The Memory Tree (eBook)

Jennifer Scoullar (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019
298 Seiten
Pilyara Press (Verlag)
978-1-925827-24-8 (ISBN)

Infos

From Jennifer Scoullar, author of the bestselling Fortune's Son, comes the third book in the Tasmanian Tales series. The Memory Tree carries on this gripping saga of ambition, betrayal and dangerous love.

Playing God is a Dangerous Game

When forest protests engulf a tiny Tasmanian timber town, one family's century of secrets threatens to destroy a marriage - and bring down a government.

Matt Abbott, head ranger at beautiful Binburra National Park, is a man with something to hide.  He confides his secret to nobody, not even his wife Penny. The deception gnaws away at their marriage.

 Matt's father, timber and mining magnate Fraser Abbott, stands for everything Matt hates. Son disappoints father, father disappoints son - this is their well-worn template. But Fraser seems suddenly determined to repair the rift between them at any cost, and Matt will discover that secrets run in the family. When Sarah, a visiting Californian geneticist, tries to steal Matt's heart, the scene is set for a deadly betrayal.              

The Memory Tree is a haunting story of family relationships, the unbreakable ties we all have to the past and the redemptive power of love.           

 

Praise for Jennifer Scoullar

'Scoullar's writing has a rich complexity. Poetic and visual ... the landscape vivid and alive.' Reading, Writing  and Riesling 

'Jennifer Scoullar's passion for the land shines through ... Highly recommended.' Sunshine Coast Daily

'An absorbing story ... beautifully written.' Reading, Writing and Riesling
'Scoullar, it turns out, is a writer of documentary calibre ... lovely, lyrical prose.' The Australian.

Jennifer Scoullar lives on a farm in West Gippsland and has previously published six novels with Penguin Random house. A committed conservationist, she writes about the land, people and wildlife that she loves

Textauszug

Chapter 7

An hour passed. The road ran between blue gum canopies under a narrow ribbon of slate sky. It grew rougher and rougher as they climbed, causing the truck to pitch and slide. An iron rim of distant cliffs rose up ahead. Sarah seemed content to stare out the window, but she’d see no panorama. Trees hugged them too close, obscuring the view.

They were getting close now, close to where it had happened. Matt’s knuckles showed white on the wheel and he swallowed hard, bracing himself for that sick, swooping feeling in his stomach. He tried to concentrate on driving, working hard to coax the vehicle up the steep, rutted track.

‘Not much wildlife,’ said Sarah.

Matt barely heard her. He was reliving that fateful night a month ago. Going over and over what he was doing, what was he thinking, in the seconds before the young thylacine died? He’d been listening to music. Cold Play. Viva La Vida. A song about a fall from grace. He liked to sing along to the song, but he didn’t know all the words and was focused on the lyrics instead of the road. Is that what happened? Theo – the name he’d given the thylacine — died because he couldn’t remember the words of a damned song? Matt thumped the steering wheel, alarming Sarah. She looked at him for an explanation, but he said nothing so she went back to staring out the window.

‘Stop,’ said Sarah. ‘Is that a devil?’

Matt slammed on the brakes, then ran to a dark shape lying beside the road. Flies buzzed about. Congealed blood caked the animal’s coat and ran in a line from its mouth. He examined the ear-tagged devil more closely — a rare all-black male, dead less than twenty-four hours by the look of him. Matt felt sick. Was this Lazarus?

He fetched his scanner with a sinking heart, hoping he was wrong, but the animal’s microchip told the tale. Matt swore, feeling the prick of tears and a stomach-churning sense of déjà vu. This part of the park was closed to the public. Nobody else had access. He must have hit Lazarus last night on his way home from setting the camera traps. Matt examined his muzzle — healthy, with no deformity. If he was going to kill devils, couldn’t he at least pick on diseased ones? Thank goodness it was a male. He didn’t know how he or Penny would cope if he’d killed a female with pouch young.

‘So sad.’ Sarah squatted down for a closer look.

Matt gazed down at the dead devil. In flashback he saw a bleeding Theo instead. The sense of loss was overwhelming.

‘Who could have done this?’ asked Sarah. ‘Don’t only park staff came up here?’

‘It was me.’ Matt could hear the pain, the tremor in his own voice. He fetched a specimen bag from the jeep and placed the stiff corpse inside. Then he bent over the bonnet, closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind his neck.

Sarah touched his shoulder, her fingers softly stroking. ‘This wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.’

Was it an accident though? Or was it criminal carelessness? He hadn’t even noticed hitting the poor little devil. With first aid and a trip to Binburra’s hospital, Lazarus might have been saved. Instead he’d bled to death on a lonely roadside, while Matt kept driving down the mountain.

How would he tell Penny? How could she forgive him? Lazarus carried precious genes from a rare, almost extinct west coast population. They’d hoped he might inject some desperately needed hybrid vigour into Binburra’s devil colony. Penny’s Uncle Ray had delivered Lazarus to their door last summer. He’d hit the wild devil with his log truck in the Tarkine and driven all day to bring it to Binburra. Matt hadn’t realised Ray could be so sentimental. That bristly old bastard had taken a real shine to his rescued devil, bringing him marrow bones for treats while he recovered from his injuries and naming him Lazarus. Ray had never taken a shine to Matt, though, even at the best of times. Matt could only imagine what he’d say now.

