Things were not going too bloody well for Sharon. For starters, she was in England. Making matters much worse, she was English. Perhaps because of this sad state of affairs, her boyfriend, Alan, had told her just this morning that he preferred a life of lager, lads, and loose women to the predictable monogamy in which they had been engaged for the past two years and that it was best she start packing her things. She said she’d go stay with Janelle for a while. He promised to bring her mail around in a week or two.
If these burdens were not enough to make a pommy bird turn to Pimms and a weekend of East Enders reruns, she had only this morning learned that cuts to the higher education budget would lead to the consolidation of various university libraries. Library budget concerns do not usually inspire emotional reaction, at least, not among people who infrequently wear tweed and regularly see the sunlight. But Sharon worked as an assistant librarian at the local uni and now would continue to do so for only two more weeks before the library closed its doors.
Sharon sat at home and cried.
She continued to cry, with periodic breaks to walk to the shops for more Pimms and to put the next season’s DVD in the player, until Alan came by a week or two later to deliver her mail. Among the phone bill, second-to-last-paycheck, and assorted junkmail that made up her regular deliveries, there was a letter from one Samuel P. Marshman, Esq. of Number 11, First St. in Nara, South Australia. Her curiosity overcame her misery long enough for her to open the letter, at which point she promptly resumed crying.
Ms. Gardiner,
It began.
I regret to inform you of the death of your great-uncle, Gerald G. Gardiner. Gerry, as he was affectionately known about town, died rather unexpectedly last week while digging an irrigation ditch. He was 97.
She had spent a great deal of her childhood hearing about great-uncle Gerry. He was a great man, by all accounts, and a wealthy landowner in one of the most fertile and productive parts of Australia. His letters described the bustling, cosmopolitan rural utopia in which he lived and Sharon spent much of her dreary English childhood wishing fervently that she would one day visit Nara.
As you may have known, Gerry died childless. Not for want of trying, mind. Every chance he got down Murray Bridge for the Show or with the sheilas passing through town of a Friday night, but to no apparent, or at least no legitimate, avail.
Sharon struggled to fathom the relevance of this disclosure to her, personally.
But I digress, the letter continued. Gerry died childless and unmarried. His brother, Geoffrey, whom Gerry frequently described as a pompous pommy-loving cunt, was his closest relative. As you may know, Geoffrey died some years past.
Sharon recalled the death of her grandfather and permitted herself another small cry.
And I am sure you are aware that Geoffrey’s only child, Gregory, died an untimely and grotesque death some fourteen years past . . .
Sharon was 16 when her parents had died. Half an hour later, half a box of tissues and a few beers deep, she felt strong enough to continue.
. . . leaving you Gerry’s closest living heir.
She paused to take a sip of lager and consider the sentence.
. . . Gerry’s closest living heir.
it continued to say.
The letter continued in other ways. It continued to say that she was to be named the sole beneficiary of Gerry’s estate, that any bequeathment was subject to certain conditions, to be specified at the reading of the will, and that the will would be read seven days hence at the offices of Samuel P. Marshman, Esq., Number 11, First St. in Nara, South Australia. It continued also to say that Mr. Marshman had enclosed an airplane ticket for travel to Adelaide and a bus ticket from Adelaide to Nara. The plane left in two days.
“Well,” she thought. “This is pretty bloody unexpected.”
* * *
Two days later, Sharon spent a third day travelling to Adelaide. She spent the better part of the fourth day travelling by bus from Adelaide up through the hills past Mt. Barker and Murray Bridge and out into the rolling hills that nestled Nara. Rather tired from the journey and ready for a hot shower and a soft bed, Sharon stepped from the bus and made straight for Nara’s preeminent hotel, the Rear Admiral Hindmarsh.
As on any Friday evening, it was crowded. Sharon dragged her rolly suitcase through the doors, past the tables, and up to the bar. She caught the publican’s eye and asked, in her most pleasant manner, if he had a room available. The man squinted back at her.
“How’s that again, love?”
“A room?” she asked again.
“Yeah?”
“The sign said that this was a hotel.” She tried, in exasperation.
“Exactly, love. You want a beer?”
“No,” Sharon responded, although she was beginning to doubt her answer. “I’m looking for a room for a few days.”
“Ohhhh, right. You’ve come to the wrong place, love. This is the hotel. You’ll be wanting to try the motel, but I’m pretty bloody sure Bernie’s all booked up what with the hay-raking convention in town.”
Sharon was crestfallen.
The publican poured her a sympathetic beer as he asked,
“Come on, love. It can’t be that bad. What are you doing in town, anyway?”
