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‘Press the green button inside the door!’
The man walked up to the screen-door uncertainly. It opened satisfactorily. He peered into the darkness.
‘There’s a green switch just inside!’
He stepped into the dark kitchen and groped for the switch. The door clanged shut behind him as his hand found it. He pressed the switch and somewhere a diesel generator started up, and the kitchen lights came on. He stared.
He saw a dead dog on the floor and a wild woman crouched on the kitchen table in her underwear. She cried: ‘There’s a snake!’
The same instant he saw a long writhing streak across the floor. He whirled back to the door, but the handle was jammed. The snake seemed to bounce off the cupboard doors on the opposite wall, then it flashed around and streaked towards him. Helen screamed again and the man gargled in fright and scrambled across the kitchen out of its way. The huge snake hit the closed screen-door, then whirled around and disappeared back into the cupboard with a crashing of fruit jars. The man leapt up on to the table beside Helen.
Helen McKenzie stared at the stranger crouched beside her on the table. He still had on his black crash-helmet, the visor up. He wore gauntlets reaching to his elbows and high black leather boots. His studded leather lumber-jacket was zipped up to a thin, unshaven face, dominated by a beak nose and dark eyes under heavy black eyebrows.
‘Who’re you?’ Helen whispered.
The man saw a worn, frightened, pretty woman, her blonde hair awry, ringlets sticking to her sweaty neck.
‘Ben Sunninghill,’ he croaked.
Helen’s mind was fumbling. ‘How’re we going to get rid of this snake?’
Mr Sunninghill’s brown eyes were wide. He turned and looked fearfully at the dark cupboards, then shook his head. ‘I’m from New York,’ he said, as if that explained everything. He added: ‘I’ve just come to borrow a spanner.’
‘New York?’ Helen stared at him a long moment, then she dropped her head and sobbed. ‘Oh, thank God, anyway … Just thank God you’re here …’
They crouched in the centre of the big table. Helen was still weepy about Oscar, but Ben Sunninghill was more composed now. He said hoarsely: ‘Where is he now?’
Helen pointed at the open doors of the main cupboards.
‘Which end?’
She shook her head. ‘They’re all inter-connected at floor level. He could be in any of them.’
Ben pointed at the open cupboard on the opposite wall. ‘How do you know he’s not in there?’
‘I don’t. But when you came in I think I saw him go there.’ She pointed again.
Ben looked very worried. Then he said hopefully:
‘Snakes are as frightened of us as we are of them, aren’t they?’
‘Oh God … King Browns are very aggressive, particularly when they’re frightened.’ She looked down at Oscar and her chin began to twitch.
‘If we jump off the table together and run for that back door—’
‘The bloody catch sticks, there’s a real trick to opening it.’
Ben pointed at the other door. ‘That one?’
‘It’s bolted from the other side.’
Ben Sunninghill looked unhappily around the kitchen for weapons. There was a meat-cleaver next to the sink and a broom on the floor. He gingerly reached down, picked it up, and looked at it with misgiving.
‘Have you got a gun in the house?’
‘Yes, but it’s in my bedroom. And it’s not a shotgun, it’s only a .303. Not much good for a snake.’
Ben took a deep, unhappy breath. ‘I’ve got these boots and gauntlets, and the broom. If I make a dash for the back door and smash it open—’
It was then that he noticed the cauldron of water boiling on the stove. He looked at it, then turned to the cupboard. He considered, then gingerly leant out with the broom and opened it wider. He peered.
Nothing happened. He could see no snake in those shadows. He poked the broom into the clutter at the bottom. Instantly, there was a furious slithering noise and the terrible snake burst out midst a clatter of jars. Helen screeched as the creature flashed across the floor and disappeared into the smaller open cupboard opposite.
Ben stared into the beast’s new lair. ‘Can you see him?’
Helen peered. ‘Oh God, I think so …’
Ben took a deep breath.
‘Right – listen. What I’m going to do is jump across on to the sink, and get that pot of boiling water. I’ll bring it back here, and then I’ll throw it on to that snake.’
‘Oh God …’ Helen whispered.
