An hour into the mountains we turned off the main road, bumping down a rutted side track that quickly dropped away into a lush valley.
‘Are you sure this is it?’
‘Perfectly. Now can we please slow down?’
Forest enclosed us; mountain ash, thick scrub, ferns. The track inclined steeply; we seemed to be moving down a darkened green tunnel, emerging suddenly into dazzling sunlight, onto a small, flat clearing. A perma-pine cabin squatted at one end. Heather Sims, the zoologist, was sitting on the verandah; Scanlon was underneath a basketball ring attached to a verandah post, bouncing a ball.
‘You didn’t tell me she was here.’
Tad smiled, beatifically: ‘I wasn’t certain.’
The cabin had the look of something assembled from a kit, an environment that suited Scanlon, in his jeans and beard and army shirt — a man who might have been built from cheap kit parts himself. Several small sheds were clustered to one side of the clearing; and a row of large, fine-meshed cages. The chairs and table on the verandah also had a build-it-yourself look; a cask of wine and various odd-shaped glasses sat on the uneven surface.
As the car bumped across the clearing several plump dodos lumbered squawking out of its path. Scanlon turned, one arm shielding his eyes against the light. I climbed out; he greeted me, smiling:
‘Professor Fox.’
‘Professor Scanlon.’
Sims said nothing. She was bent over some kind of papoose, or knapsack, strapped to her chest. I felt a surge of curiosity at the exact nature of their relationship, curiosity pricked through with something else, something a little … sharper.
‘You’re a long way from home,’ he said.
‘Could we talk?’
That wide-eyed, direct gaze: ‘Sure. Want to shoot some baskets?’
‘In private?’
Tad had emerged from the car, hoping for fireworks, but Heather Sims intervened: ‘Don’t you want to look at our baby first, Mara?’
A small, furred dog head poked from the mouth of the papoose, suckling at a baby’s bottle: the head of a cuckoo grown too big for a Devil pouch. I had last seen Truganini as an embryo: an embryo carried on the outside, marsupial fashion. Then, undifferentiated, she could have been anything: kangaroo, woolly mammoth, dodo, even human. Now she was definitely a puppy; although the blunt nose, big eyes and big head were still to some extent the shared proportions of all animal young.
‘What do you think, Mara?’
‘Very nice. About our talk, Professor Scanlon … ’
‘What do you mean, nice? She’s beautiful. Come and have a cuddle.’
‘I’m allergic to animals.’
Sims rose and unstrapped the papoose: ‘You can’t be allergic to something you haven’t been exposed to before. Here, sit down.’
My anger would have to wait. I sat on the verandah at her feet; Sims eased the papoose gently over her head and shoulders, and slipped it across mine. The bundle, warm, and heavy, came to rest between my breasts.
Tad was already tapping himself a drink from the wine cask: ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘It’s the Marsupial Woman.’
‘It does seem a better system,’ I said. ‘Giving birth to something the size of a goldfish: no pain, no trauma.’
I found myself looking towards Scanlon. For approval? I hoped not. He was standing some distance off, eyes closed, face to the sun, dreaming. Perhaps it was only his silence that drew me to him, wanted to make him pay attention.
‘No arrested labour,’ I said, too loudly. ‘No forceps, no big, stuck heads. Minimal involvement.’
I had thought this over, off and on. The joke notion that marsupial intelligence might have evolved in Australia, given time. The clear advantages of Marsupial Woman. Obstetrics would be so much easier: uterus becomes marsupium, a pouch womb worn on the outside, easy to get at. No need for ultrasounds or amniotic probes; antenatal checks would be as simple as lifting back the lip of a pouch and glancing in.
As for Termination of Pregnancy: open the pouch, and pluck the tadpole from the nipple. Or was that infanticide?
‘Strictly speaking,’ Heather Sims said, ‘if intelligent life had developed in Australia it would probably have been a monotreme, not a marsupial.’
She also was addressing her words towards the small figure of Scanlon as she spoke, as if for approval. His thoughts were still elsewhere.
‘You’ve lost me,’ I said. ‘Strictly speaking.’
‘Us,’ added Tad.
She turned away from Scanlon. Her voice seemed to be talking down towards me, a tutor’s voice: ‘Monotremes. Egg-laying mammals.’
‘The platypus?’ I said.
Truganini was scrabbling in my lap, trying to find the dislodged teat.
Tad emitted a high-pitched laugh: ‘Duck-billed humans?’
‘Probably ant-eating humans. The nearest thing we have to chimp intelligence on this continent is the echidna.’
‘Porcupines?’ from Tad, incredulous. ‘Porcupines are our most intelligent species?’
‘Not porcupines. Echidnas. Spiny anteaters.’
She glanced towards Scanlon; he was shooting baskets in the sunshine again, possibly half-listening. I sensed, humiliated, that the two of us — two women who were both years older than him — were entering into some kind of competition for his attention.
‘Three-pointer!’ he muttered to himself: some sort of private triumph. The ball swished through that low-altitude ring.
Sims pressed on: ‘Echidna brains are among the biggest of all mammals, relative to size.’
Tad was unconvinced: ‘You’re joking!’
She shook her head. The two curtains of straight-combed hair that framed each side of her face, released from the usual ponytail, flapped from side to side.
‘In Hobart we used to run them through mazes.’
‘Run them?’
‘Well, walk them. Strictly speaking.’
The tiger cub whimpered; I slipped the teat back into an eager mouth.
‘What about this one?’ I asked.
‘She’s no Einstein,’ Sims said. ‘But she’ll get by.’
‘We just want her to be happy,’ Tad said.
Everyone laughed; Scanlon included. He dropped his basketball and stepped up on to the verandah: ‘Maya, you wanted to talk?’
‘It can wait,’ I said. The pup was suckling again; I felt an odd, unfamiliar contentment. Was this all it took?
‘Then let’s eat, guys.’
A gas barbecue was standing to one side, he wheeled it into the open, and lit the gas. Sims disappeared into the cabin, emerging shortly with a jar of vegetable oil and a platter of odd-looking food. Three dodos came waddling across the clearing; she tossed them a few scraps of food.
Tad approached the barbecue: ‘What’s on the menu? Endangered species? Dodo drumsticks?’
‘Soy fritters, tofu, salad.’
He wrinkled his nose: ‘I’ve driven all this way for a vegetarian barbecue? Who’s in charge here? I demand to see the manager.’
Scanlon was no vegetarian, I knew. He ate anything that fitted the dimensions of his mouth. Heather Sims was clearly in charge of the catering arrangements. The unfamiliar food began to hiss and splash onto the oil. I sat stilled, becalmed; feeding the tiny, wide-eyed occupant of my marsupium. The ungainly dodos raked their top-heavy beaks through the dust at my feet, the warm sunshine spilled over me. Remembering that moment now — sitting here, setting it down in black and white — I’m not sure what to think. Were my reasons for seeking out Scanlon that easily brushed aside? Shove something small and cute into my arms and turn up the sunshine and everything else is forgotten?
Am I really that pathetic? That easily softened, and tenderised?