Butterfly Hunter 01 (6 page)

“
Oh. Oh, of
course.” Dave felt like an idiot. He’d done some research, but then
he’d also felt that the butterflies were Nicholas’s area, and the
organisation and safety of their travel were Dave’s. Apparently his
reading – or, more to the point, his browsing – had gone in one eye
and out the other …

Nicholas had straightened
up to consider Dave a bit kindly, as if he were to be pitied. “You
know nothing about butterflies, do you?”

“
They’re
pretty, I know that much.”

“
Yes, they
are.”

“
I like the
colours,” Dave babbled, probably not redeeming himself. “When I was
browsing Google images, I liked the blue ones best.”

Nicholas was nodding
earnestly. “Ours –
our
butterflies – are going to be
gorgeous
.
Like bits of the sky come alive.” He took a step closer to Dave,
his hands in the air between them as if trying to shape adequate
words. “But you’re only thinking about their last stage of life.
They
transform
.”

“
They do,”
Dave agreed, looking at the pupa, which might as well be an old bit
of stick. “Is that – is that why you’re so interested? In
butterflies, I mean. Because of how they change so
much?”

“
Sorry …
What?”

“
I was
just wondering,” Dave blundered on: “
Why
butterflies?”

But Nicholas had taken a step
back, and his long face sobered. It was as if the sun had gone
in.

All right. Time to change
tack. “D’you want to walk about a bit more?” Dave asked. “Seeing as
we’re out here.”

A brief nod.

“
We’ll get the
field guide, eh? Is it in the Cruiser?”

“
Yes,” was the
quiet reply.

Dave hardly spoke after
that, not wanting to spoil things any further. They went back and
fetched Nicholas’s satchel which contained his guide, his camera, a
notebook and pens. And then Dave followed around as Nicholas ducked
and weaved, searching around at random, and he kept track of where
they’d left the Cruiser. It didn’t take too long – not even half an
hour, really – before the peace settled over them again.

They were into the acacia
scrub the next day, as they headed west for Charleville. The gum
trees grew sparser, and the acacia shrubs took over with tussocks
of dry grass dotted about, and plenty of bare red
–brown dirt between. The land was quickly flattening out. A
lot of people hated this semi–arid countryside, and Dave would
agree that none of the individual elements were particularly
attractive. There was a spartan kind of elemental beauty about the
overall effect, though. And he knew that it harboured all kinds of
life, some secretive and some not. It was in a landscape such as
this, he thought, that Nicholas would find his
butterflies.

Nicholas was sitting in
the passenger seat looking around with that strangely childlike
eagerness of his. It was really quite endearing, but Dave couldn’t
help teasing. “Don’t soak it
all
in at once. Take your time.
We’ll be seeing a lot of this.”

“
Yes?”

“
We
might see nothing
but
acacia scrub, depending on how far afield we go.
It’ll thin out more as we head west, and it’ll be mostly low–level.
You’re gonna get bored with it pretty quickly.”

“
Not yet,
though,” Nicholas said with a grin. “Um … Can we stop?”

“
Sure.” Dave
glanced in the rear–view mirror, just in case, but there was
nothing between them and the horizon in either direction. He pulled
the Cruiser over, taking it safely off the road. Kept his gaze
tactfully averted. “Loo roll in the glove box, if you need
it.”

“
Oh! No. Thank
you, but no.”

“
Well, then.
Let’s go see how many grubs you can find.”

Nicholas grinned, put on
his Akubra, grabbed his satchel, and clambered out of the Cruiser.
“It’s all useful,” he explained with endearing earnestness as Dave
trailed around after him. “It’s like I said: there’s so few people
working on this. Any reliable observation is welcome.”

“
That’s
great.” Dave obligingly held items as necessary, kept an eye out
for anything Nicholas might find interesting just in case he didn’t
notice it himself, and made engaged or impressed noises
occasionally as Nicholas nattered away.

At some point after Dave’s
attention had wandered, Nicholas abruptly sat down in the dirt, and
Dave stepped towards him anxiously thinking,
God, what a klutz this guy is!
and,
How the hell am I
gonna keep him safe?

But of course Nicholas was
fine. He sat there offering a dazed smile to Dave, and said, “I
just looked up.”

“
Oh yes. The
sky.”

“
It’s rather
larger than the one we have at home.”

Dave put his head back and
looked up. There wasn’t a cloud to interrupt the enormous arc of
pure blue, which if you didn’t – scarily – let into your soul,
would indeed make anyone feel insignificant. Dave huffed a breath.
“You matter to me. If not to the sky.”

“
It’s not that
so much. I got dizzy there. Just for a moment.”

“
Like you’d
fall up into it?”

“
Yes. And
float away.”

“
I’ll keep you
grounded. It’s all right.”

Nicholas looked down at
his hands for a moment, as the long pale fingers meshed together.
“Is that another reason for the hats? To keep the sky
out?”

“
No! No,
you’ll get used to it.” Dave chuckled. “Wait until you see it at
night.” Out here, with few lights around, the stars were beyond
awesome. Dave had never yet gotten tired of it.

“
Spectacular?”

“
You got it.
Not tonight while we’re in Charleville. Wait till we’re camping
out.”

Nicholas grinned, and
lifted a hand, which Dave grasped. “I will,” Nicholas murmured as
he unfolded from the ground, some of his weight a not unwanted test
of Dave’s strength, and the rest borne up by those long thighs.
Nicholas didn’t move away once he was standing again. Not
immediately. He stayed there for a moment, right up into Dave’s
space, and whispered in Dave’s ear, “I’ll wait for you to show
me.”

