Darkening Skies Read online

  ‘A long time ago,’ she murmured, steering her thoughts away from the past, concentrating instead on avoiding dust-filled potholes and the deep tyre ruts gouged in the last rain. Five kilometres along the track the gates of Marrayin Downs stood open, and she turned into the tree-lined driveway.

  A dusty white ute was parked in the shade of an old red gum in the wide drive-circle across from the century-old homestead, and she pulled up behind it. Mark? His property manager? It was unlikely to be her Uncle Jim over here – he managed another Strelitz property just south of Dungirri. And her Uncle Mick probably hadn’t stepped foot on the place since his dismissal had forced them to leave the manager’s cottage nineteen years ago.

  She spared a single glance towards the old cottage, half-hidden in its grove of trees. No vehicles, no signs of life. Turning her back on the house she’d once lived in – never a home – she straightened her shoulders and walked across the drive to the main homestead.

  The deep shade of the vine-covered veranda created a refuge from the heat and her steps sounded on the timber boards with a mellow, half-forgotten resonance.

  Long gone were the days when she would have simply called out and walked in through the front door. Instead, she pressed the doorbell, heard its chimes echo in the house. Heard, too, footsteps inside. The silhouetted figure she glimpsed through the leadlight window beside the door hurried – but not towards her, the back door slamming seconds later.

  Strange. Definitely strange. The figure was stockier than Mark. Although she hadn’t seen him in person for eighteen years, she’d seen him often enough on the TV news, and he’d maintained his lean fitness. Perhaps it was the manager or a housekeeper. A ten-thousand-hectare grazing property needed staff to run it. Or perhaps a lover or friend – she had no idea of Mark’s current domestic arrangements. A few women had been linked to him over the years, by his side at formal functions. One of them might have caught his heart.

  She pressed the doorbell again, heard it echo through the house. No response. Uncertainty tightened the tension in her spine and she glanced again at her watch – it was after six o’ clock. According to Mark’s office manager in Canberra, he’d left straight after this morning’s media conference. Unless he’d stopped on the way, he should be home by now.

  Huffing in frustration, she followed the veranda around to the back of the house. The east wing was new since her day, as were the French doors opening off the eat-in kitchen on to a large, multi-level terrace tiered down the slight hill. She quickened her steps, the low sunlight glinting on the jagged glass in the doorframes. Smashed glass, open doors, a man who’d run away on her arrival … her senses snapped to alert.

  Nothing moved among the outbuildings beside the house that she could see. In the few minutes she’d waited on the veranda, he’d disappeared.

  She hesitated, considering her options. Find the manager? She assumed there was one, but he could be anywhere, mustering, fencing, checking dams. Phone the police? She was three steps towards the kitchen phone when she caught the first whiff of smoke, and she whirled around, scanning the view for grassfire in the paddocks, or bushfire in the distance. Either could be deadly in the dry summer heat.

  The second whiff of smoke drifted from behind her, from the house, and a fire alarm suddenly began to beep, high pitched and loud. Underneath that sound a car engine roared to life somewhere – possibly down by the old wool shed.

  Her sandals crunched on the broken glass on the kitchen floor. She could see the smoke now, thickening in the passageway behind the main rooms of the homestead, the light starting to flicker with a garish glow when she turned into the passage that led to the office.

  The door was open, the room a mess, burning papers were scattered on the desk and floor, fire already eating the desk chair, the armchairs, and climbing the curtains.

  And on the floor behind the desk she could see two feet, clad in dusty leather boots, lying motionless, close to the flames.

  Nearing the end of the long drive from Canberra, Mark skirted around the edge of Dungirri, dodging the main street, turning back on to the Birraga road a kilometre from town. He didn’t intend to avoid Dungirri for long, but he planned to go home, shower and change, check his messages for anything he couldn’t ignore and then head back to face the Friday-night crowd at the pub. There were usually a fair few people there; tonight, with the announcement of his resignation, he expected the pub to be crowded with people talking about it. About him.