Ben crouched carefully along the table, to the end. He gauged the distance to the sink. About five feet – easy enough, but could he make it back with a heavy cauldron of boiling water? He began to get to his feet. He straightened up shakily, his arms out to control his balance. Then he launched himself across the gap.
He landed with a crash in the sink. He crouched there for a moment, trembling. He looked back at Helen.
‘Before I come back, you must crawl to the far end of the table, to counter-balance me.’
Helen began to edge down the table. Ben looked at the heavy iron cauldron. It had a handle on each side, and it held about two and a half gallons. He got slowly to his feet. Crouching, he reached down to the handles. Even through his leather gauntlets, they were hot.
‘Use the oven-mitts!’ Helen gasped.
The oven-mitts hung on a peg beside the stove. Ben pulled them on over his gauntlets; then bent forward and began to lift the cauldron. It was astonishingly heavy – and frightening, the boiling water seething in his straining grip. He crouched on the edge of the sink, straining under the treacherous weight. He turned carefully towards the end of the table, looked at Helen and croaked: ‘Ready?’
She nodded desperately. Ben leant forward, stretched out a skinny leg, and he went for it, half jumping, half lunging across the gap. He landed on the end of the table, and he howled.
He howled because a pint of boiling water slopped out of the cauldron into his boots. He reeled with shock, Helen shrieked, and for a terrible moment he teetered on the edge of the table, about to crash off and scald himself with boiling water. Then he recovered his balance. He crouched, enduring the agony, eyes closed, still clutching his treacherous burden.
‘Are you all right?’ Helen gasped.
Ben opened his watering eyes and nodded. He took a deep breath.
‘You’ve got to keep clear of me. You’ve got to crawl down to this end as I come up to your end. Ready?’
‘Yes,’ Helen whispered desperately.
He began to make his way unsteadily down the table. They passed each other in the middle. Ben staggered to the end.
He peered into the dark cupboard. And, yes, he could just make out the dreadful beast coiled in there. For a teetering moment he crouched, trying to take aim with his thirty pounds of boiling water, his arm muscles trembling with strain; then he grunted and he hurled the water.
It cascaded into the cupboard with a steaming crash, and all hell broke loose. The snake came bursting out in a great writhing knot, coiling and contorting, a twisting killer three yards long convulsing around the kitchen floor, flashing jaws agape. Helen shrieked and snatched up the broom and swiped down at it with all her might. It skidded across the floor, and she shrieked again and swiped again, and then there was a metallic crash as Ben Sunninghill hurled the empty cauldron. It landed on the beast’s head and he leapt off the table, snatched up the meat-cleaver from the sink and ran at the writhing mass. With one furious swipe he chopped the snake in half. Now two sections of it were writhing bloodily all over the floor. Ben raised the cleaver again, aimed wildly for the head, and swiped. He chopped the head clean off, but still the sections writhed all over the floor. Ben Sunninghill frantically chopped and chopped, scuttling around scattering pieces of bloody snake everywhere.
Finally he stopped and stood up, chest heaving. Helen was leaning against the cupboard, her hair a mess, her breasts heaving. She looked at Ben, then she stared at Oscar lying dead. Then her bright eyes filled with tears, her lower lip curled, and she cried: ‘Oh Oscar …’
She stumbled across the kitchen and fell to her knees beside the dog, gathered him into her arms and hugged him and rocked him.
‘Oh Oscar, Oscar …’ she cried.
CHAPTER 3 (#)
They sat at the kitchen table, sipping brandy. The mess of snake had been cleared up, the floor mopped, and Helen had put on fresh jeans and shirt. Oscar lay on the verandah, covered in a blanket, awaiting burial in the morning. She was over the immediate grief of it now: the brandy was doing its work and she just felt numb.
‘Sorry, what’s your surname again?’ she said.
‘Sunninghill,’ Ben said. He had taken off his crash-helmet and gauntlets.
‘And how come …? I mean, what brought you here, like a guardian angel?’
Ben smiled. ‘I came to borrow a spanner,’ he said. ‘For my motorbike. I was having trouble and when I passed your gate, I thought maybe you had the spanner I needed. I did have one, but I lost it somewhere.’
