Alex hadn’t questioned the adventure once. As they ate their sardines on toast and drank their second mugs of tea at the kitchen table, he rested his knife and fork upright in his fists beside his plate for a moment and said, ‘Gosh, it’s good to be home. What a grand lass you are, doing all this for me.’
Olivia felt her throat swell up inside, her mouth and chin suddenly went wobbly. ‘That’s okay, Grandpa,’ she said, but her voice was hardly more than a whisper. They smiled at each other in the soft light of the lantern sitting between them on the table. His face looked
deeply lined and tired, but happy, so happy. She put another forkful of food into her mouth to stop her bottom lip from trembling.
They both turned in early. Birds or possums scrabbled occasionally in the ceiling, and overhanging branches scratched at the tin roof, but the two travellers just slept, and slept, and slept.
By the time Olivia woke the next morning Alex was already up, exploring what had once, long ago, been a vegetable garden.
‘Good morning, Grandpa,’ she called from the back door.
‘Hello there!’ he cried, waving enthusiastically. ‘I’ll be right in!’
There was a pot of tea already made, and Grandpa had found a long spindly toasting fork with which he speared a slice of bread and then sat himself down on a chair placed before the wood stove to do the toasting.
‘Sorry, darl, I wasn’t expecting visitors. There’s hardly a thing to eat in the house, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t worry, Grandpa,’ Olivia assured him. ‘Tea and toast is perfect for now, and then I’ll hop on my bike and go and get some more supplies in town.’
‘Oh, would you do that for me? That’d be such a help. I’ve got a fair bit to do in that vegie garden. Can’t believe I’ve let it go like that.’
‘Don’t wear yourself out though, I’ll give you a hand when I get back.’
Olivia passed a small local general store, but she didn’t want to be asked friendly questions or for talk to start. So instead she rode all the way to Castlemaine and rode around till she found a supermarket there. She dithered over what to get in the unfamiliar aisles.
Do we need cereal? Toilet paper! What about potatoes for dinner? How many?
She wished she’d made a list before she left. Halfway through she remembered her mobile phone, which had been turned off, but when she checked it (half-dreading any messages) she found to her surprise that it was dead. She must’ve forgotten to recharge it last night.
Damn!
By the time Olivia finished shopping she was ravenous.
She bought a meat pie with sauce from a bakery and wolfed it down, and then felt guilty because Grandpa would be hungry too
.
But he’d be okay, happily setting the vegie garden to rights.
‘Inverness… Oh Inverness! You’re the best… you’re the best!’ she sang as she rode back, and the bike tyres sang along with her on the black tarmac. She had to slow down on the dirt track, she had bought eggs and didn’t want to break them. She unloaded her backpack full of goodies in the kitchen and went out to the vegetable garden, but Grandpa wasn’t there.
He must’ve gone back to bed for a rest
, she thought, but he wasn’t there either. Nor in any of the other rooms.
‘Grandpa,’ Olivia called, standing at the back door. And again, more loudly,
‘Grandpa!’
She listened for his answer, but none came. She went out past the vegetable garden and into what had once been an orchard. There were the apricot trees Uncle James had mentioned, and the huge almond, and apples, too,
full of codlin moth, I’ll bet
she thought, and a big pear tree. He wasn’t in the orchard. She even peered up into the branches in case he had climbed up to inspect them at close quarters, but no.
At the end of the orchard was a wire fence, almost completely broken down. Beyond that was a clear area and then gum trees, thickening gradually into serious bush. She walked towards it, making sure to keep the house in sight, and called again.
‘Grandpa!’
And then
‘Alex McDonald!’
Still no answer.
She went back to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, and checked all the rooms again.
Maybe he got sick of waiting for me and went to get some food himself
, she thought. She got on her bike again and rode down the track, stopping several times to call his name and listen, and then on down the road as far as the general store, where she went in and bought a bottle of lemonade just so she could check out whether he was in there, chatting maybe to the woman at the counter. But he wasn’t.
She rode back to the house, hoping desperately he would be there.
No. It was now several hours since she’d last seen her grandfather and Olivia was seriously worried.
What do I do now?
she asked herself. She just couldn’t think.