“My great uncle died,” she began, staring morosely into her beer. “And I’m to attend the reading of his will in a few days.”
The publican perked up at this.
“What’s your name, love?”
Sharon looked up and gave a small smile.
“It’s Sharon.”
“Shazza!” The publican grinned back at her. “Well it’s a bloody pleasure to meet you, love. ”
“Yes,” Sharon said, “a pleasure, but it’s Sha . . .”
“Bernie!” The publican roared across the pub to a small, round man playing darts.
“Bernie runs the motel,” he explained more quietly to Sharon, before returning to his across-the-pub voice.
“This is Gerry’s grand-niece–Shazza!”
“Actually, it’s Sha. . . ” she began, but stopped as half the pub turned to inspect her.
“Oi Shazza!” Bernie held out a calloused hand. “Nice to meet you, love.”
Sharon took his hand and started in again.
“Nice to meet you, also, but it’s Shar . . .”
“Shazza’s looking for a place to stay until they read Gerry’s will on Monday.”
Bernie inhaled through his teeth.
“Yeah. Tricky thing that. We’ve got the hay-raking convention in town and I’m all booked up. Won’t have any vacancy for a couple of days, really.”
Sharon looked despondent once more.
“Now Shazza, don’t look so bloody sad. You ought to try Australian Charles Darwin out at the petting zoo on Virgo Road. He’s not long ago put in some guest quarters and a flush dunny with that Home and Away money.”
Not one word of this made sense to Sharon. Fours beers later, it made no greater sense, but she felt a lot better about it. And so it was that Sharon found herself standing outside a petting zoo, looking for a place to stay.
* * *
Monkeys are known for many things. They’re mad for bananas, obviously, and they are pretty bloody good at climbing trees. Less well known–known only to Australian Charles Darwin, really, until he’d introduced the Home and Away watching public to the concept–is their ability with the written word. The next morning, Sharon discovered another characteristic: monkeys wake up at the crack of bloody dawn and are excited to do so.
The pillow stuck to the side of Sharon’s face as she sat up. Her eyes weren’t fully opened, yet, but her ears were filled with a terrifying scream. Her bedroom, the Primate Suite, had one large window that looked out into what could have been a peaceful jungle scene, if peaceful jungle scenes contained typewriters, heavy crystal ashtrays, and tall, leather backed chairs. Sharon was in no place to appreciate this curious tableau because, on the other side of the glass, blocking the view and not six inches from her face, an enormous mouth was stretched wide into its best impression of a banana’s nightmare.
Australian Charles Darwin could cheerfully explain the reasons why a chimpanzee’s scream sounds so exactly like a human’s. Shared DNA in the tonsil regions played a role. A common history of being the softer, less toothy options in a voracious jungle history, also. All of which would’ve been lost in Sharon, who was mostly concerned with a sound that six million years of evolution had tuned to the harmony of pure, bowel loosening terror.
Sharon screamed back, rolled away from the terrifying sight, and fell out of the narrow bed with a thump.
“Picture window, that!” said Australian Charles Darwin from the doorway, as the chimp continued screaming. “Just built the accommodations last month,” he explained over the noise, “and I wanted the guests to really experience the creative process.”
The chimp had stopped screaming and begun smearing shit across the window.
Sharon, her mouth agape, stared at the chimp for a moment and then looked back up at Australian Charles Darwin.
“Tea’s on!” He announced happily before turning and leaving the room.
Breakfast was a relatively uneventful affair. Sharon, shell-shocked from her wake up call of the wild, had difficulty drinking her tea without spilling it all over herself and inadvertently threw a slice of vegemite toast across the kitchen when the phone rang, but she began to feel a little better as she got some food in to her. After breakfast, Australian Charles Darwin had promised, he’d take her on a tour of south eastern South Australia’s premier petting zoo and centre for evolutionary studies. Whether because of her curiosity or her hunger, Sharon ate quickly.
* * *
Sharon couldn’t quite tell what she was meant to be looking at. They’d toured about half of petting zoo as Australian Charles Darwin explained the evolutionary heritage of each animal.
“Your bilby,” he explained, “now you go back far enough to when there was the land bridge between Queensland and Papua New Guinea, there was much greater uniformity among the species of South East Asia and Australia. Once that closed off, you had your isolation of Australia from the rest of the world which led to the unencumbered evolution of Australian flora and fauna as they adapted to the unique conditions here. Right before that happened though, right, a wallaby fucked a rat. And that’s your bilby.”
