The Grass Castle (11 page)
Today she is sitting at home with Pam, glad of a quiet day. Since her episode at the valley a few days ago, she’s been quite exhausted, and even though she hasn’t done much, she’s eternally weary. Pam has been fussing and worrying over her, but Daphne insists she’s all right. It’s just as well Pam doesn’t know about the discarded referral.
The phone rings and Pam goes to answer it. Daphne has been hoping Abby might call, but she hasn’t yet, and perhaps she won’t. What use would a young woman have for spending time with an old lady? As usual, it is Sandy on the phone. She has a sick joey and needs someone to look after her youngest child Ben while she takes care of it. She wants Pam to go out to the farm because she doesn’t want to stress the joey by putting it in the car. Daphne feels too tired to travel, but Ray has gone into the shop today and Pam doesn’t like to leave Daphne alone, so she will have to go too.
They have lunch and get organised then Pam helps Daphne into the car.
The The property is a twenty-minute trip along a twisty road that passes through open woodland and dusty farms. Daphne would like to drive out here herself sometimes, but she doesn’t have a car anymore, thanks to an old woman who backed into her in the main street two years ago. Daphne hadn’t been ready to give up driving, but after her car was written off it was hard to justify buying a new one. She discussed it with Pam and Ray, and they encouraged her to accept what life had served up. It was time for her to retire from driving anyway, they said. And Pam could take her wherever she needed to go. Still, it was a relinquishment of independence. Daphne would have liked to make the decision herself. To have it made for her by some other silly old woman’s mistake was unfair.
When they arrive at Sandy’s property, the house is in disarray, which is not out of the ordinary as Sandy is often too busy to attend to details like tidiness. Today, however, it’s worse than usual, because Sandy has been distracted by the sick joey. Daphne notices that the breakfast dishes haven’t been done, the cereal boxes are still on the kitchen table, and half-finished cups of cold coffee lurk on the bench.
Sandy is sitting on the couch with the sick joey in her lap, and her face is puffy and blotched from crying. Pam goes immediately to hug her, and fresh tears loosen down Sandy’s cheeks. She has two joeys at the moment—Daphne knows all about it because Sandy and the children are at Pam’s so often it’s impossible not to know. The younger joey, Milly, is still pouch-dependent. This one in her lap, Zeek, is being prepared for release. He’s been living down at the holding pens for a few months now, learning to be a kangaroo before being let out into the wild. Yesterday he was fine, Sandy says. But this morning she found him in a mess of faeces.
Now she has him tucked up inside a large home-made pouch—a bag made from one of her husband Clive’s old windcheaters. Only the joey’s head is visible, and Daphne can see he is limp and lethargic. It doesn’t look good. The kindest thing would be to put the poor thing down, but Sandy is not one to give up without trying. She subscribes to the belief that where there’s life there’s hope, something Daphne has never understood. Daphne hates to see an animal suffering.
The youngest child, Ben, is sitting in front of a DVD. It’s a Harry Potter movie, and Daphne sees Pam bristle when she notices. Pam believes four-year-old Ben is too young for these films, but Sandy shrugs and says how hard it is with two older children. Young ones get broken in early. It frustrates Pam that Sandy uses the video as a babysitter. Parents these days are all about keeping children quiet and out of the way rather than interacting with them. It’s easier, Daphne supposes, and at least, living on a farm, the children are often outside, so they know how to entertain themselves too.
At Sandy’s suggestion Pam delivers a banana and fruit juice to Ben, then a lengthy discussion of the joey’s symptoms ensues. ‘It’s a bad case of diarrhoea,’ Sandy concludes. ‘I’ve treated him for absolutely everything.’
Pam’s lips seal into a straight line. She understands the joey is dying, but she’s not sure how to handle her daughter on this one—Daphne can see it. Pam puts the kettle on for a restorative cup of tea. Perhaps after that Sandy will come to her senses.
Sandy lays the pouch aside and fetches a large syringe of sterile fluid which she injects under Zeek’s skin. She says she got it from the vet the other day for emergencies like this. ‘He’s dehydrated,’ she says, as she caps the needle. ‘I can’t get him to drink.’
