The proportions of the old Kirooma homestead came clear and fresh into her mind. And beyond it, the land stretching out through scrub and weed, trees and swelling dunes until the cracking surfaces of ancient lakes crawled towards her. Salt was precious. Valuable. A compound favoured by kings. Wars had been fought over salt. She’d only needed to head north-west from the homestead and sooner or later, if she survived the trek, the white glimmer of a salt lake would appear. For those of faith, these crusty deposits could be scraped free, exorcised and blessed for the faithful to use in their homes. Instead, good Christian that she was, Stella only ever thought of the meat that could be preserved if the generator ceased functioning.
That is, until her baby died.
A pair of birds swooped from one of the boughs of a gum tree to land on the ground. They strutted across the grass, pecking unenthusiastically, and then flew away again. Stella searched through the glovebox for the pack of cigarettes, lit one and drew heavily. She never had managed to give up smoking, much to Joe’s annoyance. A triangle of trees to the right of the carport marked the end of the garden. The plants were thick, bushy and olive green. Beyond them, the land extended outwards to the fields. She’d not ventured further than the house and immediate surrounds. It suited her, this limited space. She’d grown used to walking the garden perimeter every day. Lapping it like a long-distance runner, single-minded in approach to her task. Ten laps of the garden took less than forty minutes. Each trip took her past the boundary fence and the mighty cedar tree. Each circuit brought her close to the grand house at the bottom of the hill, and the now-familiar suspicion that she was being spied upon.
She said a prayer aloud as she sat in the car, reminding herself not to set her expectations too high nor to castigate herself for an execrable past. There was nothing that could be done about it now. A small voice trembled within her. It wasn’t her fault. She’d had no experience with real love before Joe and even less understanding when it came to a person being able to adjust to such changed conditions. Yet at times the anger within her was so great Stella feared she might implode. At others, a sadness of such depth came upon her that she was barely capable of cooking meals. It was terrifying, the way her emotions overtook her.
She held the cigarette between her thumb and forefinger, twirling it back and forth. Then glanced again at the trees. Through the branches she could see a cream-coloured wedge of something. Stella squinted, trying to make sense of what she was looking at. She switched off the car’s engine, slid from the seat and, once outside, dropped the cigarette and ground it out with the heel of her shoe.
The path through the trees was barely visible. Stella pushed branches aside, stepped over clumped grass and then slid through fence wires into an adjoining paddock. The area opened to reveal a large work shed, adjacent to one of the harvested cane fields. An engine was running and she caught a whiff of petrol along with a familiar sweetness, which she now knew came from the harvesting of the cane. Stella had known of the shed’s existence, having previously seen it when exploring the garden, however the patch of cream sighted from within the car led to a new discovery.
Now she was clear of the garden Stella saw that the cream colour belonged to an aged cottage that sat just outside the house paddock. An electricity line ran from Harry and Ann’s place to a pole at the dwelling. The cottage stood apart from everything else and its positioning hid it from Harry and Ann’s house. She walked towards it, feeling inexplicably nervous. Close by, a yellow cat meowed and ran off.
The cottage was derelict. A screen door swung open and shut in the breeze, pacing out her approach with the rhythmic clipping of a latch that wouldn’t hold. The two small windows on either side of the door were shuttered. The garden non-existent. Stella walked across the oblong slab of cement that lay at the front of the hut. Withered weeds and burrs were stretched across its surface. Marks on the wall suggested a veranda had once extended out from the front. Someone had attached aluminium swimming-pool steps as a means of accessing the door. She balanced on the rickety rung that was wired to the side of the house and swung open the screen door. The wooden second door opened with a twist and a shove and Stella tentatively peeked inside.
She entered the building, noticing the sunlight that pierced through cracks and gaps in the walls and floor, but the interior of the cottage was in semi-darkness. The kitchen was fitted out with a wood-burning stove, an old kerosene engine fridge, two chairs and a simple timber table. A plate and a cup still sat in the sink. The corners of the room were cobwebbed and a large spider had taken up residence, undoubtedly keen to partake of the numerous daddy-long-legs which, like squatters, had infested the area.
Stella opened the only other door in the room. It was a tiny room, with a handbasin in one corner and a narrow bed in another. A timber frame held empty coathangers. In one corner, the wall had pulled away from the floor and a piece of timber had been hammered into place, probably to keep out inquisitive rodents. She stared at these few objects and then drew the curtain, dressing the lone window. The metal rings attached to the material scraped along the rod and she flinched at the harsh noise and then stepped forward to inspect what the flush of light revealed. The tongue-and-groove boards were covered with paper and plastered with photographs and news clippings of people, motorbikes and sheep. Stella felt the saliva increase in her mouth as she moved closer. In the centre of the wall was a page torn from a rural newspaper. The article featured the rural property of the month, a station located in the far west, on the South Australian border. Stella raised fingers to her mouth in amazement.
