, rearing up, holding the pose with its needlepoint fangs unsheathed. Then it dropped down again. In what he quickly decided was an inspired moment, Doug unhooked the tweezers and slid open the lid of the fish tank. It took him a couple of tries to prong a fat little critter. The next part might have been trickier except he had no problem holding the tweezers clenched in his left hand while he unscrewed the perforated plastic lid of the jar. He dropped in the cricket and deftly replaced the lid. Then he waited. Now the spider had flattened itself motionless in the damp soil, playing possum while the insect wriggled and twisted. But the next second the swiftness of its attack almost took his breath away. Up it went, fangs angled, and pounced, fast and nasty. The cricket was dead before it could even figure it. That accomplished, the spider began to work over the creature’s impaled body, delicately squeezing and kneading it with a rhythmical motion of its legs. It took Doug a moment to realise it had begun to eat it, sucking up its victim’s juices until only the husk remained. Christ, it could well be starving. Urgently, he dumped another cricket in the jar, thought about it, then added one more for good measure. Checking the tightness of the lid, he slipped the jar into his suit-coat pocket. Despite its bulk, it fitted very

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snugly. As he walked all the way along the corridors, up the elevator and out in the street by a side door, he patted his pocket every now and then just to be sure. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Madeleine’s face when he showed her what he had brought from Sydney, tucked in his coat like a secret weapon. Or, looked at from another perspective, it was his special gift to her. Her own personal, A1, handdelivered funnel-web. ———— In the evening in his flat, Doug set himself up in front of the television. He placed the jar containing Fang the FunnelWeb on the shelf above the screen, to keep an eye on him. The spider appeared to have settled down okay. It had chosen to ignore the remaining crickets and had assumed a watchful, somewhat paranoid pose as if it suspected something was happening out there in the world that it couldn’t quite get a fix on. Doug leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at it, trying to figure what the hell it was on about. He shook his head abruptly to clear his thoughts, to shake off the fretfulness that clutched him. What was he going to do when its dinner ran out? Maybe the program would fill him in on that too. It was a half-hour documentary on Australian spiders. He frowned. Who would have thought it would be on tonight? He had given Madeleine a quick call to tell her he would be over straight afterwards.

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‘After what?’ He had spelled it out for her, relishing the notion that she wouldn’t expect him to be watching it. ‘The documentary on our native eight-legged friends.’ Into her puzzled silence, he gabbled, ‘Yeah and I’ve got something for you.’ He glanced at the titles coming up on the TV. ‘Catch you shortly.’ What struck him most was the sheer ubiquity of the spiders. The documentary claimed they were bloody everywhere you looked and most places you didn’t. Actually, it gave him an idea. Fang might be his piéce de résistance. But he could do more. Bit of a larder, if you looked at it that way. A quick scout around the house in the commercial break scored him a black house spider near the toilet bowl and four daddy-long-legs. He scooped them up on a piece of paper and tapped them into an empty chocolate box. But the garden at night was the place. The rooster on the TV was tiptoeing round someone’s backyard with a torch finding them in webs, trees, bushes, scrabbling through the grass. It reminded him of a story of the naturalist who hosted a wellknown wildlife show. Birds, bush rodents, snakes, insects revealed themselves to him in every nook and cranny. Turn over a rock and, my goodness, he would find a rare species of lizard, snake, whatever. He was supposed to have spent days beforehand combing the bush until he found something, then pulled off its leg and left it in place for the cameras. Grasping a torch, Doug went out into the darkness to reconnoitre the foliage and the bit of lawn around his

