The Bat(85)

When Harry closed his eyes he heard Andrew’s voice. Because, of course, it was Andrew lying next to him on the grass and sermonising about what was important and what was less important.

‘Have you heard the story about why the emu can’t fly?’

Harry shook his head.

‘OK, stick with me, Harry. In the Dreamtime the emu had wings and could fly. He and his wife lived by a lake where their daughter had married Jabiru, a stork. One day Jabiru and his wife had been out fishing and brought home a wonderfully big catch; they ate almost everything and in their haste forgot to leave the best bits for her parents, as they usually did. When the daughter took the remains of the fish to her father, Emu, he was furious. “Don’t I always give you the best bits when I’ve been hunting?” he said. He grabbed his club and a spear, and flew to Jabiru to give him a sound beating.

‘Jabiru, however, was not of a mind to let himself be beaten without offering any resistance, so he took a huge branch and knocked the club away. Then he hit his father-in-law first on the left and then on the right, breaking both wings. Emu crawled to his feet and slung the spear at his daughter’s husband. It pierced his back and exited through his mouth. Beside himself with pain, the stork flew to the marshes where it transpired the spear was useful for catching fish. Emu went to the dry plains, where you can see it running around with the stumps of broken wings, unable to fly.’

Joseph put the bottle to his lips, but there were only a few drops left. He eyed the bottle with an aggrieved expression and replaced the cork. Then he opened the second.

‘Is that more or less the same as your story, Joseph?’

‘Well, er . . .’

The bottle gurgled, and he was ready.

‘I worked as a parachute instructor up in Cessnok for eight years. We were a great bunch, excellent working atmosphere. No one got rich, neither us nor the owners; the club was driven by sheer enthusiasm. Most of the money we earned as instructors was spent on our own jumps. I was a good instructor. Some thought I was the best. Nonetheless they stripped me of my licence because of one unfortunate incident. They maintained I was drunk during one skydive with a course participant. As though I would have spoilt a jump by drinking!’

‘What happened?’

‘What do you mean? Do you want the details?’

‘You a bit busy?’

‘Ha ha. OK, I’ll tell you.’

The bottle glistened in the sun.

‘OK, this is how it was. It was an improbable convergence of ill-starred circumstances that did it, not a stiffener or two. First of all, there was the weather. As we took off there was a layer of cloud at about eight thousand feet. That’s no problem if the clouds are so high because you mustn’t pull the ripcord before four thousand feet. The important thing is that students see the ground after the parachute has been released, so they don’t go crazy and head for Newcastle. They have to be able to see the ground signals to know where they should steer according to wind and terrain to land safely in the drop zone, right? When we took off it was true there were a few clouds coming in, but they still seemed some way off. The problem was that the club used an ancient Cessna held together with gaffer tape, prayers and goodwill. It took more than twenty minutes to reach ten thousand feet, the height at which we would jump. After take-off the wind picked up, and when we passed the clouds at eight thousand feet, it blew a second layer of cloud in beneath us, which we didn’t see. Understand?’

‘Didn’t you have contact with the ground? Couldn’t they tell you about the low clouds?’

‘Radio, yes. Ha ha. That was another matter that was hushed up afterwards. You see, the pilot always played the Stones in the cockpit at full blast when we reached ten thousand feet, to get the students going, make them aggressive instead of shit-scared. If they did send us a message from the ground we never received it.’

‘Didn’t you even make a final check with them before jumping?’

‘Harry, don’t make this story more complicated than it already is. All right?’

‘All right.’

‘The second thing that went wrong was the mess with the altimeter. It has to be set to zero before the plane takes off so that it shows the height relative to the ground. The moment we were due to jump I discovered I had left my altimeter down below, but the pilot always had full parachute equipment with him, so I borrowed his. He was as afraid as the rest of us that the plane would suddenly fall apart one day. We were already at ten thousand feet so we had to move fast. I had to hurry onto the wing and didn’t have time to check my altimeter against the student’s – which of course I had checked was set to zero on the ground. I assumed the pilot’s meter would be more or less accurate, even though he didn’t set it to zero every time we took off. That didn’t bother me too much – when you’ve done more than five thousand jumps, as I had, you can judge the height visually to a reasonable degree of accuracy by looking down.