For another hour Olivia circled the house, increasingly frantic. The possibility that her grandfather had wandered off into the bush and was getting further and further away, maybe more and more lost, was becoming frighteningly strong.
And if
I’m
frightened
, she thought,
then he must be…
She heard the sound of a car approaching, and rushed out to the front verandah. The car came in sight, a big, fancy station wagon that looked a bit familiar, bumping along the track. It stopped in the front yard, the driver’s door was flung open and Uncle James leaped out and ran towards her. Silver was behind him, walking at an unhurried pace and smiling broadly.
‘Oh Jesus, Olivia!’ Uncle James cried and grabbed her in both arms and hugged her really hard. ‘I am so glad you’re here! You’re all right!’
‘Hey, Olivia,’ Silver said, stroking her arm just once.
Olivia’s mouth and chin were wobbling again. She couldn’t seem to speak.
‘Where’s Dad?’ asked James. ‘Grandpa?’
‘I don’t know,’ Olivia said. She scrunched her face up momentarily to keep from crying. ‘I think he’s lost.’
After Uncle James called the police on his mobile phone, he said, ‘I’ve got to ring your mother and tell her you’re safe.’ Olivia opened her mouth to say
No
and then closed it again.
Silver touched her elbow. ‘Show me where the orchard is,’ she suggested. Olivia led her away, and James waited till they were out of earshot before he called Deborah.
Silver asked lots of questions. What sort of trees were in the orchard? Were they still healthy? How old was the house? Olivia
answered as best she could, immensely grateful for the kind, distracting chatter. She’d always liked Silver but she couldn’t remember ever talking to her like this, just the two of them. Something about her – her Americanness perhaps, or her wealth, or the whole art dealer thing – had always made it seem like Silver wasn’t quite part of her ordinary family. It had never been possible to think of her as
Auntie
Silver, and now Olivia felt glad of that.
Suddenly they both heard a car approaching at speed, not slowing for the bumps in the track, and then a little skirl of noise from a siren, more greeting than warning. Olivia jumped, and had taken her first hurried steps towards the house when Silver stopped her with a hand laid gently on her shoulder.
‘Olivia,’ she said, ‘I just want you to know that whatever happens, you came here with your grandpa for the best of reasons. The very best. I know that, and your Uncle James knows it, too.’
Olivia nodded twice and started walking away. After a few steps she turned. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But really, how
can
you know?’
Silver looked taken aback. ‘I… just do,’ she said. As they came closer to the house they could hear men’s voices, James and a couple of others. Silver stopped her again and said in a determined way, ‘Okay: it’s observation, honey, and experience. I’ve seen you with your grandpa, I
do
know. Sometimes you just have to trust these things.’
‘Okay,’ said Olivia, as if allowing her something.
There were two policemen, one a man about her dad’s age, one a lot younger. Clearly they assumed James to be the person in charge. They asked Olivia none of the questions she’d been dreading: why she was here or how she’d got into the house. An old man with dementia had gone missing, that was their only concern. They asked Olivia what time she’d last seen him, and where. She led them around the back of the house and pointed out the old vegetable garden. These facts established, the two cops turned as one to face the rise of thickening bush beyond the orchard.
‘What d’you reckon?’ asked the younger cop.
‘Probably,’ the older one replied gravely, nodding.
‘Bugger,’ said the young one.
‘What?’
cried James.
The older man sighed heavily. ‘Mine shafts, from the gold rush days. They’re thick as fleas on a dog through there.’
‘Do you mean they’re not covered?’ asked Silver. ‘Someone could… ’
‘’Fraid so. We need to get a proper search underway, quick smart.’
‘Talking about dogs,’ said the young cop suddenly, ‘What about Uncle Col? We could have him here in ten minutes.’
The older man nodded. ‘Yep. I’ll radio Tony and get him to swing by Uncle Col’s on the way here. Amanda can notify Ballarat and the SES, start getting organised.’ He headed back to the police car, walking fast but heavily. He was a bulky man, and Olivia couldn’t help noticing how his bottom wobbled with each step, though under the circumstances this observation seemed not only irrelevant but disrespectful.
‘Uncle Col’s got the best nose dog in the district,’ explained the younger cop. ‘My name’s Mark, by the way.’ Names were exchanged and hands shaken all round, including Olivia’s.