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apartment block. He found a solitary bulbous grey spider finishing off a web between the lamppost and a bottlebrush. Into the box with it. He was more successful in the strip of park across the road. Breaking off some bark from a tree, he found a flat brown spider but on subsequent trees there was zilch. Next he tried the bushy grevilleas, which he noted gleefully were festooned with bunches of webs in which midget spiders were moving about in frenzied activity. It was not easy, but he managed to gather a few of them by grasping a leg between the tips of his fingers. Then he swept the ground with his light searching for the glow of small eyes, just like on the telly. No way, except for a big grey job making its way over a tree root. Hell, it was his best find yet — not a bad 20 minutes’ work. ———— Madeleine was sure she heard Doug’s car pull into her driveway. But as the minutes passed and he did not knock on the door, she went to the kitchen window to check. The car was there all right. She leaned forward over the sink and saw a yellow torch light bobbing round in the garden. What the hell was he doing out there? The thought that he might be drunk or, worse still, loopy with marijuana filled her with angry resentment. They had matters to resolve and she could not bear a rerun of the day before. She might slip the deadlocks on the doors and ignore his presence. She began to pace the floor, gnawing the skin around her ravaged fingernails. Yesterday, stoned or not, he had

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been so different. Maybe he was losing it, cracking under the strain. Now she heard the car door slam. She listened for the hum of the engine. But then a moment later came the insistent knocking. When she did not answer, it became louder, a pounding on the door. At this rate, he would wake the neighbours, and Josh. Drawing breath, she opened the door to find him standing there, the same old Doug in his well-pressed Trent Nathan casuals and tidy haircut. In his arms was a box of chocolates with a red ribbon round it and another gift, tastefully wrapped with a rosette on top. He was as sprucedup and expectant as a kid on his first date. Looking him over for longer than she meant to, she felt a wrenching weariness as if the whole thing was beginning again. She did not have the heart for another round. So much destruction, so much foolishness, as her Dad would have said. ‘Our son asleep?’ Our, knowing the answer already. She nodded grimly. She saw in the shift of his eyes, the slight hunch of his shoulders, that a little of his jauntiness had seeped away. But, as always with her, he never embraced an honourable defeat. He stepped into the room, swinging his leg wide so that she remembered his injury. That was his problem, wasn’t it? He laid his gifts on the coffee table. ‘Come on.’ He gestured stiffly. ‘I know you’ll like these.’ ‘I don’t want them,’ she said, though anxiety clutched her stomach. Maybe she was imagining it, but he seemed so strange. Unfocused, lost somehow.

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He ran his fingers through his hair impatiently, rocked on his heels, so that she remembered clearly that time before, in the kitchen, when he had slapped her. ‘For Christ’s sake, Maddy, be gracious, would you.’ Maddy, when had he ever called her that? She felt the heat rise in her face. She plumped down on the lounge and took the chocolate box on her lap. It was as light as a feather. She pulled off the ribbon and began to shake it to dislodge the lid while Doug shifted uncomfortably beside her. All at once the bottom of the box dropped out. It was a moment of sheer panic. Dead and dying spiders, some missing legs, others waving limbs in lethargic death, spilled across her knees. The fragile tiny ones were curled tightly and scattered like confetti. A couple of bigger ones were vibrantly alive, dropping to the floor to scrabble away or clinging desperately to the box. She braced herself against the lounge, brushing them furiously away. She glanced wildly at Doug, who was cursing and flapping at his clothes. ‘Jesus Christ, talk about clumsy.’ She could not trust herself to speak. She leaned forward and placed the box on the coffee table. She closed her eyes, fighting for calm, warning herself to go carefully. He was crazy, out of his head, some kind of breakdown. Now he was fidgeting, with jerky movements, collecting the wrapping paper, the chocolate box, placing it all tidily back together. All the while he was watching her, quick sidelong glances, with that strange secretive smile.

