When I get home, the place seems emptier than before, as if Mercy’s absence is a negative presence.
For the first time since Em died, I wish I had a pet to greet me at the door, be glad I’m finally home, demand my attention. How long is it since another living being touched me?
I think about the animals we’ve shared our lives with. With my beloved, they were always going to come as part of the package. Is there a vet anywhere in the world who doesn’t have pets?
While she was finishing her course at the RVC, there were none in our shared life. They were banned from her poky student digs and I was too busy bouncing around on the dot-com bubble for that kind of responsibility.
I got to hear all about the exploits of her horses, dogs and pet cow back in Australia, though. So I knew what I was eventually in for.
When I wasn’t with Em, I was at the ‘office’. First Tel’s parents’ lock-up garage in Brentwood, then in dizzy succession: a corner of a shabby warehouse in Walthamstow; a yuppy loft overlooking Camden Lock; a suite at Canary Wharf.
It was all built on venture capital. Credit was cheap and the times were utterly bonkers.
Our steep trajectory attracted the attention of much bigger players. We were clearly going places, and the fact that we still hadn’t turned a profit didn’t rate a mention. We were made an offer we would’ve needed balls of steel to refuse. So we took the cash and scarpered.
This was in late 1999. A few months later, the bubble went pop.
It was more luck than two lads from Basildon Comprehensive could expect in a lifetime. Maybe I used up my quota right there.
So, there we were, Tel and I, walking clichés of the Millennium: thirty-year-old dot-com millionaires. We took a break from work while the dust settled. Tel got spiritual, went to live in an ashram, changed his name to something I couldn’t pronounce. Our correspondence became sporadic and baffling.
My spiritual awakening followed a different path.
I followed Em to Australia, from the noise and grime of London to the quiet Victorian bush, and moved in with her family and the other animals. Sorry, cheap joke.
I popped the question; she said ‘What took you?’ It was a big bush wedding.
If I thought I was going to lead a life of rustic leisure, I was mistaken. There’s no room for loafers on a farm, I found out. My days became a busy routine of mucking out stables, shovelling cow shit, carrying feed buckets. In time I graduated to cleaning tack and sticking those sucky things on cows’ tits.
When we bought our own property, Em’s dogs and horses came with us. Betsy the Cow was left behind with her bovine mates.
I’ve never trusted horses. Great bitey, hoofy things. A tonne of muscle and bone with the nervy temperament of a much smaller creature. A hamster or something. So Em’s horses and I were in a permanent state of uneasy truce. Hostilities could break out at any moment.
Little Beanie the fox terrier got very old. When her heart gave out, we buried her in a shady corner of the home paddock. Then Bazza the kelpie followed her. We were suddenly dogless.
Em missed her doggoes, so I was relieved when one day she brought home from work a German Shepherd pup. Tiny, blue-eyed. Too young to be separated from his mother, but dumped by the roadside. Arseholes, some people.
The tiny pup grew fast, became gangly, clownish, with huge paws. The big eyes turned amber. We called him Herby for some reason I forget.
That dog adored Em. I was tolerated as my wife’s tiresome but harmless, slightly imbecilic hanger-on.
We talked about adding a cat to our household to keep the rodents down, but the thorny environmental issues around cats in the bush put us off. Merciless hunting of ground-nesting birds, lizards and amphibians, the native mammals we hoped to reintroduce.
A pity, because cats are the only pets I really see the point of, to be honest. I admire their independence and cynicism.
After the Disaster, the horses had to be found new owners. I couldn’t look after them, obviously. With the help of Em’s horsey mates, loving homes were located and I said goodbye to the animals with mixed feelings. The mixture being joy and relief.
That left Herby. We got on okay, and I was glad of his company.
The dog, who’d grown into an austere, shaggy giant, seemed to think I was doing an alright job. Though there were times when he looked at me accusingly, as if I were keeping his beloved mistress somewhere and when was I going to bring her home?
‘Sorry, mate. I want her back too. Like nothing on Earth.’
Herby would put his big head on his front paws and breathe a great gust of a sigh. We bonded through despair.
Yeah, well, that all changed.
I was working on the old farm dam we’d rechristened the Wetlands.
Early sketch maps show it as a chain of ponds and marshes. Then, some time in the mid-twentieth century, Farmer Brown came along with a shiny new bulldozer and a bright idea: scoop out this useless bit of bog, turn it into a dam for livestock.