Sharon had been puzzled by this, but before she had an opportunity to inquire into the details of the bilby’s provenance, Australian Charles Darwin whisked her along the path to the next animal display. It was this next display that was causing her confusion. Australian Charles Darwin pointed again and nodded encouragingly. She tilted her head.
Australian Charles Darwin tried to give her a clue.
“It’s a dog,” he announced.
It was a dog. It was a pretty decent sized rottweiler asleep in a ratty dog bed on a porch that looked, for all the world, like Australian Charles Darwin’s back porch. Sharon still looked confused.
“It’s my back porch,” he explained.
Sharon nodded.
“And does the dog play some special role in the evolutionary history of Australia’s unique flora and fauna?”
Her confusion had put her on edge.
“Did this particular dog evolve from the chance encounter between a carnivorous dinosaur and a fleet-footed early hominid? Surely he’s spawned some new genetic hybrid?”
“What!?” Australian Charles Darwin said. “Nah, he’s just a bloody dog. His name’s Phil.” Australian Charles Darwin, unimpressed with this lapse in logic, scratched the back of his head and furrowed his brow in Sharon’s general direction. She blushed a little in embarrassment.
“I had him fixed anyway.”
Australian Charles Darwin took again toward the most popular part of the petting zoo–the kangaroo enclosure. Young kids loved their visit the petting zoo and what they loved more than anything was feeding these kangaroos by hand, rubbing their soft fur, and watching the mums hop around with a humourously oversized joey still insisting on catch a ride in her pouch. Australian Charles Darwin had started with just one roo that he’d picked up off a mate, but he’d added a few more over the years. A while back, when the big bushfires had come through and left most of the land between Nara and the coast looking like a piece of bloody burnt toast, the CFS had picked up four little joeys on the side of the road and brought them by to recuperate.
Australian Charles Darwin had nursed them and bathed them and hung pillowcases for them to sleep in, curled at the bottom like they were safe again in their mum’s pouch. The school’d had a competition for the kids to name the joeys: Tony, Claire, Bronson, and Cornetto. Their four little name plates, hand-painted by the kids, now hung up on the fence alongside the simple stencils for the other three roos.
The roos were lying in the shade of a tall gum, scratching in the dirt and blinking slowly.
“I count six,” she said, “where’s the other one?”
She knew she’d said something wrong. Australian Charles Darwin wiped and eye and reached out slowly to touch Cornett’s name plate on the fence.
“It’s a sad story, Shazza. I don’t . . .”
He seemed to choke back a sob.
Sharon touched his shoulder tenderly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “We don’t need to talk about it.”
Australian Charles Darwin sniffed and ran his fingers softly across the raised letters on the plate.
“Just so you know, though,” Sharon began again, “it’s Sharo . . .”
“You’re right!” Said Australian Charles Darwin briskly. “There’s no need to dwell on these sorts of things. Life goes on. And so should the tour. Let me take you around to see the bunyip pit. There’s fuck all in there, but it’s a bloody good pit.”
So they walked on, Australian Charles Darwin happily pointing out other parts of the Petting Zoo and Centre for Evolutionary Studies, and pausing only a few times to dab his eyes with a handkerchief.
Sharon spent the rest of the day watching the cricket while Australian Charles Darwin hid himself in the kitchen, whipping up something pungent. It was worth the wait, though, when he ladled a steaming portion of curry into her bowl at dinner.
“It’s delicious,” Sharon gushed over a mouthful of potato and carrot. She took another spoonful and chewed lovingly.
“Is this local beef?” She asked, dipping in for another mouthful.
“Beef?” Australian Charles Darwin laughed. “Nah, love. It’s home grown roo!”
* * *
Sunday began with a salutary primal scream but continued largely without other incident. Sharon didn’t think she’d be able to stomach another visit to the kangaroos in the Petting Zoo and Centre for Evolutionary Studies, having stomached one of them the night before, so she settled for exploring Nara by foot. First to Ruth’s for a kitchener bun and a cappuccino, then around town to admire Nara’s beautiful examples of classic Victorian bungalows and hay-bale-shaped rubbish bins, before a long afternoon of pints and cricket at the Rear Admiral. By the time play ended for the day, Sharon and her four pints felt they could make it through the night that stood between them and a meeting with Samuel P. Marshman, Esq. of Number 11, First St. in Nara, South Australia, first thing tomorrow morning.
Sharon thanked her prescience on Monday morning when the pile of pillows she’d left on the floor the previous night cushioned her fall. She hoped that chimps renowned grasp of sign-language enabled them to understand the gesture she made as she dressed for her much awaited meeting with Mr. Marshman.
