“My grandparents said once that she was drunk. That she was an alcoholic. But my grandparents were against the marriage, they didn’t like my mother and never had a good word to say about her. I would have smelt it if she’d been an alcoholic. Children smell those things.”

Irene took my hand. I could tell exactly what she was thinking. Like your wife, she thought. I didn’t like that thought, but her eyes grew heavy, and I thought it was better that she slept the thought away than if I contradicted it. She fell asleep, and I held her hand and resented her.

18

Then I too smelled smoke. It had the sharp, sweet scent of eucalyptus; it was faint yet penetrating and almost intoxicating. I stood up and looked around, but I saw no smoke and no fire. The mountains, the cove, the trees, the bush, the jetty, the sea – everything looked the same.

Suddenly, Kari was standing next to me and signalled that I should come along. I wrote a note for Irene saying Kari had come and wanted to show me something. I thought we would take the Jeep, but Kari headed up the mountain in quick, light strides, and I struggled to keep up with him. I only knew the way the Jeep took, through the mountains along the coast into the rolling plain where the two farms lay. Now Kari led me up a path on one of the mountains. We went ever higher, the cove was small and blue beneath us like an illustration from Treasure Island. After half an hour we stood on the mountaintop.

The view stretched all the way to the mountain range on the far side of the plain. Even before I saw the fire, patches and lines of reddish gold on the mountains, I saw the smoke billowing black into the clear sky. When it drifted over a gorge where the fire was burning, it lit up gold-red. It lit up, too, when it passed over a mountain whose far side was already ablaze; the ember glow announced that the flames would soon reach the summit and crown it with fire. Then they ate their way down the mountain, and by the time they reached the bottom, they had devoured everything above, and left only embers, black ash, and charred wood.

Fire engines with flashing lights sped down the stretches of motorway that were visible. Helicopters flew over them.

“Will the fire reach us?”

“The plain is wide. But it’s dry, and if the fire jumps the motorway…” Kari shrugged.

“Then?”

“I don’t know. It depends on the wind. We still can’t smell much and we still can’t see too much smoke – the wind is still weak. But if it picks up…”

“Have you had a wildfire here before?”

“No, not here. Further north, though. The fire makes the wind and the wind drives the fire.”