Dave tilted his head in
closer, as if about to confide in the other man – but what he said
was, “You promised you wouldn’t flirt.”

“
Not
my
fault you’re so gorgeous, not to mention
promising me spectacular nights.”

“
Huh.” Dave
stepped away. So gorgeous, yes, he reflected sourly, when the only
person he’d ever wanted to hold such an opinion had proved it
untrue just over a year ago. And that was that. It hardly mattered
if some eccentric English earling had taken it into his head to
feel attracted. Dave muttered a few choice swear words under his
breath, and kicked disconsolately at the nearest shrub – which sat
there, sturdy and unmoved.

“
David …”
Nicholas sounded infinitely compassionate, all sorrow and
grace.

“
Leave it be,”
Dave insisted. Then he said, rather more reasonably, “Take your
time. There’s no hurry. I’ll wait with the Cruiser.”

“
Of course.”
And Nicholas crouched to examine something at ground level, his
Bluegrass Green Akubra tilting to hide his face.

Dave made as cool an exit as he
could.

When Nicholas finally
returned to the Cruiser, Dave was deep into
The Nutmeg of Consolation
–
and he felt all the better for it. He lifted his head once Nicholas
had clambered back into the passenger seat, to find the man smiling
at him fondly.

“
You’re a
reader,” Nicholas commented. “That actually explains a great
deal.”

“
Not really.”
Dave shrugged.

“
You like the
Aubrey–Maturin novels, though? That’s wonderful! And what
else?”

“
There’s
twenty of them,” Dave explained. “Twenty–one if you count the last,
but it was only half done when he died. When I finish, I just go
back to the start again.”

Nicholas laughed, though he
sounded more delighted than cruel.

“
I’ve
read
The Last of the
Mohicans
. And
Moby Dick
. But mostly just
these. Denise is the serious reader. She loves George Eliot – who’s
a woman. And Tchaikovsky.”

Nicholas took a breath, and
glanced at him askance, before deliberately not saying
anything.

“
All right, so
I’ve got the name wrong again, don’t I?”

“
Um …
Dostoyevsky?” Nicholas hazarded.

“
That’s the
bloke,” Dave equably agreed. He didn’t pretend to be educated,
after all, but he did love these novels. “I think I’ll be reading
these all my life.”

“
I can’t think
of anything better,” said Nicholas.

They reached Charleville late
that afternoon, checked into the hotel, and then met half an hour
later in the lobby. Despite the fact that they had adjoining rooms
again, Dave had been very firm on the location for their
rendezvous, and he went down early, while he could still hear
Nicholas moving around next door, apparently taking his time
unpacking and freshening up.

Once Nicholas joined him,
they headed off down the street to the pub that was Charlie’s
regular. The westering sun bathed them in gold as they walked along
side by side.

“
Now,”
said Dave, breaking the silence in his best
this is me setting the rules
voice. “We need to be tactful here. We’re not gonna blunder
in where we’re not wanted, all right?”

“
Yes,
David,” Nicholas replied with a fair crack at a
this is me being the meek and obedient
client
voice. The trouble being that it
was always undermined –
always
, Dave had learned this
already – by a happy little smirk loitering around the man’s
shapely pink lips.

“
Charlie’s a
mate; we go back for years. We’ll say g’day and I’ll introduce you,
just as soon as it feels right. I mean, just like with anyone. He
might already be hanging out with his friends, or something. I
mean, his own people. In which case, we don’t interrupt unless it’s
clear we’re welcome.”

Nicholas nodded, seriously.
Apparently now hanging upon every word.

“
It’s not that
Charlie’s not completely comfortable in both cultures. But if he’s
hanging with his Aboriginal friends, then we don’t expect him to
switch over to our register right away.”

“
No, of
course.”

“
And once
we’re talking, then you need to take your cue from me, all right?
When you start asking about Dreamtime stuff, then you go easy, and
you have a care about whose toes you might be stepping on. If
something’s secret, then it’s secret, and we’re not pushing to know
who or what or why.”

“
I understand,
David.”

“
Do you? And
can you stick to it? Cos all you can do is explain yourself and
ask, right? You can’t have any expectations about getting any
answers. And even if you sense he’s holding back, you’ve got to let
it be his decision.”

“
Well, you
know,” Nicholas responded with at last a spark of ire, “I’m not a
complete boor.”

“
I
do
know that,” Dave said. “I’m just trying to say –
that even more tact is called for than usual.”

Nicholas huffed out a
breath. “One day I’m going to look back at this and laugh. An
Australian teaching an Englishman about tact!”

They’d reached the pub, so
Dave led the way through the door, too caught up in the argument to
pay any real attention beyond registering that the place was as
crowded as usual. He turned back to Nicholas, and let the noisy
buzz of the pub’s patrons give him an excuse to raise his voice.
“Oh yeah, cos you Poms have learned so much from hundreds of years
of good relations with the Aboriginals, haven’t you?”

Nicholas had been about to
take his Akubra off, in an instinctive politeness, but Dave shook
his head in annoyance and, after a glance around, Nicholas must
have realised that no man took his hat off in such a place. He
pushed it back on, and stood tall. “Don’t try to pretend,
mate
,”
Nicholas crisply replied, “that you’re not on the white side of the
equation. All this pussyfooting around makes you look like part of
the problem, not the solution.”

“
Respect isn’t
pussyfooting!”

“
I’ll respect
him enough to just tell him straight out what I need, and then I’ll
leave it to him to decide what he tells me.”

“
That’s what I
was asking you to do!” Dave cried in frustration.

“
You were not;
you were telling me. And I didn’t need to be told.”