Not long after, a second police car bounced down the track and swung into the drive, and behind it a battered old utility. A brown dog sat in the passenger seat of the ute, looking across at them solemnly as the driver got out and opened the door for it. He was a tall, skinny man in jeans and a checked shirt, with a creased face and thick hair that was mostly grey. He and the dog ambled over to them.
‘Curly haired retriever,’ said Olivia automatically, stooping a little to offer the back of her hand to the dog.
‘Dinah,’ said the man, both an introduction and an instruction, and the dog sniffed her hand politely and wagged its tail. It had yellow eyes, strikingly beautiful against its dark brown fur.
‘Hello, Dinah,’ said Olivia.
‘This is Uncle Col,’ said Mark.
‘Tony told me what’s up,’ he said. ‘Got some of the missing bloke’s clothes? Smell.’
Olivia hurried inside. Grandpa’s jacket was draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and she snatched it up and ran back out to them. Dinah sniffed the jacket thoroughly, thoughtfully, then looked up at Uncle Col as if to say,
Ready
.
‘Find ’im, girl,’ he said laconically. Immediately, the retriever put her nose to the ground and set off, picking up Grandpa’s scent in seconds and following it quickly into the vegetable garden, up and down there a couple of times, then into the orchard, and she was racing around each tree so fast she was almost a blur. From the pear tree at the far end to the broken-down fence, through that and off in a fairly straight line to the gum trees beyond.
‘Yep. Bugger,’ said Mark, the young cop.
Uncle Col was not far behind Dinah, walking fast and then breaking into a trot. The rest of them followed in a ragged clumpy line. One of the cops from the second car stayed at the house, the other, a policewoman in her twenties, had joined them. She was carrying a first-aid kit, Olivia noticed, and Mark now had a thick coil of rope over his shoulder.
They heard Uncle Col call out ,‘Stay!’, and he waited for them to catch up.
‘Watch out now,’ he told them. ‘Don’t want anybody going down a shaft.’
‘How deep are they?’ James asked.
‘Varies. Deep,’ he said. There was a big blank area in Olivia’s mind that she was just not going near.
Grandpa, Grandpa, be safe, be safe
, she thought with such intensity it chased all other thoughts away, though she could feel them circling like wolves around a deer.
‘You lot follow close behind us. Sandy, keep with ’em,’ the older cop said, and they all took off again, strung out through the bush like characters in a cartoon chase: first Dinah with her nose to the
ground, Uncle Col fast and quiet behind her, then Mark, and the chubby older cop lumbering along, then Sandy the policewoman, with James and Silver and Olivia. They went on and on, deeper into the bush. Sandy pointed out some scrubby mounds.
‘Old mullock heaps,’ she said. ‘But not all the mine shafts have got ’em. Sometimes they just open up in front of you. You’ve gotta be really careful.’
After a couple of kilometres they heard Mark call, ‘Over here! Over here!’ A few moments later they could see them. Dinah was standing alertly watching their approach; the three men were lying on their stomachs, side by side.
‘It’s a shaft,’ said Sandy grimly. Olivia saw Uncle James and Silver exchange an agonised look. Silver reached for Olivia’s hand and held it tightly as they approached. The blank space in Olivia’s mind was suddenly filled; the wolves were on the deer.
Is he going to be all smashed up?
she thought wildly.
How will we get him out? How will we get him to hospital if he’s still alive?
‘Careful, careful,’ Sandy said. Her voice sounded barely audible to Olivia, as though faintly heard over the booming of ocean waves. She shook off Silver’s hand and threw herself down on her stomach, wriggling the final metre till she lay beside Mark.
Let it be just a big dark hole
, she thought at the last moment, before she peered over.
I don’t want to see him all smashed up.
There was a big dark hole. But there was also, on one side of the shaft, a sort of shelf or platform thinly covered with pale sandy soil and spindly grass. It was not much more than three metres below the surface, and not much more than a metre or so wide. And on it stood her grandfather, grubby face upturned and grinning hugely.
‘Olivia!’ he cried as soon as her face appeared. ‘How are you, darling girl?’
‘I’m fine, Grandpa,’ she heard herself reply. ‘What about you? Are you all right?’