When Charlotte Brontë wrote about fire in Jane Eyre she had the luxury of symbolism. To Charlotte, fire represented sex and passion, cleansing and renewal. For Lisa, when she was finally able to return home, it was heartache. While she’d been over at the Wrights’ cottage, the inferno had raged down her driveway and engulfed the stables. The stables’ roof had collapsed, leaving a smouldering ruin. The blaze had then arced across to the servants’ quarters at the back of the manor. Another fire truck arrived just in time to stop the flames spreading to the kitchen in the main house.
In the meantime, embers had rained down on the front paddock, causing the dry grass to explode into flames. Fire fighters had done what they could to douse it with water, but the fire had run rampant until it reached the natural barrier of the river.
With the main house out of danger, the team had turned their attention to the spot fires on the other side of the river, but just as it seemed the conflagration might leap the water and roar through the valley towards town, the wind had changed direction and dropped.
By Australian standards, it was a small fire covering just a few acres and had been quickly extinguished. Yet the devastation was going to take months, possibly even years, to recover from.
News was back from the hospital that Mr Wright’s condition was serious due to heat stroke and smoke inhalation. Mrs Wright was in shock and dehydrated but would probably be okay. Their house had been checked out, too. Though it was badly damaged, it was repairable.
Now the fire fighters finished packing up their equipment. Humbled by their courage and cheerful pragmatism, Lisa hugged them one after the other. They waved as they drove off to check properties on the other side of the ridge.
After they’d gone, Lisa took Mojo’s carry case from the car and stood on the veranda. The air was hazy and heavy. Her front paddock was a blackened desert. Ravaged trees were etched against a tangerine sky. The cockatoo wouldn’t have stood a chance. The stables and servants’ quarters were destroyed. Her front garden was razed. She’d nearly lost the house she could hardly afford in the first place.
Sobs jagged from her lungs and echoed across the valley. Somewhere in her head she heard Aunt Caroline’s voice. Pull yourself together, girl. Where was Scott when she needed him?
She crouched and flicked the latches on Mojo’s carry case. He stepped onto the veranda and lifted his nose. With tail looped close to the ground, the cat padded down the steps and sniffed the smoking grass. Head to one side, he extended a cautious paw and dabbed the blackened soil. Then the lion cat shook himself, as if this changed world was beyond comprehension, and crept back up the steps and inside the house.
Lisa sighed and walked around the side of the manor. Charred beams jutted like ribs from what was left of the stables. Amid the smouldering wreckage, a door to a horse stall swung from the outline of a frame. The servants’ quarters were a blackened skeleton. Empty windows stared back at her. The extension would’ve fared better if it’d been made of brick like the rest of the house.
To her amazement, the fire fighters had managed to save the orchard. The apple tree spread its fresh green branches in astonishment.
Numb to the core, she walked to the end of the driveway. All her favourite trees—the magnolia, the wattles and gums—had been reduced to charred sticks. The fire had ripped through at breathtaking speed. Leaves, scrub, everything that had been green was now grey. Lisa felt like a character in a children’s book who’d stepped through a portal into a black and silver world. Charcoal tree trunks rose from ashen earth. Maxine had been right all along. People who came to Castlemaine with big dreams were destined to fail.
Lisa hugged herself. Her skin was black and sticky—she needed a shower. As she turned to go back to the house she noticed a shape huddled near the base of a burnt-out tree trunk. It looked like some sort of animal. She tramped through the ash towards it.
To her astonishment, it was a human form, crouched on the ground with its back to her. It was a man wearing a dark-brown hoodie.
Scott turned and looked up at her. He put his lips to his mouth and beckoned her over. Branches crackled under her feet. As she drew closer, she saw the focus of his attention. Sitting on the bush floor in front of him was a bewildered koala.
‘You okay?’ he said under his breath.
She nodded.
‘Sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but I had to check on Todd. They live out this way.’
She should’ve guessed.
‘Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine. They saved your house.’
She glanced back at the silhouette of the manor. Standing proud in the gritty air, it reminded her of photos of London’s blitz in World War II. ‘Only just.’
‘I parked on the road. I know you have a thing about me barging in . . .’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Not anymore.’
‘I heard what you did for the old people. That’s incredible.’
She ached for him to stand up and encircle her in his arms. But that would just make her howl her eyes out. It was a good thing at least half his attention was on the koala.