Number 11 First Street was a small, pleasant Victorian bungalow with a red brick path, roses by the gate, and a sign on the door that said “CLOSED.” Upon closer inspection, Sharon saw a piece of paper tucked into the jam next to the door handle. The handle jiggled when she reached for the letter, then fell right off the door. Sharon looked around guiltily, but no one was around to witness her act of inadvertent vandalism. After a few unsuccessful tries to reattach the handle, she left it sitting on the nearest window sill and unfolded the note.
“Shaz,” it said.
“It’s Sharon,” she grumbled.
“Will reading had been postponed on account of me not being here. Please return at same time tomorrow.
Samuel P. Marshman, Number 11 First Street, Nara.”
Sharon neatly folded the note and left it under the door knob on the sill.
The next morning, after a customary scream and hot breakfast, Sharon returned to Number 11. A shiny new door knob had been mounted on the door and used to support a note.
“Shazza,”
“It’s fucking Sharon!” she said aloud.
“Will reading had been postponed on account of me not being here. Please return at same time tomorrow.
Samuel P. Marshman, Number 11 First Street, Nara.”
“It… It’s the same fucking note!”
Sharon looked around her in suspicion. Perhaps this was some kind of test. No, she was alone.
She crumpled the note and threw it angrily at the door.
The following day, Sharon made it half way up the path before she noticed a piece of paper tucked into the door jam. It was creased all over, as if someone has crumpled it into a ball and then smoothed it or again. She didn’t bother to read it.
* * *
Australian Charles Darwin took pity on her that night and took her out for dinner at the Rear Admiral.
“Crab?”
“Can’t go wrong,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Sharon had glanced at a map before leaving England and, although I shed found Nara hard to locate, recalled it being hundreds of kilometres from the nearest ocean.
“Fresh!” He said, encouragingly. “I had it last time and it was bloody brilliant.”
Sharon grimaced at the rest of the menu and figured she didn’t have a whole lot to lose.
“Crab then!”
* * *
The chimp was halfway through his scream before he realised Sharon wasn’t in the bed. He squinted through the glass and gave another shriek just to make sure she wasn’t hiding on the far side of the bed.
He nibbled the end of his pipe and leapt to the nearest branch to peer in the bathroom window. There, and by the presence of a pillow next to her, she’d been there most of the night, was Sharon, arms clutching toilet bowl and hair sticking in tendrils to get pallid, sweaty face.
The chimp gave a half hearted hoot and swung away.
“You alright Shazza?” asked Australian Charles Darwin from the bathroom door.
“It’s Sh… ”
Sharon bent over the toilet bowl again.
“I don’t reckon I could pronounce that without a lot of beer and a half full bucket,” Australian Charles Darwin joked from the doorway.
“You, uhh… You going to be alright?”
“I think it’s good poisoning.” Sharon managed, her face pressed against the cool tile floor.
“It must’ve been that crab.”
Australian Charles Darwin nodded.
“Funny that, happened the last time I had it, too.”
* * *
A dry wind whipped wisps of hay around Sharon’s ankles as she waited for the bus out front of the BP.
A few minutes later, she watched the haybale shaped bins whiz by the windows on the way out of town, then give way to haybale shaped haybales on the road to Adelaide. Marshman would call, at some point, but until then, she’d be ensconced in a relatively modern hotel, or a motel perhaps, with food that didn’t threaten to turn her inside out and an alarm that went “beep.” He could bloody well call when he was ready.
Nara’s legendary rolling hills gave way to the plainest plains, devoid of rain and all looking the same. She must’ve regretted her decision to leave behind South Australia’s Tidiest Town, it’s quaint Victorian bungalows and tastefully situated public works, because she closed her eyes and began to doze.
An all too familiar screeching tore Sharon from her slumber. She looked through the window with horror, expecting to see the gaping mouth of an emotionally troubled ape. What she saw, instead was four petrol pumps and a sign for Balfour’s pies as the bus squealed to a halt.
“Ladies and gents,” the driver’s voice crackled over the speakers. “We’ll be stopping for a bit here in Tailem Bend long enough for you to visit the toilet and have a smoke. We’ll be leaving in ten minutes.”
Sharon yawned again and made her way to the front of the bus. She stepped out into crackling, desiccating heat, but it still felt good to stretch her legs.
“Oi!” A voice called out across the carpark.
“Oi. Shazza?”
Sharon squinted in the bright sunlight at a small, bandy legged figure making his way towards her.
