had perished here long ago. Ash had pictured himself striding up a hill in a borrowed Akubra hat. What lay around was less disconcerting than the magnitude of his mistake.
“See that signpost?” said Lachlan as they flashed past. “Bony Track. Half a dozen Aborigines were tied up and shot there in the 1830s. Plenty of those colorful local names all over the country. We’ve a Butcher’s Creek ourselves. Stone dry.”
“What happened there?”
“My forebears were much too canny to keep a record.”
In a far paddock, a broken feather was stuck into the ground: some weirdo had neglected to cut down a tree. The Subaru rushed at the dead, discarded distance. A hawk appeared, strung up in the white air.
Lachlan said, “Not much farther now, couple of hundred k. We’ll be there in time for tea.”
He said, “Dinner, I mean.”
He said, “Since Dad died, Mum likes to have tea on the table as soon as it gets dark.”
“It’s dark at five,” said Ash.
“Yes.”
An e-mail had not been sent or had not been read or had failed to arrive. The fragrance of dead lamb enveloped them as they drew up before the sprawling timber house. But food was irrelevant—on getting out of the car, Ash discovered that he was ill. A light-eyed dog stood a little way off and barked at him. The wind came and slapped everyone. Ash spent the three days of his visit in bed.
Plastic ring binders filled a fireless fireplace in his room. A massive wardrobe, sturdy and somewhat scarred, loomed against one wall. Ash looked inside, hoping for something useful, like extra blankets, but found only a wire coat hanger and an emery board. He spread his coat over his bed and climbed in. Pressed-metal walls tightened around his dreams.
His door opened. It was hinged in such a way that from his bed Ash couldn’t see who was standing there. After a while, a child with a dirty face edged around. The farm was run by Lachlan’s sister, Bob. Presumably the child belonged to her. A hard brown arm connected the door to the child. The arm was paler on the inside, like the limbs of the yellow-eyed creature he had seen on arrival. Ash concluded that it was Bob’s child who had barked at him—it made perfect sense.
A second door gave on to a side veranda shared with Lachlan’s room. The wind shouted at the English elms, and Lachlan shouted at his phone: “You can have the Eames recliner.” “No, I never said Glen could come and get it.” “Well, what I mean is, we’ll say it’s yours.” “That’s right, it’ll stay in our lounge room. But now you’ll be the one who sits in it.” “Well, if I say Glen can have it, will you come back?” “What do you mean that’s bloody typical?” “No, you can leave the Thermomix out of it.” “No, Glen can’t have it either.” “That’s right, one or the other.” “What do you mean, typically binary?”
Sometimes Ash woke to hear Lachlan’s keyboard. Lachlan had a major research grant and was writing two books at once. Meanwhile, Ash shivered unproductively. He wore a cashmere sweater, a Christmas present from his mother, over his pajamas. He struggled into his coat and scarf, and tottered along a passage that struck icy through his slippers. There was the sound of splashing behind the bathroom door and someone—Bob?—bawled, “Afternoon delight! Afternoon delight! Ah-ah . . .”
On the last day of Ash’s stay, his mother brought him a piece of toast as he lay in bed. She said, “Are you sure you couldn’t manage a boiled egg? Or a beer?” She wasn’t Ash’s mother, of course, but Lachlan’s: they had the same voice, echt Aberdeen. Margaret’s straight, short hair, the delectable pewter of pencil shading, was parted on one side like a child’s and fastened with a child’s flowered clip. She picked up Ash’s coat and hung it in the wardrobe. Ash felt shivery again and decided to risk a cup of coffee. Lachlan brought it to him in a mug that said “Farmers Do It in the Dirt”—it was excellent coffee, frothy and strong.
Lachlan said, “Feel up to a tour? Shame to have to leave without seeing the old place.” He was wearing only a woolen vest over his red RB Sellars shirt, so Ash was too abashed to retrieve his coat from the wardrobe. He lifted his scarf from the hook on the door, and Lachlan peered at him, saying in an incredulous way, “Not feeling cold, are you?” as if Ash had taken it into his head to challenge an unassailable proposition in logic.
Ash trailed his host in and out of big rooms with empty fireplaces. They were like rich people’s rooms anywhere, only colder. Lachlan said things like “1869” and “the Twenties” and “1976”; Ash gathered that the original homestead had been added to or remodeled at these dates. He was shown the former telephone room—larger than his study in the tower—and a room that had once contained the family silver. There was also a ballroom with stained-glass windows built to impress a duke, who sent a last-minute telegram in his place.
They crossed the ballroom, emerged onto yet another veranda, and went back into the house by a different entrance. Ash remarked on the number of doors.
“Fifteen external ones,” said Lachlan. “I counted them once. Handy for Bob’s boyfriends—always an escape hatch somewhere. I’d look out my window and see the latest bloke running away.”
“Does your bedroom door open in such a way that you can’t see who’s standing there?”
“They all do in the old part of the house. Very practical, the ancestors: you can give the maid her instructions without having to look at her.”
A wonderful surprise waited in the kitchen: it was warm. Margaret sat by the Aga, peeling potatoes onto a sheet of newspaper. “We’re having mash for our tea,” she told Ash. “With Thai green curry.”
Ash offered to peel potatoes—it would be a reason to linger in the warmth. When his offer was refused, he said firmly that he felt too weak to continue and sat at the table anyway.
“Have you shown your friend the gun slits?”
“His name’s Ash, Mum.”
“I know that.” Margaret turned to Ash. “My children think my mind’s going because of my old woman.”
Ash looked polite. Lachlan said, “Mum!”
“When I wake up these days, there’s an old Aboriginal woman waiting,” explained Margaret. “She gave me a scare the first time, but I look out for her now.”
“It’s called hypnopompic hallucination,” said Lachlan. “A kind of dream that carries over into waking.”
“That’s what you say. But I spotted my old lady outside the bank last week when Bob took me into town. She was wearing a blue tracksuit.” Margaret added the last pale potato to the bowl and dipped her fingers in the earthy water, saying, “Well? Are you going to show him the gun slits?” She told Ash, “They’re in the old cold-storage room. It’s Bob’s office now. You should take a look before it gets dark.”
“I’m not sure I’m up to that,” said Ash. The phrase “cold storage” had filled him with dread.
“They’re just slits in the walls,” said Lachlan. “For shooting at marauders. In case there were escaped convicts about. Or blackfellas.”
Ash said, “I thought Butcher’s Creek had taken care of one of those problems.”
“Oh,
