Chapter Two
CHAPTER
2
Just as the Viking decreed, my collarbone is broken. When the hospital discharged me late last night, I was told I’d be in a sling for a month and then I’d need physiotherapy. After four to six weeks, I should be okay to drive.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
Even though I’ve been propped up on pillows all night, it takes a few minutes to wriggle upright and hang my legs over the side of the bed. My chest is painful, as is my arm, and the rest of my body is stiff. I’m woozy from the painkillers I was given at the hospital.
My phone vibrates on my side table. ‘Hi, Grandpa.’ I talk through a yawn.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks.
‘It could be worse.’
‘You shouldn’t be on your own. Why not go to Sydney and stay with your mum for a while?’
‘That’d set my recovery back by months.’
‘Not with that fancy swimming pool she’s got. And the giant bath with all those bubbles.’
‘It’s called a spa, Grandpa.’
‘You’d have a bedroom as big as the saddlery, and a bathroom as big as your bedroom.’
‘You left out Mum’s massage therapist, herbalist, and the orthopaedic surgeon who lives across the road. Stop taking her calls, Grandpa. I want to stay here with you.’
‘Trouble is, I’m stuck in this bed and no help at all. Get yourself to Sydney, young lady.’
Pain shoots through my arm as I push myself upright. Biting hard on my lip, I focus on the slowly opening door. Keith Urban, our blue-eyed kelpie with tan and brown fur, trots into the room and runs tail-wagging circles around my legs.
‘Mackenzie? Are you okay, love?’
‘I was planning to take a few days off and this has brought it forward.’ I ruffle Keith Urban’s ears. ‘I like to be at home, Grandpa, you know that.’
My grandfather bought this cottage not long before he and Grandma were married. In the next few years, he fenced the paddock, planted scores of eucalypts and created a garden. Wattle trees, bursts of yellow from August to October, shield the cottage from the shed that holds most of our tools and equipment. The rest of the garden is a mix of groundcovers and native trees and shrubs like kangaroo paw, banksia and boronia. The cottage is small, a kitchen and sunroom out the back, three modest bedrooms, a laundry and a bathroom. Grandma gave her blessing to convert the living room into a workshop. Off that is the front verandah where for over fifty years Grandpa spent most of his days.
Until he couldn’t.
***
On Wednesday after getting a load of wet washing out of the machine and draping it over chairs because I can’t lift my arm to hang it on the line, I spend the morning at the kitchen table, sipping tea and sorting accounts. Beyond the paddock is the tail end of hundreds of hectares of state-owned national park. On a clear day, if I were to stand on a chair and look out of my westerly facing bedroom window, I could make out the disused open-cut coal mine that scars the landscape.
A series of emails pop into my inbox. I have three from clients, two from the admin assistant at Grandpa’s nursing home, and one from the Viking. Heart in my mouth, I read:
Miss Henry,
Astrid gave me your email. She told me Gordon Henry is unwell.
As you are a co-applicant on your grandfather’s submission to the Polar Institute, you can take his place.
When can we meet?
Kit Thorsen
The Viking scowled when Astrid said I was a troubleshooter, but according to the Polar Institute website he’s a troubleshooter too. After graduating from university, he worked as a scientist specialising in climate, but that’s not why Astrid assumed I’d know who he was or why Wendy the paramedic blushed when she recognised him. After featuring in a documentary on Antarctica that won an Academy Award, he’s starred in a spectacularly successful documentary series that’s streamed all over the world.
I take two strong painkillers before walking to the community centre. Claudine Fortier, a capable woman with a generous smile and wavy brown hair, came to Summerfield to fill a temporary position with the council but ended up staying long term. In addition to being employed as a librarian and community worker, she volunteers at the Ladies Auxiliary, and last year she started up the Recycling Shed, where retired men and younger men looking for employment work on projects to improve skills and benefit the town.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she says in shock when I ask about the documentary series. ‘You’d never heard of Kit Thorsen?’
‘He got his start in a one-off documentary, didn’t he? And that led to other things.’ I smile apologetically. ‘I don’t watch much TV.’
In the first episode of the documentary series, the Viking is wearing a hooded jacket and working on a laptop in a tiny snow-bound cabin. In response to a question, he talks about the importance of tracking seals to monitor oceanic conditions and then he goes back to his keyboard. In the second episode, he and a colleague are on a rock shelf above the stormy Southern Ocean. When the other man slips, a seal they’ve caught is at risk of getting away. The Viking dives, hauling the seal out of the shallows and securing it in a net. Still on his knees, he pushes dripping wet hair from his face, looks up at the camera through startling blue eyes and laughs. Then, in answer to a question, he speaks passionately about Antarctic environments and the preservation of habitat and species.
For the remainder of the series (and from what Claudine tells me, for the next two series), the Viking—on ships, inflatables and kayaks, on rocky outcrops, glaciers, sheets of ice and mountain tops—anchors the show.
When I told the paramedic my name, the Viking clearly knew it. What did you say? How long has he been in Australia? Is he combining meetings with visits to his reputed ex-girlfriend, the beautiful raven-haired Chloe? If they are exes, they’re friendly ones.
By the time I get home from the community centre, I’m not only aching all over but riddled with uncertainty. Two more painkillers, then I search through Grandpa’s ‘important things to do’ folders, finally finding the one that I want in the back of the cupboard in his bedroom. I feel guilty about reading it without asking, but before he was unwell, Grandpa talked about the snow bloke, and mentioned he had a deadline for a project he wanted to surprise me with. On the morning that I drove him to the hospital for tests, he winked and said, ‘I need to get back because the Norwegians are coming.’ If I hadn’t been so busy with work, if his health hadn’t deteriorated so rapidly, he would have explained what he was so excited about.
‘This will give me the heads-up Grandpa intended I have,’ I reassure myself.
The folder answers some questions but raises many others. There’s no mention of the Viking. The submission to the Polar Institute is only a draft, and the email correspondence with Erik Neilson, a man linked to the Polar Institute and past documentaries, is sketchy, but Grandpa’s handwritten notes suggest a nominee from the institute could visit Summerfield to discuss a documentary about the closure of the Summerfield mine and plans for rehabilitation of the site.
I want to talk to Grandpa in person, but I’m too sore to walk to the nursing home on Thursday. By Friday, I have a cold that not only makes my eyes water when I cough or sneeze but rules me out of going anywhere near frail and elderly people.
A week after my fall, on Monday, I’ll finally get to see Grandpa again. I’ll ask about his submission to the Polar Institute and then I’ll respond to the Viking.