“‘Scuse me,” he started, when he got a little closer. “Your name Shazza?”
Sharon closed her eyes against the continuing indignities and opened them to stare down at the petrol station attendant. A badge on his shirt suggested that his name was “Mark” and Sharon decided it was high time he learned.
“No,” she replied archly. “It’s Sharon.”
Mark nodded.
“Alright then. Too bad for you, because I’ve got a message for a sheila named Shazza from some shonky lawyer in Nara.”
He turned to walk away.
“Wait!” Sharon called out. He looked back at her.
“I think that message is for me.”
“Nah love. Message is for Shazza. Bloke on the phone said so himself.”
“Yes yes. But it is for me, my good my man.”
Mark looked back sceptically. “You said your name was Sharon, but.”
“I really do think it is for me.”
“Your name’s not Sharon, then?”
Sharon took a deep breath.
“No.” She began. “No. I’m . . .”
She’d been resisting all this time the mere change in a single syllable in some desperate attempt to retain a sense of self in this foreign land. The locals’ apparent need to alter her name to fit their image had grated against the sharp edges of her conflicted, troubled identity. Now she was forced to choose. She could accept the change, embrace her local identity, and find out why she was in this bloody country in the first place, or she could stand on principle, return to the bus, and, perhaps, to England, ignorant of what might have come. Like the many other creatures who’d washed ashore in Australia and been faced with the same choice, she could adapt or die. This new name was her mammalian pouch. Her poisonous hind claw. It was a bloody monotrematic evolution born of the insurmountable will to live in a harsh bloody country. It was as true blue as Malcolm bloody Fraser eating a lamington at a John Farnham concert. Fucking oath.
“. . . Shazza.”
It was easier than she’d expected. She beamed at him.
“Fucking Shazza,” she said again.
“Yeah, right-o. Suit yourself.” He said. “Follow me, Shaz.”
Next to the phone behind the counter, Mark had written a number on a scrap of paper. Sharon rang it and, to her surprise, her call was answered almost immediately. Mr. Marshman introduced himself and informed her that her great-uncle’s will would be read tomorrow, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, and that her presence was required. Sharon was none-too-pleased about the sudden turn of events, but the thought of finally resolving this drawn out affair and being able to return home filled her with hope. She told Mr. Marshman she had merely to collect her belongings from the bus and she’d take the next one bound for Nara, to arrive that evening.
Sharon set down the phone with a satisfying click. She crumpled the scrap of paper and threw it in the bin behind the counter, then scrounged the last of her change out of her pockets. She had just enough to buy a bag of FruChocs, which she promptly opened as she headed out the door. Just in time to see the bus pull away.
A warm breeze blew across the petrol station, whipping up the red dust.
“Well fuck me.”
Sharon stared down the highway, first at the rapidly shrinking rear end of the bus, then at the empty stretch of road, long enough to finish the bag of FruChocs. She sighed and walked back inside the petrol station.
“Shaz!” The young fella was hanging up the phone as she walked in. “I reckon you’re going to miss your bus if you don’t hurry.”
He gestured out the window at the stretch of empty bitumen where the bus had sat.
“I do believe it’s a bit late for that,” Sharon said, “but I was hoping you could tell me when the next bus to Nara will come through.”
“Should be through in about six hours, love. I can sell you a ticket if you like.”
The thought of spending six hours in the petrol station leapt uncomfortably to the front of Sharon’s mind, only to be knocked suddenly off its feet when Sharon reached for her purse. For where her purse would be if it was in and her handbag was hanging off her shoulder. Her thoughts now ran rapidly backwards through the last fifteen minutes, right back to the point when she placed her purse in her handbag and left her handbag sitting on her seat in the bus. The bus which was now speeding towards Adelaide.
“Well fuck me.”
She smiled at the young man.
“Do you suppose . . .” she began.
“No fear, love,” the man grinned back. “No money, no ticket. No ticket, no bus.”
Her smile tightened.
“Do you think I might use your phone again?” She asked.
The young man waved nonchalantly at the phone and watched as Sharon first sorted through the rubbish bin for a wrinkled scrap of paper, then rang Mr. Marshman. He did not answer. Nor did he answer when she rang again.
Sharon waited ten minutes, tapping her nails against the counter and periodically glancing up at the young man, before ringing again with no greater success.
“Well . . .”
She caught herself this time. Other than the clothes she currently was wearing, two large suitcases and her handbag comprised everything she’d brought to Australia, including her wallet, her phone, and the assorted miscellany that makes up the bulk of a lady’s travelling accoutrements.