The joey doesn’t move—a bad sign. Daphne hopes Sandy will take heed, but Sandy follows up with a bottle of warmed joey-milk, trying to encourage Zeek to drink. He feeds listlessly and Sandy weeps when the teat slips from his mouth.
‘What should I do?’ she says, looking to Daphne and Pam for answers.
‘Maybe you need to let him rest,’ Pam, offers gently. ‘Perhaps there’s nothing more you can do.’
Sandy sits down heavily. She knows Pam is right. They all know it. They can’t help little Zeek. He’s heading slowly out of here; the life is seeping out of him. Later Sandy will start on the
if-onlys
—it could go on for hours. Pam pours tea while Sandy sits miserably on the couch, Zeek in her lap. The pouch is almost flat—there’s nothing of him. Daphne sees the bag lifting slightly with each breath. Sandy gives in to tears again.
‘A year of snuggling with this little fellow,’ she says. ‘A year of watching him grow. His first hops. Watching him emerge from the pouch and dive back in. His little head peeking out. His little whiskers. I’ve done everything for him. I’ve fed him, toileted him, moisturised his skin, cleaned his pouches. And now this! He doesn’t deserve it.
I
don’t deserve it.’
Pam strokes Sandy’s hair then takes the pouch and hangs it from a doorknob in the laundry beside the other joey. ‘You go and have a shower,’ she says when she comes back. ‘You’ll feel better.’
Daphne watches her granddaughter trail sadly from the room. She can’t fathom why Sandy rears joeys; it’s a form of self-torture—too much death and grief. Sandy does have her successes, but joeys seem to be fickle creatures. When a new one comes into care it’s touch-and-go for a while. This one is particularly tragic for poor Sandy. Losing him after so much time and effort seems unfair, but that’s the way it goes with wild things.
‘I wish she’d give these joeys up,’ Pam says, echoing Daphne’s thoughts.
‘She already has three children to care for,’ Daphne points out.
‘Yes, but I suppose the joeys are her hobby,’ Pam says, ‘the one thing she does for herself that doesn’t involve the kids. She does it because she likes it.’
When Daphne was growing up on the property she tried raising a few joeys that her father brought home after shooting kangaroos for dog-meat. Most of them died, despite plenty of good rich cow’s milk to drink. Sandy has told her this is exactly why they died—because they shouldn’t have been drinking cow’s milk. She says they can’t handle the lactose, but Daphne doesn’t believe it; everything grows well on cow’s milk.
One of Daphne’s joeys survived to adulthood. Big Joe, a large muscular male. He would hang around the homestead hoping for treats. Eventually he took off looking for females, but he came back every now and then for some bread or a handful of oats. He died when a pack of dogs brought him down. Dogs were a problem in the mountains back then. Daphne’s father, and then Doug after him, shot every dog they saw, both dingoes and wild dogs, which were mostly farm dogs that had taken to the bush. Dogs and eagles played havoc with the lambs. That’s why Doug got rid of the sheep. Plus it was too cold for them up in the High Country; they never did well.
Daphne accepts a cup of tea from Pam and sits in an armchair by the window, looking out at the property. It’s a sad place, she thinks, not a patch on the valley in the mountains. Here the paddocks are steep and dry, the garden is scraggly, there’s no stock to help control the weeds, and rocks keep floating to the surface. Daphne has never been quite sure why Sandy and Clive decided to buy a farm; for urban people it seemed a strange thing to do. Sandy had such big dreams for the place. She and Clive wanted to do some replanting and restore it as habitat for wildlife—but it’s a mess in this drought. Part-time farming simply doesn’t work. Sandy is too busy with children and joeys, and Clive doesn’t have time to be a farmer. He knows nothing about it and he’s not handy like Doug, who knew how to fix things like chainsaws and mowers and tractors. These are skills you must have if you own a farm because tools and machines are always breaking down.
Daphne supposes Sandy grew up hearing about life on the land. Daphne and Pam often reminisce, even now, about their time on the family property, and Sandy has visited the mountain country many times. It would have been her inheritance if the park wasn’t gazetted. She has heard all the stories, and she knows how Daphne loved the place, still does. Perhaps Sandy needed to build her own grass castle. Daphne can’t blame her for that—it’s in her blood.