He made a thorough job of it. Then he dug a bore and installed a windmill to pump water from the aquifer, deep below the surface.
Now, the aquifer is pristine fossil water – not the slightly saline surface water the rare endemic plant community needed. If any plants survived the scraping of the dozer blade and the trampling hooves of thirsty cattle, they were poisoned by the too-fresh water.
Fast-forward sixty years, and enter two cashed-up greenies.
Our plan was to restore the Wetlands to their natural ecology. We’d decommissioned the bore and were allowing the hollow to fill naturally from the water table and seasonal rains.
Then one greenie died, and there was one sad, lonely little greenie left. Trying not to let his wife’s legacy go to shit.
It was an unremarkable spring afternoon.
On the back of the ute were a few hundred club-rush tubestock, and I was planting them out in the boggy soil of the water’s edge. I had no enthusiasm for the task, but it had to be done or they’d die, and Em had grown them.
Planting was methodical work. I’d already laid out, cut and pinned down the jute matting. It would rot away as the plants grew, but meanwhile protect the banks from erosion.
Next the planting holes: the routine was to stick the sod plugger in the pre-cut slits in the jute, stand on the footplate, extract; on to the next. Invert the plugger every once in a while and shake the plugs out of the tube.
Then the planting, which I found easiest to do kneeling: coax the plant out of its plastic tube; plonk it in the hole; squidge down the soil around the little plant to ensure good root contact; shuffle along on my knees to the next hole.
Hundreds upon hundreds of times.
Toward evening I got up to stretch – and realised the surface of the water was vibrating. I thought at first it was a tractor or other heavy machinery in the next paddock, causing the concentric ripples.
Only there was no sound of a motor. Just a ringing which I put down to blocked ears.
One side of my face suddenly felt taut, hot and dry, a sensation which has since become familiar to me. Irritated, I pushed my hat back on my head, rubbed my eyes.
Then the screaming began.
The air pulsated with this omnidirectional shrieking, on and on. A chorus of inhuman voices raised in pain or anger. Unbearable. I sank to my knees, pressed my hands over my ears, screwed my eyes tight shut.
That’s when I became aware the ripples weren’t in the pond. I could still see them, on the insides of my eyelids.
Through the rising panic it jolted my memory. Of course! The migraine attacks I’d had as a kid. The panic eased, so did that horrible screaming. I opened my eyes and found that I could see, just about.
What I saw were two big amber eyes.
Herby had been off, happily poking his big nose down rabbit burrows in the next paddock. Now he was advancing towards me, around the edge of the pond, crouched low, lips drawn back from those fearsome teeth.
Instinct told me there was no use commanding him.
He meant business, and his business was to tear me to pieces.
I have no idea how I covered the ten paces to the ute before Herby got to me, but somehow I was inside, the door was shut and he was hurling himself against it. Gobs of saliva splashed across the driver’s side window; there was a sickening thud every time the big dog launched himself. Claws scrabbled on metal and glass. He didn’t bark or even growl, he just grunted with each impact.
I was trapped in the ute in the paddock for half an hour, with Herby prowling around. I’d shut the gate behind me, driving in, and nothing was going to get me out of the vehicle to open it.
Eventually I reached Tony, my neighbour, on his mobile. He arrived on his quad bike with a rifle. Herby didn’t attack him, just stood there panting, blood and saliva dripping from his muzzle, and let himself be shot.
It will stay with me my whole life.
A psychotic episode, the vet said later. As if that explained anything.
I felt I’d let Em down, betrayed her.
Of course I had to tell Shona and John, her parents. I don’t think they ever grasped the ferocity of it, the horror, the necessity of putting Herby down. Our relationship grew frosty.
No dog for me, after that.
What was it about me that suddenly made him hate me so intensely? What flaw in myself had I revealed?
Next week in Blind Spot:
Chapter 6: Grand Tour
Mercy gets shown around the farm, and makes a discovery of her own.
Acknowledgement of Country: This story is set on the lands of the Djargurd Wurrung, while the author lives on Wadawurrung country. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned herein are the product of the author’s imagination. The locations are based on real places.
Hey Steve. I listened to this for a second time, while listening on air pods, and became more aware of how good you are at writing a story. People like me just write a string of associated ideas and images, but you know how to plot a story. Your voice adds to the experience. Like handwriting, it is a feedback loop with the production of personality.
What flaw in myself had I revealed? Beautiful. Listened to the audio while reading. I like your voice, mate. I have to try that.