Things at that moment could have gone much worse for Sharon had she not spied, in a rack of promotional brochures for the region’s best tourist destinations, a poorly drawn picture of a wallaby fucking a rat.
“The Miracle of Evolution!” The brochure proudly proclaimed. “Now Featuring the Bilby!” A phone number was printed on the back.
* * *
It took four and a half hours for Australian Charles Darwin to arrive. Perhaps due to his extensive study of the preservation habits of Australian wildlife, he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut when he saw Sharon. Back in his ute, he quietly presented her with a sandwich. Her self-interest overcame culinary disquietude and she bit silently into the sandwich without inquiring into the taxonomic classification of its fillings, then fell asleep.
She awoke to the gentle laughter of a kookaburra and the smell of coffee. She lay perfectly still while she waited for her hippocampus to rouse from its own slumber, then held her breath and rolled ever so slowly towards the picture window behind her. Through it she could see a collection of gum trees, bananas, and an anatopistic selection of office furniture, but no shrieking primate mouth. She breathed out slowly.
“I had some kava left over from a research trip to Bali last year. I mixed it into their fruit mash earlier this morning. They’ll be sleeping all day.”
Australian Charles Darwin was standing in the doorway to Sharon’s room, looking a little tired from the drive, but still smiling.
“Coffee’s on. Got some eggs on toast for ya, too.”
Sharon smiled back at him.
“Come on Shazza. Gotta get out to the lawyer’s office this morning. Get your arse out of bed, then.”
Sharon yawned.
* * *
Samuel P. Marshman had the dual distinction of being Nara’s best and only lawyer. He carefully cultivated that reputation by being notoriously inaccessible, but today, he’d carved out exactly one hour to read the will of one Gerald G. Gardiner, a Naranian of some great repute who had almost single-handedly constructed the majority of the irrigation ditches that made the dry dirt of Nara’s native rolling hills into fertile slopes of golden grain. If Rog Shankey had harvested the fields of Nara’s success, and he surely had, Gerry Gardiner had watered them.
With the wealth created from his essential role in Nara’s success, Gerry had amassed a small fortune, and it seemed half the town had crammed into Marshman’s rather cramped offices to hear how it was to be apportioned. Sharon looked around for a place to stand, but quickly was directed to the front of the crowd where a hard wooden seat sat in front of Marshman’s desk. A piece of paper had been left on the seat by way of reservation. In bold letters was one word: “Shazza.”
Marshman himself was a small man, but he made up for by sitting behind a particularly large desk on which he’d spread two pieces of paper.
He cleared his throat and half the town listened.
“I, Gerald Gerald Gardiner . . .”
Half the town scratched half its collective head at this revelation.
“. . . being of sound mind do declare that this last will and testament expressed my clear wishes without any undue influence or distress.”
The formalities apparently completed, Marshman now paused. He looked up at the assembled crowd and seemed to consider the wisdom of what he was about to say.
“Gerry was pretty adamant I just write down what he had to say,” he explained to the expectant audience.
“You know Gerry was pretty, uhh, adamant in his wishes.”
Half the town nodded knowingly.
“And he, well he asked me to write down just what he had to say. Adamantly. So I, uh, I’m just going to go ahead and read what he’s got down here, then.”
Marshman continued with obvious reluctance.
“Marshman, you’re a slimy cunt and no fucking mistake about it. Are you writing this down? I paid you to write every fucking word of this down.”
Sharon seemed to be the only person in the room perturbed by this introduction. Other people in the room nodded and fanned away tears.
“He sounds like himself,” someone murmured.
Marshman continued.
“The Gardiner name is bound to die with me, but blowed if I’ll let my estate die with it. I can’t say a lot of good about that shithole brother of mine, who seemed to think he grew too big for this town. The best thing he ever seemed to do was to inconvenience some poor sheila with nine months of his mistakes. There’s not a lot of good to say to about him, but the best thing he seemed to accomplish with his life was to leave a trail of progeny that led to my grand-niece, Shazza.
And so I leave my entire estate to Shazza, subject to the condition that she live on the land for not less than ten years and that she use the land only for pastoral or agricultural purposes.”
Marshman looked up.
“That’s the bloody lot of it.”
Half the town turned to stare at Sharon.
She stared back at Marshman.
“The estate includes Gerry’s house and all the belongings therein, his deposits at the First Bank of Nara and his holdings in Shankey’s Automated Hay Rakes. All that’s left is to determine the bounds of the land you’ve inherited, Shazza.”