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‘You okay?’ she asked, her voice harsh with fear. He shrugged irritably, looking away. Josh’s wail from the bedroom was almost a welcome distraction. Madeleine went to him though Doug wasn’t far behind her. The room was in semi-darkness, illuminated only by a small night light. Ignoring Doug, she began to change the child’s nappy, reaching into the cot so as to disturb him as little as possible. Beside her, Doug tore away the wrapping paper from his other gift. She fiddled with the pins, soothing the baby, while Doug was opening the lid of the bottle because now the Sydney funnel-web, Atrax robustus, might’ve been dead, so motionless was it. It was only when she straightened up to shake out Josh’s bunny rug that it hit her like a nightmare what Doug was doing, standing there so close to her, to Josh, peering at a funnelweb in an open jar. She screamed and too late bent to pick up the baby. Because, in sudden witless panic, Doug flung the bottle away so that the black spider fell swift as a bullet into the cot, onto Josh, rearing up with malevolent, pugnacious vitality to plunge its fangs into the child’s chubby pliant flesh. And then Josh too was screaming in terror and agony.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As I’ve said, funnel-web venom is a complex chemical cocktail, designer-made to kill human beings. It took 14 frustrating years for Dr Struan Sutherland to unravel its secrets. Apart from anything else, he was hampered by short research dollars. As well, he could obtain only sufficient venom for four hours’ research a month. And another thing, in one of those quirks of science, the component of the venom that targets the human nervous system was overlooked for many years. During chemical analysis it smeared itself finely around the sides of the glass test tubes until Sutherland hit upon the idea of using specially imported, silicon-coated glassware. M. H. Spider Notebook

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Madeleine knew the quicker the onslaught of symptoms, the more badly Josh was likely to have been bitten. While Doug stood white-faced and useless, she secured the spider in the glass jar, just as she had seen Paddy do. Then with a dread-stricken urgency she ran to the bathroom, throwing aside the contents of the medicine cabinet in search of the compression bandage. Already Josh was sweating, his face flushed, his fragile body shuddering. She wrapped the bandage firmly around his left leg, thanking her stars he’d not been bitten on some other part of his body. The drive to the hospital, clutching Josh while he convulsed in pain, unfolded with the slowness of a ghastly dream. She at least had the presence of mind to alert the hospital staff and they were barely through the door before the child was plucked from her arms. Within minutes, they’d inserted a tube into his arm and hooked him to an electrocardiograph to monitor his heartbeat, then more electrodes to measure the oxygen saturation in his skin. Now Josh was gasping for breath, half-choking on his saliva while Madeleine strove to hold the oxygen mask against his face. She was distraught, tears streaming down her face. Why were they taking so long to help him? He could not survive because he’d been severely bitten, too much poison to contain in his small frail body. Paddy insisted no one died from a funnel-web bite. Where was the antivenom? Why hadn’t they given it to him? Despite her terror, Madeleine knew the answers, the necessary stage-by-stage treatment, the drugs dripped

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intravenously one by one; allergy suppressants, antihistamines, atrapine to dry up his saliva and then the antivenom. And yet, as the minutes lengthened and Josh’s blood pressure soared, his pulse pounded, 180, 200 per minute, his temperature climbed to 38 degrees Celsius, she tried to remember whether anyone so tiny had ever pulled through. The first ampoule of antivenom had no effect. Nor did the second. Now Josh’s breathing was laboured and hoarse, a buzz-saw sound of effort and agony that reverberated through the ward. Hunched over the end of the bed, head in her hands, Madeleine waited as the third ampoule drained into his arm. Still, nothing happened. Behind her, Doug paced the floor, a rhythmical swish of leather on lino, on and on. She could not look at him. She had no time for him, no emotion, every cell in her body was focused on Josh. Another 15 minutes, while Josh twisted and thrashed, gasping for breath. Perhaps he had turned a corner, perhaps not, because now the doctor rapidly unwound the compression bandage from Josh’s leg and they waited to see if the residual venom would rush through his body. The baby seemed quieter now. Madeleine held his small hand between her palms, stroked him, willing it to be so. Halfway through the fourth ampoule, an abrupt silence filled the room. Madeleine looked up in fearful bafflement. The nursing staff had paused in their efforts, were observing her baby with frowning intensity. She looked pleadingly at the doctor, who nodded wordlessly.