  Better to face them today, rather than later. His electorate covered a huge area of outback New South Wales, including larger towns such as Birraga and Jerran Creek, but in Dungirri they’d known him all his life. And they’d known and mourned Paula. If there was anger and a sense of betrayal, it would be strongest here.

  Beyond Dungirri, out of the scrub, the road stretched flat and mostly straight ahead, the late-afternoon sun strong between the flickering shadows of the eucalypts along the road. He passed the rough track that led to the old Gillespie place a few kilometres from town. Somewhere along this section of the Dungirri-to-Birraga road he’d picked up Gil Gillespie one evening eighteen years ago. There was nothing in his memory to tell him where and why. Nothing but the gaping hole caused by the head injury he received in the accident, permanently erasing several days from his short-term memory. Days he would never recover. And while he’d been unconscious in hospital, Gil had been threatened and subsequently confessed to being the driver of the car.

  Ghost Hill rose out of the flat plains, still some distance ahead. No matter where he travelled, that first sight of the hill beckoned him home.

  Yet today the view of the hill seemed hazy, despite the clear afternoon air. Perhaps his eyes were just tired … He blinked a few times to refocus them, and scanned the landscape as he drove. Yes, definitely a grey, smoky haze. Worrying, in this summer heat. But from where?

  Coming over a slight rise, he located the faint plume of smoke on the horizon – and he instantly pressed harder on the accelerator. If it wasn’t on Marrayin Downs, it was close to it. He turned on the UHF radio and switched it to the emergency channel.

  ‘… Seven-four-one-five on Dungirri One Alpha. We’re responding. ETA seventeen minutes.’

  Seven-four-one-five. As a volunteer with the Rural Fire Service he knew every one of the local IDs. Even if he hadn’t recognised Paul Barrett’s voice, he would have known it was the captain of the Dungirri brigade.

  Another voice reported in: ‘Firecom, Birraga Two Alpha responding. ETA Marrayin thirty minutes.’ Marrayin. His property. And the Dungirri tanker was at least fifteen minutes away.

  This time Mark floored the accelerator.

  From the main road he couldn’t pinpoint the location of the fire. The trees at the corner of the road obscured the view, but as he sped down the dirt track the glimpses across the landscape gradually revealed the worst: not the paddocks, not the wool shed or the shearers’ quarters, not the machinery sheds, but the homestead itself. His home.

  Smoke spilled from the house, flowing across the driveway and garden. A few metres along the veranda from the main entrance, flames blazed out from the French doors of his office, the doorframe, the veranda and the roof above it well ablaze. The old, dry timber in parts of the house would burn quickly and easily – and spread if it was not controlled rapidly.

  He drove around the side of the house, straight down to the shed that held the fire trailer, permanently ready with a tank of water and a pump, and swung his vehicle around to reverse in. Focused on his objective, he didn’t see the woman running from the house until she was almost at the shed.

  Recognition hit hard. Jenn Barrett.

  Jenn, here, with no warning; no chance to prepare himself for this first meeting in years, no way to know her thoughts, and no time to find out.

  Jenn, with dishevelled hair and dark soot smeared across her face and her light shirt.

  He caught her by the arms and she gripped him, her breathing raspy, urgent but not panicked.
‘Mark! Jim’s inside, hurt. I’ve moved him out of the office, but I can’t—’ She caught sight of the fire extinguisher on the shed wall and left his hold to unhook it from the brace, continuing over her shoulder, ‘He collapsed again and I couldn’t move him. We have to get him out.’

  Jim Barrett. Inside the burning house. All the other questions spinning in his head had to wait. Even Jenn, with smoke-scented hair, a red burn on the hand that had rested briefly on his arm and the thousand tangled emotions between them, would have to wait. He yanked open the back of his vehicle and grabbed his RFS kit bag. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘The living room.’

  He took the extinguisher from her and set off at a run but she kept pace beside him, explaining in between gasps, ‘I closed the doors but that won’t last long. The fire’s taken hold. The kitchen extinguisher wasn’t enough.’

  The broken glass of the kitchen door partially answered one question, but smoke had spread in the room beyond it and the enclosed back veranda, leaving no time for details. The light breeze might keep the fire to the front of the house, but there was no guarantee of that.