“It’s . . . ”
But she fell into silent shock as Marshman turned from the will to the large piece of paper next to it, on which was platted the land on and surrounding Virgo Road. Marshman drew lines across the page as he described the bounds. Gerry had bought the first parcel some fifty odd years ago with the proceeds from an irrigation ditch that connected most of the major farmers in the area, and he’d added to it over the years. Marshman read the coordinates and marked them out across the map, running first away west away from the road, then turning north and navigating strange twists along dry river beds and ancient walking paths before turning east again and cutting a line straight through a parcel of land marked “ACDPZACFES.”
Half the town gasped, but none so loudly as Australian Charles Darwin, who was sitting at Sharon’s side.
Sharon was perplexed.
“What the bloody hell is Ackduhpuhzackfees?” she asked.
Australian Charles Darwin mumbled something quietly.
“What’s that?” She asked again.
“It’s the Australian Charles Darwin’s Petting Zoo and Centre for bloody Evolutionary Studies,” he said again, somewhat bloody louder.
“As you can see,” Marshman explained, “the Gardiner estate is rather more extensive than prevailing wisdom suggests and it appears to run across some existing . . . uhh . . . structures and developments.”
“I built it a while back on a piece of my granddad’s land that ran up against old Gerry’s place. He was never one for fences, anyway, but I just went ahead and built the place on granddad’s land.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I don’t want it.” Sharon blurted out.
The silence returned, rather more awkwardly.
Marshman broke it with a gentle cough.
“It sounds like I’m being called upon to dispense some legal advice,” he announced, “which is best done with rather more privacy. Perhaps the rest of you would be so good as to give us the room.”
“I don’t want it,” Sharon repeated, when the room had emptied.
Marshman looked at her quizzically.
“I don’t want the house, I don’t want the land, and I sure as hell don’t want to live in bloody Nara.”
Marshman nodded.
“Fair enough,” he said. “There’s always been those who can’t tolerate the pleasures of pastoral life. We can get started on the paperwork for you to renounce your interest immediately, at which point the land will escheat to the crown.”
He removed some papers from his desk drawer.
“I’ll get started on that matter right away, of course, but it will take me some time. Why don’t you enjoy the rest of what might be your last day in Nara, and I’ll have these sent over for your signature in the morning?”
Sharon nodded quietly.
“Yes. I . . . uh . . . yes. I’ll see about finding my bags, I suppose.”
Marshman smiled up at her. “And you’ll be needing you wallet, also, of course.”
Sharon paused. Yes, she thought. She’d need to buy a bus ticket to Adelaide, but Marshman’s simple smile seemed to suggest something more.
Marshman broke the silence.
“Your debts to the estate?” he explained.
Sharon stared at him with no greater comprehension.
“You came here by way of a plane ticket provided to you by your great uncle’s estate, yes?” Marshman asked.
She nodded.
“And a bus ticket, also, for the trip from Adelaide to Nara? Those tickets were paid for by funds from your uncle’s estate. If you renounce your interest in the estate, you will, of course, be required to compensate the estate for the benefits you received therefrom. I will include a more exact total in the materials I send to you tomorrow morning, but I expect it will be in the vicinity of four thousand dollars.”
Sharon sat in stunned silence.
“I’ll also include a bill for my time for the conversation we’re currently having.” He smiled again and checked his watch.
Sharon opened her mouth, but, finding that she had nothing quite appropriate to say under the circumstances, closed it again, stood up from her chair, and left the room rather quickly.
* * *
She walked the whole way back to Australian Charles Darwin’s Petting Zoo, kicking stones and cursing her luck.
As she neared the Zoo, Sharon came across a rather strange sight. A bright yellow line led from just to the left of his letterbox back down past his driveway. It narrowly missed the side of his house and continued all the way up to the new accommodations he’d put in with the Home and Away money. As she got closer, she could see that the line went straight up the wall of the building and over the roof. She wandered around and picked up the line on the other side of the building where it cut through the literary enclosure. Sharon peered inside. The line extended across the floor of the enclosure, up a tree in the middle, and across the sloth, who seemed oblivious to this state of affairs and happily munched a fistful of leaves.
Half the leaves were covered in yellow paint.
Sharon kept following the line across the path and into the herpetarium, where she found Australian Charles Darwin painting a yellow line across a red bellied black snake. She cast a shadow as she entered the dimly lit building and he looked up.
“Hey Shazza,” he said morosely.
“What’s the story with the paint?”
“Well, I know you’re going back to England and everything, so it sounds like Gerry’s land is going to be reverting to the Crown. They’ve already got one or two cutting edge centers for the scientific study of flora and fauna. I don’t reckon they’ll have much use for another.”