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The spell was broken. There was laughter, congratulations, thank God, touch and go for a while there; she heard Doug’s heavy anguished sigh and glanced up to see his tears. Bending down close to her child, she touched her palm softly against his cheek. His temperature was normal, his breathing had eased. She saw he was simply asleep, an exhausted baby, a miracle of struggle and survival, and the joy came so strongly in her she began to weep too. ———— Afterwards in the waiting room, with Josh still under routine observation, Madeleine sat across from Doug. She still could find no words for him, to confront the enormity of what he had done. If she sensed his agitation, in his constant movement, in the way he stood up, sat down, paced the room, it meant nothing to her. Finally, he drew up a chair opposite and, prising it from his coat pocket, placed the jar containing the funnel-web on the coffee table between them. After a long moment, Madeleine held her breath and picked it up. Her only thought was that she must keep it from him. ‘It’s not local, is it?’ When he shook his head, she turned the jar on her palm, looking at the spider more closely. Now, she thought, it was almost certainly dead. If not, then soon enough, because it could not survive long in an empty jar. Numbly, she tucked it into her bag, thinking to take it to Paddy, who would know what to do.

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‘Where’d you find it?’ she asked, coldly. Again Doug shook his head. He pressed his hands to his face as if struggling to control himself. Madeleine stared at him, though in some detached part of herself, beyond her anger, the situation seemed absurdly sad. Was it possible that somewhere down the track she would find a way to forgive him? Now the silence that stretched between them was an unbridgeable emptiness. ‘Spiders are so fragile,’ she said, half to herself. With a glint of his old self, Doug squared his shoulders. ‘Not just the spiders.’ Again she stared at him, the vain self-centred fool in front of her. But Doug had something to say to her, measured, carefully assembled words, so that for the second time that night she saw clearly he was crazy, out of control. He wasn’t pleading for her exoneration. Such a notion would never occur to him. He simply seemed intent on explaining the persona he had been as if it was a set of ragged and dirty clothing to pick over. He had known, he said, that she had fucked Dr Patrick Jones — call it a lover’s sixth sense, if you like, but it was as clear as day despite her lies. ‘No,’ she said, but he would not look at or listen to her. It was because, he went on, their relationship was on the skids, had been for some time, since the day Josh was born. ‘Way before that,’ she said bitterly.

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He nodded. He could accept now that they were finished. He knew it was better that way, both of them getting on with their lives. And then, painstakingly, he went through his lunch with Katya Kapuscinci, Neil O’Flaherty, the press reports, the CSIRO, the Minister’s response to her letters. Here, he smiled ruefully, so self-contained she felt nauseated with loathing for him. ‘You know,’ he deliberately hesitated, ‘… you know, Cunningham believed every word you wrote?’ She shook her head, wary now. Doug looked at her with bitter scorn. ‘There’s a meeting … tomorrow … more money for CSIRO and … and a payout for your friend, Jones.’ So that was it! ‘What the hell do you mean?’ He leaned forward, his voice slow and bleak. ‘It’s Cunningham’s play and he won’t want to appear he’s conceding a damn thing. So he’ll insist Jones goes.’ She watched his hands, grinding knuckles into palm. ‘The idea is, the good scientist gets an honorary life membership of CSIRO.’ ‘Oh, I get it,’ Madeleine said, wondering if she could control her fury, ‘you wreck a guy’s reputation, then you buy off CSIRO to shut them up, then you get rid of the innocent guy you were after in the first place.’ Doug sat back; everything was locked into place, a fait accompli. ‘Hell, Maddy, the guy was on the way out, whatever.’ Madeleine could hardly breathe, her body trembling, though she sensed too the odour of defeat. ‘I’ll go to the press.’

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Doug had hoped she would see the answer for herself. ‘With CSIRO clammed up? With Cunningham talking about all the loony letters he gets? I gather your Jones doesn’t want to get into a public brawl?’ Madeleine seized on this. ‘Paddy? You’ve got to be kidding! He’s above it, that’s what he is. His work is what matters. You can keep your dirty little power games.’ Doug put his hand up as if to ward her off. ‘I know, I know.’ She slumped back, trying to get the measure of what he was telling her. It was unfair, unforgivable, a tidy slice of nastiness, cunningly executed. ‘It’s backfired on you, hasn’t it?’ she announced. Doug smiled a queer, bemused smile. ‘Yep. You’d want to say, as far as Cunningham’s concerned, I’m pretty well stuffed.’ He went on, stumbling over his words. ‘I reckon … well, I’ve been thinking, I should go back to home base … that’s the shot, do not pass go, do not collect $200. What I’m talking about is home, Sydney, you know … the place … from whence I cometh. You understand?’ Then, with a hint of venom, ‘Hell, Madeleine, I thought you would be absolutely bloody glad to see the back of me. I thought it would cheer you up no end.’ She thought she’d never been so exhausted, that she couldn’t go on. She wanted only to be away from him. She stood up and went to the window, though she could see only her own stupid distress mirrored in the opaque blackness of the glass. She turned back to him.