The animal gazed up them through black button eyes. With his furry, rounded ears he was as cute as a grey teddy bear. The white fur on the underside of his chin extended down his chest, giving him a sort of baby’s bib. His leathery nose had a painful raw patch.
The koala turned and plodded away in a bandy-legged waddle.
‘He’s disoriented,’ Scott said as the koala stopped beside a blackened tree trunk and sat down. Scott slid a bottle of water from his pocket, and stepped slowly towards the animal. The koala didn’t move. Scott crouched beside him and ran his hand over the koala’s sloping forehead. ‘You’re thirsty, boy, aren’t you?’ he said, unscrewing the lid and tilting the bottle against the animal’s mouth.
Understanding what was being offered, the creature raised its head and gulped the liquid.
‘There you go,’ Scott crooned with tenderness Lisa hadn’t heard before. ‘He’s dehydrated.’
The water level sank in steady chugs. Lisa’s heart turned to butter when the koala raised his paw and rested it on Scott’s hand. This was a different Scott. His voice was soft, every movement gentle and considered. He seemed to have tuned into the koala on a level beyond words.
‘We need to take him into the shelter,’ Scott said. ‘The pads of his paws are burnt.’
‘Does that mean he’ll spend the rest of his life in a zoo?’
‘No way! He’s lost his habitat, but we’ll find him another home close by. Won’t we, boy?’
The bottle was nearly drained. ‘Can you grab me another one?’ he asked quietly. ‘And a towel.’
Lisa sprinted back to the house and refilled her own water bottle. She ran upstairs and snatched her towel from the bathroom. The house reeked of smoke, but she thanked God most of it was still intact.
‘How come you knew he needed water?’ Lisa asked as the koala started on the second bottle.
‘I’ve done a bit of wildlife rescue—not that you’d know from the business with the snake.’
‘Really? I worked in a shelter in New York. Nothing glamorous. Cats, dogs . . . the occasional crocodile.’
‘There’s an orphaned wallaby in the back of the ute,’ he said. ‘His hind legs need dressing.’
‘Can I see him?’
She watched in awe as Scott wrapped the towel around the koala with the gentleness of a midwife handling a newborn. He stood up with liquid ease and, cradling the koala, crunched across the smoking earth.
‘Come over here,’ he called.
The back of the ute was covered with a silvery tarpaulin. Scott lifted a corner of the cover. Two large ears and liquid eyes appeared from under a blanket. ‘I’ve brought you a mate,’ he said, lowering the koala into a cardboard box next to the kangaroo.
Lisa noticed a dome-shaped blanket on the passenger seat and asked what it was.
Scott replaced the cover. ‘You’ll like that one.’ He strode around to the ute door and lifted the blanket. Inside the cage sat a cockatoo, its yellow crest flattened against its head. ‘I found her waddling around the orchard,’ he said. ‘At least, I think it’s a she.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Females have dark-red eyes. The males’ eyes are blacker. Hard to tell with cockatoos, though. Only way to be sure is to take them to McDonald’s and see which toilet they go into.’
The parrot tilted her head and blinked at Lisa. She offered a tentative hand. The parrot bowed and rubbed her scalp against Lisa’s finger.
‘She’s okay,’ he added. ‘But I reckon one of her wings is damaged. She can’t fly.’
Lisa broke into smiles. Tears of gratitude streamed down her blackened cheeks. ‘I know this bird!’
Later that night Lisa took a long shower. The water turned charcoal grey as it poured off her body. Her throat felt burnt. She shampooed twice. It was going to take forever to get rid of the smell of smoke. After the shower, she filled the bath with luke-warm water. Sinking into the depths, she thought of Scott. Maybe she’d been too quick to jump to conclusions about him. Perhaps his ravings at the medical centre meant something. Dipping her head under the water, she hoped she’d done the right thing accepting his invitation to visit the animal shelter in the morning. Whatever happened, she was going to need his help with the garden.
She rose early the next day. Relieved to have an excuse to leave her decimated property, she climbed into Dino and rattled down what was left of her driveway. Scott’s concept of ‘a couple of kilometres’ along the road to Maldon turned out to be closer to ten. If Lisa hadn’t been so anxious about missing the turnoff, she might’ve enjoyed resting her eyes on the green-grey countryside, the hum of the road unravelling under the tyres.
She knew she’d reached the right place when she saw Scott’s ute roughly parked in the gravel. The house was what she’d expected of Juliet—a wooden Edwardian villa nestled behind a tall hedge.
