Page 77 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
A traffic jam greeted them at the turn-off to the Adaminaby race track.
Utes were parked three abreast in the carpark, with picnic rugs and deck chairs and eskies spilling out of their trays onto the parched grass below. A few of the women were teetering about on crazy-high heels, the blokes were in the bloke uniform—jeans, plaid shorts, boots, fancy belt—and food trucks had queues stretching in loose snakes waiting for their coffee or their loaded wedges or their banh mi.
Tom turned to look at Hannah. It had taken him months to work out that when she’d hung up her scrubs and stethoscope for the day, she pulled up a barrier between her and the big bad world, but now he was clued in, the signs were everywhere.
When tourists had walked past them in Hanrahan because the only park he’d found was on a back street? Hannah busied herself on her phone, looked down at the pavement, hugged her arms about herself. When they’d driven through Berridale, had Hannah looked in the window of the car pulled up next to them at the crossing? Nope. Eyes fixed straight ahead. No wave, no engagement.
Was it habit? Or did she need to distance herself like that?
Today’s beanie and oversized sunglasses were another example, perhaps, of her disinclination to be noticed.
But she’d invited him out, remember?
‘You ready?’
‘Yes,’ she said brightly. Her knuckles looked a little white where they held her handbag in a death grip, but he took her at her word.
He got out of the car and walked around to her side. ‘Need a distraction? I can give you a monologue on any subject. Let’s see, I’ve got topics aplenty: useful knots for seafaring, how to clear brushtail possums from an abandoned building, ultimate payback strategies involving frogs in boots …’
She smiled and bumped her head into his shoulder. ‘I know what you’re doing and it’s very sweet. Also: it’s working. Tell me about racehorses. When did you develop an interest in them? I thought stockhorses were the Krauss family bread and butter.’
‘That’s Bruno’s thing. And Buttercup’s more of a hobby than the start of a racing empire. I bought her when I was—’ He broke off. Damn it. He couldn’t make slips like that.
‘Tom?’
He flicked Hannah a glance. ‘I was missing my old life in the Navy when I bought Buttercup.’ Which was true. ‘She was already in foal and her owners were a syndicate who had had some sort of personality blow-up, so co-owning a horse had become a problem. I was missing the adrenalin rush of my career and owning a racehorse seemed a good alternative.’
Hannah made an indistinct noise.
He grinned. ‘What?’
‘It’s just … it’s peacetime. I thought all you Navy types did was patrol the Torres Strait for illegal fishermen, play cards and make awesome recruitment ads.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Wow. That’s like saying all vets do is shove thermometers up cat bums. Us Navy types see plenty of action, even in peacetime, especially when we’re seconded out to the Middle—’ The tug in his lower back reminded him his role overseas was not up for conversation because a) it was unethical to blab about military operations even when you’d hung up your sea boots and b) he’d signed about six hundred non-disclosure agreements and wasn’t keen on a prison term for breaking said agreements.
He backtracked to the cover story he’d used ever since he left his operational role in the Royal Australian Navy and switched to covert naval support. ‘I was an analyst with a desk job. Biggest threat in my nine-to-five was from a paper cut.’
‘Really? But you just said you missed the adrenalin rush.’
He put on a wounded face. ‘Paper cuts can be extreme.’
‘Right. I guess that would explain the scar on the back of your hand.’
A barnacle from a hull had torn through his neoprene glove. He’d been at a depth of twenty feet, attaching a listening device to a merchant vessel in the Persian Gulf, a vessel reputed to be running crystal methamphetamine from Bandar Abbas to Istanbul. The blood loss would have worried him if he’d been in the Atlantic, but the Persian Gulf’s biggest predator had been swimming alongside of him, a Special Ops diver from the Turkish government in a joint mission anchored by the US Navy. Good times.
‘Not quite a paper cut,’ he said at last. He could make up some bullshit reason but he didn’t have the heart for it.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘What do you mean, uh-huh?’
‘It’s just … you always sound a little glib when you talk about yourself. Like you’re giving some presentation to a group of strangers and any minute now you’re going to click through to the next slide in your presentation and change topics.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound glib. I guess life here in the country is so far removed from anything I worked on in the Navy, it’s hard to reconcile them.’
They’d cleared the carpark and reached the people queueing at the gate for entry. Families had brought eskies with them, some even had marquees, and the row of small, red-tin-roof grandstands already looked crowded. ‘There’ll be journos here covering the races for the local paper. Are you going to be okay with that?’
Her hands were busy winding her scarf about her face so she was covered throat to nose. Between the dark glasses and green woolly cap she was now mostly hidden.