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‘How did I get myself into this mess?’ Doug nodded dismissively; a mess, certainly. ‘What about Josh?’ she asked savagely. ‘Josh?’ he murmured with seeming bewilderment, though the child had been in his thoughts for all the long dangerous minutes of the conversation. ‘I’ll make sure he won’t want for anything, you know that.’ He threw up his hands. ‘It’s your call.’ ‘You better believe it,’ she said. It was the one thing she intended to make damn sure of. Doug stood uncertainly, then turned away, straightening his jacket, finding his car keys, heading for the door. With her arms folded across her breasts, her face averted, Madeleine waited for him to leave. She listened intently to the sounds of his departure, the engine start up in the car park, the fading growl as he drove away. It was only then that she allowed herself a small wretched measure of relief. ———— Doug did not immediately return to his flat after leaving the hospital. Actually he’d never intended to. He had some unfinished business. There was one more loose end to tie up before the CSIRO/Cunningham meeting tomorrow morning. Christ, it had been a rough night. Swinging the BMW into the loop around Parliament House, he felt a sharp stab of rage. His carefully conceived strategy had not gone exactly to plan. But he knew how to think on his feet. It was

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one of his strengths. He knew when to play around and when to pounce. Soften her up with a couple of loopy presents. Hell, you should’ve seen the look on her face, didn’t know where he was coming from. Jesus wept, he’d never intended for Josh to be bitten. He loved the little guy and he meant what he said about always looking after him. Thank Christ, the kid had never been in any real danger. Was it his fault she chose that moment to scream like a fucking banshee? And he meant what he said about being finished with her. These days, he reckoned, he couldn’t get it up for her even if he tried. She had changed. Admittedly, he had been a bit slow picking up on that. She was no longer the fresh-faced blonde number a bloke would run a mile for. As a matter of fact, she was looking a bit worn; happened to a lot of women when they started hawking their asses to the first bloke who bothered to ask. He shook his head: gullible. She had swallowed his story, his ‘fait accompli’ hook, line and sinker. That, at least, had been the easy part. He took the right-angle turn off the circuit, then next left towards the National Press Club. Madeleine had been spot on about one thing. Neil O’Flaherty, well-known drunkard and sleazebag journalist, was still rattling around like a loose cannonball. Another one of his grubby little stories wouldn’t help the situation at all. Except, at 11 o’clock on Wednesday night he would be pissing it up at the Press Club. All Doug had to do was wait for him. Wait for him until he came staggering into the darkness, skunk

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drunk, and beat the shit out him. Make sure he shut the fuck up until this whole thing blew over. Hell, the guy wouldn’t know what hit him. He slowed, drew into a side street near the club. He turned off the engine, ran his fingers through his hair, straightened his tie, steeling himself for what came next. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, that was the motto. Or in this case, pounce like a fucking spider.