  Adrenaline pumped in his veins and fifteen years of training and experience with the volunteer RFS kicked in. ‘Stay outside,’ he said, grabbing the fire blanket and his protective jacket and hat out of his bag.

  She hrmphed – so many years since he’d heard that particular intonation of stubborn disagreement. He knew she would follow him in. No point wasting precious time trying to argue with her. Yet. He handed her the jacket and hat. ‘On. Now.’

  The solid doors and mud-brick walls of the original four-room homestead separated the living room from the first addition, providing some protection from the blaze in the office. Some, but not total. As they dodged around the oak table in the dining room, Mark could hear over the din of the alarm an ominous crackling in the roof cavity, and saw the plaster work in the corner of the ceiling start to smoulder.

  They had a minute or two, maybe less, to find Jim and get him out.

  The knob of the living-room door was still cool to the touch, but nevertheless he opened it warily, holding Jenn back with one arm lest she dash straight in. The smoke was thicker in the room but he could see Jim sprawled on the thick rug, motionless, a cream damask cushion underneath his head dark with blood, a large patch of the sleeve of his cotton shirt burned to blistered skin. At least, unconscious, he wouldn’t feel the pain.

  ‘I had to move him. We have to move him.’ Jenn dropped to her knees beside her uncle, quickly checking his pulse.

  Smoke trailed in around the door to the office wing, fire already charring the edges of the door and the cornices above. Mark gave it a blast with the fire extinguisher to slow it down, before checking through the doors to the veranda. The roof out there already burned. No safe exit that way.

  He dropped the extinguisher and knelt next to Jim. ‘We’ll cover him with the fire blanket. I’ll carry him. Can you support his head?’

  Jenn nodded and slipped into position, ready to lift. Mark manoeuvred one arm under Jim’s back, the other under his legs, murmuring, ‘Sorry, mate, this is going to hurt.’

  ‘Not much choice,’ Jenn said, her mouth drawn in a grim line.

  He nodded. They had to move him quickly – and hope they did no more damage. He looked at Jenn. ‘One, two, now.’

  Jim, over six feet and packed with the muscle of sixty years of physical labour, was heavy on Mark’s shoulders as he carried him back through the dining room. Jenn used the extinguisher on the flames that licked and danced along the cornice. Both quickened their steps in the rapidly intensifying heat, their focus on the exit.

  Smoke smarted his eyes and scratched his throat. Jenn’s eyes were red, and she tried to stifle a cough but she didn’t stop or slow her pace. In the marginally clearer air in the kitchen they both drew deeper breaths. A dozen more steps and they were outside on the paved terrace, and Jenn coughed again and again.

  Beyond the incessant beeping of the smoke alarm, sirens sounded in the distance as Mark exhaled a long breath. He nodded towards the table on the lower terrace, protected from the sun by shade sails above. ‘We can put him there. He’ll be safe for the moment till the RFS crew can help him.’

  ‘I told triple-0 to send an ambulance, too,’ Jenn said, still as level-headed and cool in a crisis as she’d always been.

  They gently laid Jim on the wooden table, and Jenn immediately put her fingers to his neck to check his pulse again.

  ‘He’s not breathing.’

  Hasty fingers tore at the buttons on Jim’s shirt and for the first time, her voice caught with a note of panic. ‘Damn it, he’s not breathing.’

  TWO

  As Mark breathed into Jim’s mouth and Jenn counted compressions, she tried to picture the bald head and androgynous features of a first-aid training manikin instead of her uncle’s pale face and greying temples, but reality wouldn’t budge.

  Mark’s head lifted and she pumped Jim’s chest again. One … two … three … ‘Come on, Jim. Breathe.’

  Somewhere beyond the immediate focus of her attention, she was vaguely aware of a vehicle stopping nearby, of voices and doors slamming and the thud of running boots.

  A firm hand gripped her shoulder and a male voice spoke beside her. ‘Jim. Shit. How long has he been out?’