‘Matt?’ asked Sarah. ‘Are you okay?’

Her soothing fingers still rubbed his shoulders. Unexpectedly, she ran her hand down his back. Matt let it linger for a second before standing upright. He was supposed to take Sarah to the main research sites. He was supposed to spend the day explaining how they monitored traps and recorded data, but he was too upset — too heavy with guilt and grief. He’d been living in a pressure cooker of his own making for weeks now, and Lazarus’s death was the final straw. What he needed was some time out, a chance to think things through, gain some perspective. What he needed was some peace, and he knew just where to find it. ‘Do you mind a change of plans?’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Sarah simply.

‘Loongana Warrawong,’ said Matt. ‘Tiger Pass.’

The road narrowed and narrowed again. Bracken and saplings punched through the track. Flattened by the jeep, they sprang back up behind, resilient, reclaiming the road. The country grew wilder, more rugged. Tall eucalypt forests gave way to sassafras, beech and leatherwood. The morning was cold and unnaturally calm. No wind tossed the trees or crumpled the light coverlet of cloud. They saw no bird or animal. The stiff plastic bag holding Lazarus crackled in the back, a constant reminder of his folly.

They rounded increasingly precarious hairpin bends, as the jeep climbed and climbed. An hour passed without a word. Somehow it wasn’t awkward, being silent with Sarah. Now she’d get her view. Each twist of the road revealed spectacular scenes of the range, in turn blanketed by forest or scarred by jagged bluffs. The once-distant granite cliffs loomed in the windscreen.

Matt parked the jeep when the road ran out and they walked between high stone walls into a rocky gorge. Fat little wallabies bounced across their path. The air here was thick with a chorus of birdsong – magpie, butcherbird and currawong. Bright parrots foraged in treetops, and butterflies swarmed on swathes of wildflowers. The bush pulsed with life.

Sarah gazed around, her expression one of pure delight. ‘Now this is more like it.’

Matt smiled. ‘It helps to get out of the car.’ Sarah made a face. Abruptly, he grabbed her arm above the elbow. ‘Don’t move.’

Sarah froze in mid-step. ‘What is it? A snake?’

Matt pointed to the path ahead of them. ‘See there?’

Sarah peered at the ground. ‘There’s nothing,’ she said at last.

‘It’s not what you look at,’ said Matt. ‘It’s what you see.’ He crouched down, indicating that she should do the same.

‘Caladenia anthracina. The black-tipped spider orchid.’ He pointed out a fragile finger-high purple and white flower. It poked bravely through the leaf litter, with petals like tiny striped tuxedo tails. Matt lay prone on the ground for a closer look and beckoned for Sarah to join him. She hesitated a little, then lay down flat beside him.

‘There aren’t leeches, are there?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘I heard there were leeches.’ Her body, from hip to shoulder, pressed lightly against him.

‘Shh.’ A tiny wasp zigzagged its way to the delicate bloom, grasped it with its legs, and thrust its abdomen in and out of the flower’s heart. ‘Darwin’s beautiful contrivance,’ Matt whispered. ‘The orchid mimics one specific species of female thynnine wasp. Frustrated males pollinate the flowers, whose seeds then germinate in symbiosis with one specific local soil fungus. These plants have evolved together with this particular place.’ He breathed a long sigh. ‘Perfect, isn’t it?’

The unsuspecting wasp flew away and Matt helped Sarah to her feet.

‘Is that orchid endangered?’ she asked.

‘Critically.’

‘Shouldn’t you make some sort of official report?’

‘And tell the world? No chance. That spider orchid has lived here quite happily since dinosaurs roamed the earth. It doesn’t need our interference. It needs to be left alone.’

Sarah frowned and began to argue the point. He put a forefinger to his lips. ‘Now, there’s something you don’t see every day.’ He pointed into the bushes. A line of spiny little echidnas trundled along, nose to tail. There must have been ten of them.

‘What on earth?’

‘That,’ said Matt, ‘is an echidna love train. A female leads the way. The rest are poor lovelorn males, hoping she’ll take pity on them. It might take six weeks before she agrees to group sex. Only the strongest, most persistent males get lucky.’

They watched the strange procession waddle off into the scrub. Matt brushed a beetle from Sarah’s hair as a long-legged bird with red eyes and slate grey wings stalked across their path.

‘It looks like an overgrown chicken,’ laughed Sarah.

Half-a-dozen more of the birds scooted past, one followed by fluffy black chicks. ‘Tasmanian native hens,’ said Matt. ‘Known locally as turbo-chooks. That bird with the chicks? She’s the single female in the group. Native hens are polyandrous.’

‘Which means?’

‘You know your Latin. Poly – many. Andro – men. The girls have harems of husbands.’

‘Nice,’ said Sarah. A laggard sprinted past, uttering a high, seesawing alarm call. ‘Tasmanian...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.9.2019
• Reihe/Serie: The Tasmanian Tales
• Reihe/Serie: The Tasmanian Tales
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Märchen / Sagen
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Australian fiction • family sagas • rural fiction • rural romance • small town fiction • Tasmanian Tigers • Women's Fiction
• ISBN-10: 1-925827-24-0 / 1925827240
• ISBN-13: 978-1-925827-24-8 / 9781925827248