EPILOGUE

A couple of years after Sutherland’s groundbreaking achievement, an Australian chemist, Dr Merlin Howden, and his associates developed a vaccine against funnel-web spider bites. It gave immunity to the venom over a number of injections. No one was much interested and the vaccine has yet to find a commercial backer. As Paddy said scornfully, there’s always something to worry about in this life and we’re all liable to get a touch paranoid. If you have to go and get yourself bitten by a funnel-web, you’ll get over it soon enough. M. H. Spider Notebook

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This time it was a much longer journey on roads winding through pastured valleys, some so narrow the sunless creases and folds of grassland were still whitewashed with frost. Here and there clumps of sheep grazed at awkward angles on the scarped hillsides. Trudi had steered Madeleine firmly into the front of the Land Rover. She sat censoriously in the back with Josh strapped in beside her. She held her tongue while Paddy crunched the gears and oversteered on the tight corners. Madeleine thought that he had never driven so badly, though she too graciously held her silence. Discreetly bracing herself against the seat with her legs, she pretended a fixed absorption on the world outside. Again, it was the mistiness, the feeble sunlight and the grimy grey-green of the scattered gums that convinced Madeleine that this was the bleakest of landscapes. As they climbed higher, the long vistas behind them faded in a haze of lemon and grey and white. There were no other vehicles on the road and the few farm settlements they passed appeared to be deserted. Here, she thought, the moonscape emptiness demanded an austerity, a self-denial, a purity of heart that Paddy, of all people, found irresistible. Perhaps in time she would understand how this might be so. Stranger things have happened. She twisted round to see how Josh was travelling. He was slumped against Trudi, not asleep, but staring vacanteyed at the world whirling past. She stroked his cheek and his gaze softened though he did not move from his comfortable perch. Just as the doctor had predicted, he appeared to have no after-effects from the venom.

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As Doug expected, Paddy had taken the payout from the CSIRO, though it had been made clear that there would be contract work in the offing when the dust settled. Paddy had been quick with assurances that he would help Madeleine find other work, if he could. As yet, Doug hadn’t moved back to Sydney as he’d said he would. With Parliament no longer sitting, he had been in and out of Canberra with the Minister. She hadn’t asked about his prospects; maybe he was biding his time until something came up. He’d asked to see Josh a half-dozen times in the past couple of weeks and Madeleine had been careful to insist they meet on neutral territory. At least he seemed to understand there was no longer any question of shared custody of being alone with the boy. She had asked him about his mate, the journalist O’Flaherty. She read in the paper a snippet describing some kind of accident outside the Press Club on the night she and Doug were at the hospital. Doug had shrugged and said the guy had fallen over blind drunk and smashed his head. An open gate and an empty visitors’ centre marked this entrance to Namadgi National Park. They drove further through a forest crowded with queer spindly trees and came out again into the wide stubbly paddocks. They were now in the heart of the Orroral Valley, close to the abandoned observatory where astronomers had tracked the stars in a cold black sky far from the city lights. A few kilometres on, Paddy pulled into a parking bay. While Madeleine changed Josh’s nappy on the back seat,

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Paddy sat on a rock with the ordinance survey map spread across his knees. ‘Thatta way,’ he announced, index finger pointing skyward in the direction of the forbidding small mountain rising up from the opposite side of the road. ‘Pretty easy walking after that.’ ‘How far?’ Madeleine asked. She liked to know. Paddy smiled, a touch patronising. ‘Far enough.’ So they set off on the steep ascent to the ridge. Paddy galloped off like a mountain goat and quickly disappeared into the bush. Trudi ambled behind, picking her way across the icy puddles and tree roots as if she could go on for days. In the middle, Madeleine did her best though soon enough she was out of breath and Josh was a leaden burden in his carry-pack. She told herself she didn’t mind. ‘A midweek afternoon ramble,’ Trudi had insisted, ‘of course you’ll come? Take your mind off things?’ Madeleine thought she understood what Trudi was about and could only admire her for it. At the top of the ridge Paddy sat on a log waiting for them, feet planted, hands spread on his knees, check flannel shirt and moleskins, a grubby cloth cap pulled down over his ears. All that was missing was a waist-length beard and a faithful dog at his feet. ‘Who’s this strange bloke? The infamous Orroral Valley hermit, maybe?’ Madeleine said. For a second, Paddy looked offended, then he raised an eyebrow in mock indignation.