‘Spanner,’ Helen said. ‘Yes, of course, all kinds of spanners in the barn.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But can it wait till tomorrow? I mean, it’s dark now.’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean, I’ve got a bed for you. Plenty of beds here.’
‘Well, that’s very kind of you,’ Ben said uncertainly. ‘As long as it’s no trouble?’
‘No, no, plenty of beds …’ She rubbed her forehead, then went on: ‘“Sunninghill”? Never heard that name before.’
Ben smiled. He was a funny-looking fellow with a ferrety sort of face, but when he smiled his cheeks puckered and all his teeth showed in a way that was both mysterious and charming. Mischievous. He was small, only about five foot eight inches in his high-heeled bikers’ boots. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘my real name is Sonnenberg, but my father changed it by deed-poll to Sunninghill. The English translation of Sonnenberg.’
‘Oh,’ Helen said.
‘He wanted to create the impression we weren’t Jewish.’
‘Oh.’
That smile. ‘Trouble is, he looks even more Jewish than I do.’
‘Oh.’ She was going to say ‘Really?’ but changed it in her mouth. She added hastily: ‘Sunninghill’s a nice name. A cheerful name. You look a cheerful type of person.’
‘Sure, I’m a laugh a minute. Remember, that was only my first snake, I’ll probably improve. Does this happen very often?’
She smiled wanly. ‘First time I’ve seen one in the house. Oscar chased it in.’ She dabbed the corner of her eye. ‘Seen enough in the bush, though, over the years.’
‘How many years have you lived here?’
‘Since I got married. Twenty years. Or nineteen.’
‘And where’s your husband now?’
She waved a hand to the south. ‘South Australia. Broken Hill, working on the mines.’
‘Oh.’ He was about to say ‘Why?’, then stopped himself. Helen volunteered the reason, as if reading his thoughts:
‘The kids’ boarding-school fees. With the drought we couldn’t make ends meet. So he had to go back to his old job.’
‘Oh. How long ago?’
‘Two years.’ She added: ‘He comes home at Christmas, when the kids get their summer holidays.’
‘I see. So you run the ranch all by yourself?’
For a moment she wondered what he saw. ‘No. We had to get rid of our foreman last year when we sold most of the cattle, but we’ve still got one Abbo stockman and his wife. They live about five miles away. So you really were a guardian angel, showing up like that, otherwise I’d have stayed on this table all night.’ She smiled wanly. ‘So, what brings you to Australia on a motorbike?’
‘Just seeing the world. I saw on your gate the farm’s called Whoop-Whoop. Does that mean anything special?’
‘The real name is Edenvale Station, because we’ve got a few wells that are usually quite good, but because it’s so remote we’ve nicknamed it Whoop-Whoop. That’s a mythical Australian place. It means to Hell and gone. In the middle of nowhere.’
‘Beyond the black stump?’
‘Right.’ She poured more brandy into his glass. She didn’t feel so shaky any more. Just grief for Oscar. Oh Oscar … ‘So, Mr Sunninghill, from New York. What do you do in New York?’
‘Used to do. Jeweller.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, a gemologist. Buying and selling stones, setting them, creating jewellery pieces.’
‘“Used to”? Have you quit?’
‘Sure have.’
‘Why? Don’t you like it?’
He said: ‘I like jewels. They’re beautiful. And I like making pieces of jewellery, that’s artistic. But buying and selling? The hassle? The cut-throat competition? And spending the rest of my life in that little shop? In New York?’ He shook his head. ‘There’s more to life than that. There’s a whole beautiful world out there.’
She looked at him enviously. ‘So you’ve sold up entirely?’
‘Not mine to sell. Family business. But my father’s cut me out entirely for leaving him in the lurch.’ He smiled then clasped his breast: ‘How can you do this to your Papa, my boy, my life? And you a gemologist – three years your Mama and I starved to send you to Technical School and now all you want is a Harley-Davidson to kill yourself with already, this is gratitude?’ He smiled. ‘He forgets I’ve worked for him since I was sixteen.’
Helen held out her hand, to show him her engagement ring, then slipped it off her finger. The diamond in the centre was missing. ‘It fell out somewhere,’ she said. ‘How much would it cost to replace?’
