Read Online Skylarking by Kate Mildenhall - Free Book Online

shelter, to be served tea, but this was something else.
    The birds sent up a clattering racket in the canopy above us; I thought I could smell the warm wetness of the kangaroo’s innards.
    McPhail went back to carving up the carcass, but this time he kept talking. ‘A bit tough, but good, meaty. Mrs Everett in Bennett’s River – her husband’s poorly and she asked that I bring her some meat if I could.’
    â€˜Can we watch?’
    â€˜Like I said, it’s no business for ladies.’ I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as if he were smiling. ‘Though, you don’t seem like one to be put off.’ He looked up at me directly.
    Grabbing Harriet’s hand I moved towards where McPhail was squatted over the carcass.
    The animal wasn’t a large male like I’d seen standing guard over mobs before. This one was smaller – a female I noted from the loose flap of pouch that had been sliced through. She faced away, eyes rolled back to the white, as if she couldn’t bear to watch him take her apart.
    I crouched down like McPhail and pulled Harriet with me.
    His big hands gripped the knife as he hacked at the leg joint; I noticed a blue-grey vein pulse in his neck. It thrilled me. There was a cracking sound, and a spray of bright blood spurted up. Harriet gasped, and I reared my head back, surprised by the sudden shoot of it, as though the animal were still alive.
    I glanced at Harriet and saw a fine spray of red across her cheek.
    McPhail was looking, too. He gestured towards his own cheek and said, ‘You’ve … here.’ The phrase seemed to escape him. ‘On your cheek.’
    Harriet’s white hands fluttered in front of her face, and she made a strange noise.
    I pulled a handkerchief from my bodice and reached out to wipe the smear away; the blood was bright on the lace and, as much as I tried afterwards to remove it, the stain was there for good. I found the handkerchief again, much later, and I folded it away to keep.
    It took the best part of the afternoon for McPhail to carve up that kangaroo. When he was finished, a canvas sack bulged at his feet. He was neat and methodical; he’d wrapped the dribbling pile of guts in paper and tucked them in the sack – good for catching sharks, he told us – and all that remained was a bloodied patch of ground.
    As we made to leave, knowing we would already be late home for supper, gathering our skirts as the afternoon’s light unravelled in the sky above us, Harriet paused, and I watched her place her hand gently on McPhail’s forearm, darkened with grime and blood.
    â€˜It’s kind, your taking the meat to Mrs Everett. She’ll be ever so grateful.’ And she left her hand there, a second longer than she ought.
    I would always wonder, when I had cause to return to the scene again and again in my mind: how did she know that one touch, placed just so, was all that was needed?

TWELVE
    E VER SINCE OUR MEETINGS WITH M C P HAIL , H ARRIET HAD come over all dreamy. We were helping in the washhouse one morning, a week or so after the incident with the kangaroo, when she stuck her hands straight into the copper right after it had come off the heat. She yelped and snatched them out as I pulled her towards the laundry trough.
    â€˜Harriet, what were you thinking?’ I said as I plunged her pink and steaming hands into cold water.
    â€˜I mustn’t have been thinking at all,’ she replied as she winced, and the water splashed over her skin.
    â€˜You’re ever so distracted.’
    â€˜Am not,’ she said swiftly, and I noted her haste.
    Harriet was ordered inside to rest and endure a salve applied to her hands, but I stayed in the washhouse, stirring the tubs and wondering what was preoccupying her mind. Perhaps it was a fisherman’s hand as it prepared tea in a billy, or sawed the flesh of a kangaroo.
    All through the next week she continued to be distracted and