  She didn’t take her eyes from her uncle, and Mark didn’t break from the CPR rhythm. ‘Unconscious – longer than fifteen, twenty minutes,’ she guessed. It felt like hours since she’d arrived, but it couldn’t be. ‘Not breathing – I’m not sure, a minute or two.’

  Three more compressions. One … two … three … She felt the flutter in Jim’s chest, heard the faint intake of breath.

  The man moved her aside with gentle firmness, his fingers already taking Jim’s pulse. ‘We’ll look after him. We’ll need to defib, Beth.’

  Beth? Jenn glanced up. Beth Fletcher. It had to be. In the orange jacket of the State Emergency Service. No longer the quiet, reserved schoolgirl that Jenn remembered. The girl Jenn had thought back then would end up marrying Mark. But Ryan Wilson’s ring glinted on her finger as she readied the defibrillator with quick, expert movements.

  Beth gave her a quick smile of recognition. ‘Hi, Jenn. Stand clear, everyone.’ Jenn took a couple of paces back and found herself standing beside Mark.

  ‘Beth and Karl are trained as Community First Responders,’ Mark said in a low voice, while they watched them work on Jim. ‘For Dungirri incidents, they can be on the scene quicker than the ambulance from Birraga.’

  Jenn nodded, not trusting herself to speak. They applied the charge to Jim’s chest, and a few moments afterwards Karl gave a quick thumbs-up. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. He’d be okay. He had to be okay.

  They heard another emergency vehicle arrive, switching off its siren before it reached the house.

  Mark rested a hand on Jenn’s shoulder for a brief moment. ‘That’ll be the RFS. I’ll get the trailer and join them.’

  Beth and her colleague bent over Jim, giving him oxygen, bracing his neck, brisk, professional and calm.

  ‘They don’t need me here,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you with the trailer.’

  She guided him as he reversed his LandCruiser back to the trailer tow hook, then helped him lift and nudge the trailer across to fit over the tow ball. With fire consuming the house they slipped straight back into old rhythms of working together, as if no time had passed, as if there was no awkwardness hanging between them.

  As he squatted to plug in the electric cable, he finally glanced up and asked, ‘Do you know how Jim was hurt? How the fire started?’

  ‘There was someone else here. They went out the back when I rang the doorbell. I heard a car somewhere beyond the shed, then I smelled the smoke and found Jim in your office. At first I thought … I thought it was you.’ She didn’t know why she’d said that, and she swallowed again, her mouth dry from the smoke and the fear and all the reactions she had yet to proce
ss.

  She couldn’t see his face as he quickly pulled on the protective clothing from his kit and the jacket she gave back to him. ‘Jim’s fit and strong, Jenn. He’s not going to give up easily. Can you stay with him? And get Beth to look after your hand.’

  ‘I’ll come and help.’

  He paused for an instant, with his hand on the driver’s door, looking at her. ‘Not without proper protective gear and training, you can’t. Stay where it’s safe, Jenn. This isn’t your place.’

  This isn’t your place. As he started the vehicle and slowly pulled the trailer out of the shed, her overcrowded thoughts noted the words. He’d meant them as protection, not exclusion, but they were truthful. Marrayin had never been, would never be, her place. She’d only ever wanted to leave. But it was his place, the homestead and the landscape, the community that even back then he’d dedicated himself to serve. Wound through his identity, essential to his spirit.

  Right now the best thing she could do for her uncle was to keep out of Beth and her colleague’s way. And Mark was right – she wasn’t dressed for fire-fighting. The burn on her hand smarted, as did the one on her foot where the straps of her sandals had been no barrier to the heat of burning paper in the office. She had boots in her car, but that was too close to the fire and might be lost.

  What Mark would lose, however, dwarfed to insignificance the potential loss of her car and a few clothes. She walked around the side of the house, standing well back and out of the worst of the smoke to assess the situation. The single-storey homestead was large, but the fire seemed contained within a few rooms of the original central structure and around the office, and the RFS crew concentrated their efforts there. So far, the long wings on either side were unaffected. She hoped the doors she’d closed as she’d retreated from the fire had slowed the fire’s spread.