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Coming up moments later, Trudi said, ‘My goodness, it’s old Paddy Jones hisself, lit off for the bush, ain’t been seen fer nigh on 40 year!’ Paddy sniffed. ‘You mean that bloke who ran amok and slaughtered two smartypants women. Buried them under a boulder?’ Trudi threaded her arm in Madeleine’s. ‘Not a chance.’ Madeleine shook her head. ‘No way.’ Paddy stamped the mud off his boot soles, made ready to be on his way. ‘I’m glad to see somebody’s having a good time!’ He strode off, though a moment later he was back demanding Madeleine hand over Josh, who was snuggled against her chest in his carry pouch. ‘Has to be Uncle Paddy’s turn, eh?’ Madeleine smiled, glowing a little. She swung her arms to loosen her sore shoulder muscles, arched her stiff back. It was so easy now, not just without Josh’s weight, to swing along through the bush in the beam of their shared goodwill. She wanted it to last forever. But then there was the strange harshness of this place, as uninviting as anything on the planet. Up ahead, Paddy pulled up suddenly, sweeping his arm across the landscape in front of him. ‘You see this here?’ His voice had reverted to his bushman’s drawl. It was a bizarre scene of devastation. For a hectare or more across the top of the ridge the bush had been gouged and flattened. Dozens of mighty trees, some a metre span, had been uprooted and lay tossed and tumbled. Smaller ones had been snapped at the trunk, their stripped branches

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crisscrossed in an eerie geometry. All around the forest was dead, a cemetery of bleached and jagged timbers. A storm, Paddy said slowly, tunnelling up the valley, pounded the place like a sledgehammer. Madeleine was silent, remembering that other mountain storm when the skies had opened like a broken water main and she had crawled sodden into Paddy’s warm tent. Decent and kind, Paddy was, in all kinds of trouble. Coming up behind her, Trudi clutched her shoulder for support while she prised a stone from the tread of her hiking boot. That done, she surveyed the scene before her, giving a mock shudder. ‘Good heavens, what an appalling place. Reminds me of a graveyard.’ ‘Exactly,’ Madeleine said stolidly. Paddy was scornful. ‘A little fanciful, ladies, wouldn’t you say? Give it six months and there’ll be new growth poking out everywhere.’ Still, Madeleine saw that he looked doubtfully about him, as if reckoning again the sheer force of catastrophe that had occurred. Then he was loping off, with the palm of his hand pressed protectively against Josh in the carry-pack. No point lingering. ———— On a dry hillock between the trees above Nursery Swamp, they stopped for a cuppa. Here the bush seemed softer, more accepting of their presence. The swamp stretched for more than a kilometre, a watery meadow of flowering sedge

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in the cradle of the valley. Crooked old-man eucalypts and mountain ash crowded its banks and, much to Josh’s amazed delight, a mob of kangaroos lolled on the grass half a dozen metres away. Paddy made a ring of stones and had a fire going in a wink with dry leaves and kindling. He ordered Trudi and Madeleine to get a move on and find some goodsized pieces of wood ‘to keep this lot going’. The two women exchanged tolerant glances. Paddy was enjoying himself, the King of the Bush. With the billy set on a sturdy stick angled over the fire, they sprawled on the grass. Josh curled against Paddy, sucking noisily on his bottle. It was easy to see that Paddy loved every minute of it. ‘He thinks I’m a bit of the furniture,’ he murmured. They seemed to subside into silence, Paddy gently caressing the child, Trudi beside him with her knees drawn up watching the coals burn. As the minutes passed, Madeleine felt her unease grow. Restlessly, she sat up and began to scrape and pick at the dirt with a twig. Though nothing would ever be said, there was much they could blame her for. Surely, it was as well to have these things out? ‘What I can’t get over,’ she said directly, ‘is how you seem able to shut what’s happened out of your lives.’ She thought now that they would not look at her. ‘For example, Doug,’ she plunged on, ‘certainly behaved inexcusably?’ And me? Where exactly do I stand? Paddy began to fidget. ‘Aarrhh well,’ he said finally, ‘I don’t think I can hold that against him, do you? An