She leans back in the armchair and listens to the drone of the TV in the background. Soon she is sleepy in the sun.
By the time Sandy brings the older two children home from school, the joey is dead. Daphne stays out of the way in the armchair while Sandy carefully shares the news with the children over afternoon tea. The kitchen fills with wailing and tears: Jamie and Ellen are bereft. Ben doesn’t really understand, but he joins in for effect; if there’s drama going down he obviously wants to be part of it.
After milk and anzac biscuits, Sandy wraps Zeek’s limp little body in an old pillowcase while Ellen drips tears onto the soft fuzz of his coat. ‘Mummy, he smells funny,’ she says. Daphne knows that strange pungent smell of death, slightly sour.
Jamie insists on carrying the joey down the paddock to the pit. He’s trying to be a little man, attempting to take responsibility to help his mother. Daphne decides to accompany them—she’s sat too long in the armchair and needs some fresh air. As she leans against the doorjamb to slide her feet into a pair of Sandy’s old gumboots, she sees Jamie standing silently outside on the lawn, the angular bag containing the joey hugged tightly to his chest. Ellen waits beside him, clutching her favourite doll. Then Sandy comes out with Ben grafted to her hip. He refuses to let go, probably sensing his mother’s sadness and frightened by it. Pam comes too. She fetches a long stick from the woodheap and hands it to Daphne for support.
They make a bizarre and tragic procession, Daphne thinks as she plods along behind them: Jamie fighting to be brave, Ellen sobbing, and Ben mute and grave, his face pressed to Sandy’s shoulder. Looking out across the paddock, Daphne sees several kangaroos grazing in the long shadows of late afternoon. Why save orphaned joeys in a drought? she wonders. Perhaps their mothers have tossed them from the pouch to survive the big dry themselves. Either that or they’ve been hit along the roadside. She’s sure there weren’t so many kangaroos when she was young. They shot the few that hung around the homestead and broke into the vegie patch. Kangaroo was poor man’s mutton—tucker for the dogs. The only good kangaroo was a dead one.
As they trudge towards the pit, Sandy quietly tells Pam about the last animal that was buried there: a road-kill swamp wallaby hit along the lane. Apparently her husband Clive had trouble digging the hard dry soil, and Sandy is worried she might not be able to cover Zeek’s body properly.
Daphne hears Jamie emit a small strangled sob. He stumbles on a rock and accidentally drops the joey, which flops to the ground with a thud, head lolling out of the pillowslip. Jamie crouches beside the joey’s body and folds into tears. ‘I didn’t mean to drop him,’ he wails. ‘The bag was heavy, and you were talking about burying him, and then my arms gave up.’
That’s when everything goes pear-shaped. Sandy tries to set Ben down so she can reassure Jamie, but Ben clings to her, crying hysterically, and won’t let go. Ellen is crying too. She stands there with her doll hanging from her hand and her face streaked with tears. Pam attempts to intervene, without success.
Daphne leans against her stick and watches, shaking her head. The noise is enough to wake the dead. Then Sandy succumbs to grief and starts sobbing too—it’s all too much. While the three children pile on top of Sandy, howling, Pam quietly picks Zeek up and slips him back in his pillowcase. ‘I’ll put him in the pit,’ she says. ‘We won’t try to bury him. Clive can do that later. And how about we all go back up to the house and have some ice-cream?’ She smiles and winks at Daphne, and they both know this will be an effective, if temporary, cure. Ice-cream is a good salve for misery.
Back in the kitchen, the children hoe into the ice-cream while Pam cooks dinner so Sandy can have some time off. Ensconced in her armchair, Daphne watches Pam peeling and chopping vegies and putting them into pots: potatoes for a hearty mash, corn, carrots and zucchini. There’s not much she can do to help—if she went into the kitchen, she’d be in the way.
Ellen appears from the laundry and comes to sit with her. She’s carrying the pouch with the other joey in it—the smaller, younger one that has been left hanging from a doorknob most of the day. She places the pouch on Daphne’s lap, and Daphne can feel the joey squirming inside the bag. She doesn’t want it, tells Ellen to take it away.