‘Did it get you?’ He leaned in hard until the animal was subdued again.
‘I’m okay –’ He heard her move. ‘I’m going to try the smaller cutters. I don’t want to catch its skin.’
Nathan was straining a little to hold the calf. It was only a couple of months old but it was strong. It would weigh in heavier than Ilse, and Nathan reckoned he might only have about twenty kilograms on it. It didn’t matter, though. He was stronger and that was enough to make it do what he wanted. It lay still. Nathan listened to the frightened thump of the beast’s heart. And all at once, before he could stop himself, he thought of Cameron.
‘Ilse?’ he called.
‘Yeah?’ She was back by the hind legs.
‘I tried to ring Jenna Moore. In England.’
He couldn’t see her, but sensed her stiffen.
‘And?’
Nathan shook his head as best he could. ‘She wasn’t around.’
‘Where is she?’ He could hear the tension in her voice. Beneath that, a soft snipping sound.
‘Bali, according to her colleague.’ The calf strained, its eyes rolling in its head. He checked to see the mother was still keeping her distance, and leaned in. ‘Wherever she is, she’s out of phone range apparently.’
Neither said anything for a minute.Snip. Snip.
‘Why did you call her?’ He still couldn’t see Ilse but she sounded closer. He tried to lift his head to look and the calf sensed its opportunity. He gripped it harder.
‘I don’t know,’ he grunted.
‘Are you having second thoughts? About what she said about Cam?’
‘No,’ he said, too quickly. ‘It wasn’t that.’
She didn’t reply. Finally, he felt her stand up.
‘I’ve finished,’ she said.
Nathan rolled off the calf, which immediately righted itself and bounded away to its cross-looking mother. She threw Nathan an ungrateful sneer and the pair ran off together without as much as a backwards glance, happy to be at liberty once more.
He sat on the ground, breathing heavily. His muscles ached from the effort of holding the calf down. Above him, Ilse was clutching the strands of cut wire in her hands. She had tears in her eyes.
‘Shit. Ilse –’ He stood up. ‘I don’t know why I called. I just wondered what she had to say.’
Ilse fiddled with the wires. ‘Bali.’
‘Apparently.’
She said nothing for a long minute, then lifted her eyes to look at the horizon. ‘Lots of flights between Bali and Brisbane.’
Nathan didn’t reply. He walked over to his Land Cruiser to get a length of wire to repair the fence.
‘You think you’d always see someone out here,’ Ilse said when he got back. Her eyes were dry now. ‘But you can’t always, can you? If someone is standing still, or parked a long way away. It’s only when they start moving you even know they were there.’
Nathan thought about Lehmann’s Hill. ‘Bub was saying pretty much the same thing the other day.’
Ilse nodded. ‘I’ve heard Bub talk about that. Being able to tell when someone else is around.’
‘Yeah.’ Nathan crouched and used pliers to twist the snapped ends together with the new wire. ‘I reckon he’s right.’
‘Do you?’ Ilse sounded surprised. ‘Cameron always said that was ridiculous.’