He looked up at the sign on the wall next to the snake enclosure.
The Evolution of the Snake: Stumpy Gets Lucky
He sighed.
“I didn’t realise, Shazza!” He protested. “I bought the place a while back and Gerry never was one for fences! He even came around a few times to see the roos and learn about symbiotic evolution. I call it the ‘Wingman Effect.’ He came around to see my lesson on drop bears twice! It’s not even scary the second time around but he still held his fork up and everything!”
Sharon was at a loss.
“I . . .” she began. But she had no idea how to finish. “I . . .”
“It’s not your fault, Shazza.” Australian Charles Darwin said, softly. “But I reckon this painting’s maybe a one man job.”
Sharon nodded, turned away, and walked back into the blinding sunlight.
Sharon didn’t know what to do with herself for the rest of the day. She would normally busy herself packing, but she had nothing to pack except the clothes she was wearing. After three beers and an hour of Neighbours reruns, Australian Charles Darwin was still somewhere out back drawing lines on the ground, and Sharon decided she needed a taste of home.
Janelle’s phone rang long enough that Sharon began to think she’d missed her. It was 8:01 on a Tuesday morning in Surrey, and Sharon reckoned Janelle would just be waking up. She’d decided to give her two more rings when she heard a click.
“Hello?” Said the voice on the other end of the line.
Sharon had opened her mouth to scream a particularly pommy good morning, but her voice caught in her throat.
“Hello?” The voice came across again, and it was much deeper than Sharon had anticipated, although not entirely unknown.
She swallowed hard.
“Alan?”
She heard Janelle’s voice come muffled from the other end of the line.
“Who is it, Al?”
The phone rustled as if hastily pressed against the worn pink terry-cloth fabric of a woman’s dressing gown that had been stretched, somewhat ineffectively, across a man’s frame.
It rustled some more, then Sharon heard Janelle’s voice.
“Sharon?”
Sharon opened her mouth to respond, but for the second time that day found herself lost for any words that would be appropriate for the circumstances.
She hung up the phone.
* * *
True to his word, Marshman had the papers delivered the next morning. He’d helpfully flagged the signature line and had taped a pen to the front of the package. Sharon got the feeling that he wasn’t terribly disappointed in her decision.
Australian Charles Darwin, however, was glum. He had promised to drive her by Marshman’s office on the way to the bus stop, but refused to let her get on her way without a hearty breakfast. Not long after, however, they were pulling out of Australian Charles Darwin’s driveway, past the fresh yellow line and the sign inviting allcomers to learn about the Origin of the Bloody Species. Just a short way down the road, Australian Charles Darwin slowed and turned up a small gravel driveway.
Sharon looked over at him curiously.
“You’ve got to at least take a look at the place before you leave.” He reasoned. “And I reckon there’s at least a couple of photos you might want.”
Sharon looked at his face for any indication of subterfuge, but found none.
A pair of palm trees framed the end of the driveway. Australian Charles Darwin parked in the gravel and Sharon got out to look around at what she was giving up. A corrugated iron roof stretched down over a verandah wrapping around all four sides of the house. Birds of paradise grew around a large rainwater tank set off to the side of the house and yaccas lined a red brick path up the front steps. She felt a cool breeze flowing from the back of the house as she stepped inside. It was a simple house, but not at all short on space. To her right, a large open kitchen with broad windows looking over the scrub towards the petting zoo. To her left, the living room, all wide pine floors and jarrah inlays. The mantel against the far wall was covered in photographs. She spotted a familiar picture of her father when he was just a boy, wearing denim overalls at the river and holding a fish proudly overhead. She walked over and picked up another in which Gerry, almost indistinguishable from her father at the same age, stood in a pair of tiny shorts on the bonnet of an ancient car.
Voices startled her from quiet contemplation and she turned to see Australian Charles Darwin with the television remote in his hand.
“Have a go, Shaz!” he blurted out. “Gerry had bloody cable put in!”
Sharon looked at Australian Charles Darwin’s smiling face and down at the picture in her hands. She looked back through to the kitchen windows at the petting zoo in the distance. She thought about the taste of a cappuccino and a kitchener bun in the morning and roo stew at night and she remembered how frigidly fucking cold Surrey gets in the winter. And she looked with wonder at this strange and wonderful man who’d drugged his monkey so she could get a good night’s sleep.
She smiled back at Australian Charles Darwin.
“Do you think he gets EastEnders?”
Welcome to Narangong 