The gate opened with a gracious creak. Lisa made her way up a brick path lined with lavender bushes. A dream catcher swayed in the breeze. Scott’s boots lay like a pair of drunken sailors under the step. She tapped on the door.
Juliet’s shape appeared in a shaft of light beaming from the end of a woody corridor. ‘Is that you, Lisa? Come on in.’
Lisa hesitated. Was it one of those quasi-spiritual shoeless houses? To be safe, she shook off her Mary Janes, the same ones she’d worn to the dance, and padded past sepia photos interspersed with splashes of modern art.
There was nothing fussy about the room at the end of the hall. Plates and babies’ bottles were scattered over the workbench, waiting to be washed. A pile of laundry lay slumped in a basket on one of the chairs. A calendar from the Castlemaine Arts Fair hung above the toaster. Almost every day had a name scribbled on it.
‘That’s the volunteer roster,’ Juliet said. ‘Would you like to sign up?’
Lisa said she’d loved to, as soon as she’d finished her book, which wasn’t far away. She asked after the koala. Juliet said she’d dressed the burns on his feet the night before. He was sedated and on a drip now. They were hoping for the best.
‘Impressive work you do here,’ Lisa said.
‘Oh there are hundreds of shelters like these all over Australia,’ Juliet said, spooning instant coffee into mugs. ‘They’re all run by trained volunteers like us.’ She smiled. ‘I hear you’re a bit of a hero yourself.’
Lisa’s earlobes tingled. ‘You mean the Wrights? Oh, that was nothing. I just acted on instinct.’
‘I don’t know what they would’ve done without you.’
Lisa shrugged the compliment off. She was more interested in hearing about Juliet’s shelter and the animals they rescued. Bush fires and road accidents were only part of the problem for native wildlife, Juliet explained. With every new subdivision, animal habitats were destroyed. As people built new homes for themselves, native animals lost theirs. ‘We do what we can to get them back on their feet and into the wild again,’ Juliet said, absentmindedly spiking up her hair. She was one of those women who could wear a sack and gumboots and still look like she was going to a fashion show.
From her time at Bideawee animal shelter, Lisa was no stranger to people doing great things for animals. But Juliet’s dedication was awe-inspiring. Thanks to the roster system, when Juliet was working at the garden centre, someone else would oversee the furry patients. Some baby animals needed feeding around the clock. Juliet’s helpers often stayed over and set their alarms to make sure their wards didn’t miss a feed.
‘You have to be psychologically tough to do this work,’ Juliet said. ‘Some of the injuries are terrible. We lose a lot of animals. It can be devastating.’
‘Make mine a skinny soy latte.’ Scott grinned from a doorway.
Juliet laughed and handed him a steaming mug. He swamped it with four sugars. The teaspoon looked like a toothpick in his fingers as he clattered it about.
Lisa’s gaze wandered to Juliet. Her pretty face glowed with affection as she watched Scott drown his coffee in milk. Then Scott caught Juliet’s eye and gave her a knowing smile.
Heat prickled on Lisa’s neck as she remembered the kiss in the doctor’s surgery. Was there something between Scott and Juliet? How could she have been so stupid!
Lisa wasn’t in love with Scott, anyway. She had no claim on him. He was hardly her type.
The words of Mr Rochester echoed in her head. You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love.
‘By the way,’ Scott said after a loud slurp. ‘Someone’s waiting to see you.’ He clattered his mug on the bench and lifted a blanket-covered cage from under the table. ‘The vet took a look at her this morning. Her wing’s damaged but it’s not too bad,’ he said, lifting the cover. ‘She might even learn to fly again.’
The cockatoo dipped her head at Lisa and raised a claw in salute.
‘If she can survive a fire and that cat of yours she’ll get through anything,’ he added. ‘Take her home and see how she goes.’
‘You can come through and see the other animals, if you like,’ Juliet said. ‘Try to keep quiet. Noise startles them. And don’t make any sudden movements.’
Lisa followed Juliet and Scott to what would’ve been the back porch in the old days. The space had been enlarged and enclosed, and the windows shaded. Mattresses and boxes were arranged around the perimeter of the floor.
As Lisa’s eyes adjusted to the dim, she saw the outline of a wheelchair. In it sat a young man with long dark curls and looks that belonged on a movie screen. The teenager was cradling a wallaby and feeding it with a baby’s bottle. The tender expression on his face was worthy of St Francis.
‘This is my son, Todd,’ Scott said, clearing his throat.
Todd looked up at Lisa through dark brown eyes and smiled.