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accident, the … spider, from all you’ve said. And a young chap who couldn’t have what he wanted. Out of his depth in a big hard world … or some such. I think I can understand … what it was all about.’ Thoroughly agitated now, he drummed his fingers on his shirt front, then thrust them in his pockets. Madeleine squirmed too. And it was only thinking about it afterwards that she could unravel his tangled response. He was scornful of Doug, with a touch of pomposity, of humbug. There was dismissiveness too, his determinedly ‘what-me-worry?’ stance. But underneath there was another more innocent thread: of compassion for a young bloke who could never lay claim to love, a woman, a child he wanted. It was Trudi who brought him down to earth, giving focus to his muddle of emotions. Pointedly, she said, ‘I don’t for a minute think it’s just the young men!’ Paddy was stricken. He kneaded the flesh of his cheeks, speechless before the enormity of his wife’s words. He thought of the granite fierceness of her spirit and reached out to her, running his hand down the line of her back. Not for a second had he intended to hurt anyone, least of all Trudi, who he continued to love beyond measure. He glanced swiftly at Madeleine, seeing in her pinched and pale face that she might share his shame. He closed his eyes, clenched his face. A born fool, that’s what he was. ‘Good heavens, Brush,’ Trudi burst out, ‘you look as if you’ve just eaten a dish of worms.’ Perhaps her forgiveness had happened a long time ago.

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Eyes shut tight, hand to his brow, he mumbled, ‘Humble pie.’ Then more clearly: ‘I am eating humble pie.’ Now his guilt was nothing if not comical, just as he valiantly hoped it to be. Trudi touched Madeleine’s shoulder, tossing her head and inviting the young woman to share her exasperation with her husband. Paddy’s eyes opened a little, sniffing the wind. ‘And so you should,’ Trudi said, brusquely, though her face softened with affectionate mockery. Madeleine nodded slowly. ‘Yep, I think that’s about right.’ Paddy stared at the women, side by side, thick as thieves. ‘Well now,’ he began, ‘well now …’ Well what, Madeleine wondered, her heart light. In another minute she would laugh outright, knowing Trudi would too. She wanted to hug them. Shrewd, strong-hearted Trudi, who knew better than to wallow in hurt and blame. Kind, stumbling Paddy, whose worst sin was to believe that cuddling people was good for them. And it was, oh it was. ‘Well, nothing,’ Trudi said, with a wink for Madeleine’s benefit. My godfather, such are women, Paddy decided in wonderment, though in a deeper part of himself he was mightily relieved that his wife had seen fit not to judge him as harshly as he deserved. And Madeleine too? He had done no lasting harm there, though he did not dare to think he might have done a little bit of good.

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Perplexed, he stretched out, supporting himself on his elbows while Josh slept blissfully on the mattress of his tummy. Above him, the tree branches creaked and shivered in the wind and the sky was feathered with clouds in a clear, washed-out blue. Against the turmoil of his spirit, he strove to separate the muted sounds of the bush; the slap of a bird nose-diving into the swamp, the cries of the currawongs. Blanketing it all was a vast hushed detachment, a serene indifference, which offered nothing and demanded less, beyond the complex, never-ending puzzle of its being there at all. He eased himself onto his back, resting his head on a tussock and spreading his arms wide. He counted himself a lucky man, to have found such a woman as his wife. A fine-looking woman and a generous heart. For the moment, he had nothing more to say, not a single blessed word.

PANDANUS BOOKS Pandanus Books was established in 2001 within the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. The Pandanus Books catalogue focuses on books relating to Asia and the Pacific. The publishing list includes not only scholarly texts relating to the region but also embraces biography, memoir, fiction and poetry. Since its inception, Pandanus Books has developed into an editorially independent publishing enterprise with an imaginative list of titles, a reputation for high quality production values and an international marketing strategy which promotes sales to a worldwide readership.

THE SULLIVAN’S CREEK SERIES The Sullivan’s Creek Publication Series is a developing initiative of Pandanus Books, seeking to explore Australian cultural issues, literary texts, biography and history through the publication of both emerging and established writers who address a global audience. Books selected within this series are still published and marketed under the Pandanus Books imprint.