Bright Air - Barry Maitland [30]
They hauled him to his feet and brushed him down, while I recovered his stick, still not sure what was going on. Finally, grasping a stiff shot of whisky in a plastic cup, he told us that he’d discovered what he believed to be the entrance to a platypus burrow, hidden behind a tangle of roots on the opposite bank of the pool. From his pocket he produced a tiny triple-cusped tooth which he’d found at the waterline, which he said had belonged to an infant platypus, discarded at the time of its leaving the breeding burrow. My rescue efforts caused much predictable amusement, and I had to put up with a good deal of ribbing while we ate lunch.
Afterwards, as the others moved away, Marcus waved me over and proceeded to give me a detailed critique of everything that was wrong with my climbing technique. He was quite merciless and I felt humiliated as I stood there, staring at the ground. It was all no doubt absolutely true and invaluable, but I found it hard to absorb those quiet, relentless words. Then, when he had finished, he asked me to help him up, and led me to a clearing nearby. I didn’t notice anything at first, but then I made out a small area in the middle that had been demarcated by plastic strips driven edge-on into the soil.
‘A square metre of forest floor,’ he said. ‘What do you see?’
I shrugged. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing. And what would it be worth?’
I looked blank, not sure what this game was all about.
‘Come on, Mr Merchant Banker. What would this fetch on the market? What’s its dollar value, would you say?’
He was pissing me off now, so I said again, ‘Nothing.’
He smiled. ‘Right. Now, go and do some more climbing, and remember what I just told you—especially the way you’re handling that rope, otherwise you’ll end up hanging from the ankle upside down.’ Then he added, ‘I should know.’
The way he said it made me look at his face, and I saw a smile, and had the sudden vivid impression that he cared and that it was as if he’d been lecturing his own younger self. The trick of a good teacher, I suppose.
At the end of the day’s climbing I stood beside Damien watching the two women on a final pitch. We had gone well that afternoon, becoming much more effective as a pair, but nowhere near as intuitively understanding of each other’s moves as Anna and Luce. As always, I was captivated by the grace and speed of Luce’s ascent. Although, being smaller, her reach was less than the men’s, her strong slender fingers were able to grip narrow fissures and creases on which we could get no purchase. Her strength-to-weight ratio was about perfect, and she seemed to glide across the rock, as if she had some innate knowledge of its inflexions and could effortlessly match her body’s movements to them.
‘Climbs like a bloody angel, doesn’t she?’ Damien murmured at my side, and I realised he’d been watching me, engrossed in my study of Luce.
‘Yes, amazing. What’s she like in the lab?’
‘Marcus says she’s the best student he’s ever had.’
I encountered Marcus again when we’d descended to the valley floor. He was in the clearing, half crouched, half lying beside his square metre of dirt. I knew better than to try to rescue him this time.
‘Ah, the merchant banker. How did it go?’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’re climbing better together, Damien and I.’
‘Yes,’ he said absently, entering something in his notebook, as if we were an experiment he’d already disposed of. There was a field microscope and a magnifying glass lying beside his square metre, which I saw had been excavated to a depth of twenty centimetres or so. ‘How about you?’
‘Yes, I’ve been studying your patch of worthless nothing. This is what I’ve got so far.’
He showed me his book with its entries and calculations under a series of species headings. As he explained the scribbles I began to understand his point—that the area had been teeming with life: ants, lice, spiders, mites, and then increasingly minute specimens, their numbers meticulously totted up, amounting to a whole township,