It was Kirooma.
‘Are you there, Stella?’ called Harry.
A door slammed behind her. Jolted by the sudden noise she swung around to greet her brother-in-law. He stood in the doorway and flicked the light switch on. ‘I was on my way back to the house for a cup of tea when I saw you.’ He surveyed the small room. ‘It wasn’t much but Joe liked this place.’
Stella thought that perhaps she’d misheard.
‘Joe was a bit of a loner,’ he continued.
She turned from Harry back to the wall collage. The pictures were a faded yellow. Fly-spotted. Forgotten. Her immediate guess was that she’d stumbled upon a childhood hideout, a special place where the brothers used to come, away from the prying of adults. However Harry’s comment stunned her. How could he have let his younger brother sleep in such ordinary surrounds? It was a miserly space for a man to occupy. ‘How long did he live here for?’
Harry gave a cough and cleared his throat. ‘He moved in when he came back from the Wells’s run over the range. Joe would have been twenty-one, or thereabouts. He had a bit of a mouth on him back then. Knew everything. Was impossible to give orders to.’
‘Why didn’t he live with you in the main house?’
‘Ann and I had four kids. It wouldn’t have bothered us if he’d stayed on, but he was pretty adamant about having his own space.’
The photographs were all from Joe’s childhood. Two brothers by the river fishing. Playing cricket on the lawn. Joe was tiny beside his big brother, Harry. Stella noticed that none of the pictures went beyond Joe’s childhood. It was as if his life stopped before his teenage years. And now out of the two boys tacked to the wall, only one survived.
‘Are you telling me Joe lived here until he and I were married?’ she asked. ‘For ten years or more?’
‘On and off,’ said Harry. ‘Sometimes he stayed at the hotel in the village. And he was partial to a swag in the back of an old utility we owned.’ Harry leant close to the wall examining the images. ‘Our dad had the cottage relocated here from just down the hill. It used to be one of the staff cottages. One of the women who worked in the main house lived there. Dad used it for harvest workers for quite a few years and then later, Joe played here as a kid. He liked the old building. The history of it.’ Harry rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, he was a funny one. He’d take off every day and go roaming and I wouldn’t see him for hours. And when he did appear
he’d be yabbering about a bend in the river where the cod gathered, or a tree with a section of bark prised off its trunk that he was convinced was used by the local Aboriginal people to make a canoe. As if he knew such stuff – he was only a boy.’
Stella recalled Joe’s intricate sketches of a yellow daisy and the detailed account of the two weeks it took for him to track and kill a wild dog. To her knowledge, her husband had not received training in either of these arts. ‘Perhaps he did know. Perhaps he knew more than all of us.’
‘Sure,’ said her brother-in-law with obvious disbelief. ‘He received the same schooling as the rest of us.’
‘You mentioned Mr Wells. Joe always spoke very highly of him.’
‘And I was pleased when he wrote to tell us he was jackerooing on that run. I figured that it would settle him down, teach him a bit of discipline. But when he finally came home Joe had all these peculiar notions about how a man should live his life. Highfalutin ideas about sheep and owning his own land, that a man’s destiny had to be followed. As if what we had, what our father built, wasn’t good enough. That’s when he started working at the rural merchandise store. A year after that he bought a ram and five ewes. The start of his breeding program,’ Harry said sarcastically. ‘That was Joe. Always wanting more.’
‘Can you blame him?’ The words came out hastily. Stella knew how she must sound to Harry, bitter with recrimination.
‘It was Joe’s idea to live here, Stella. No one shoved him out the door,’ insisted Harry.
No, she thought, but he obviously had nowhere else to go.
‘Anyway, if you’d stayed here on the farm, we would have fixed the place up. Bought one of those pre-fab houses and added it on,’ said Harry.
Stella couldn’t envisage the run-down cottage renovated. It needed a bulldozer through it. ‘Did you ever tell Joe that?’
‘What was the point? He was never going to hang around here. Maybe if he hadn’t gone away for those couple of years, things might have been different. But then again, he was one of those kids who always wanted everything at once.’
Harry drew the curtain and turned off the light, waiting in the doorway for her to leave.
Stella took a last glance at the collection of memories on the wall. At the young boy jauntily leaning on a cricket bat and the property that stole his heart and nearly destroyed hers. She followed her brother-in-law through the kitchen and outside into the raw sunlight, the whitish straw of the grass and olive-green trees vivid after the darkness of the cottage. The randomness of birth hit her forcefully. Harry was the eldest. On this farm, like so many others, to be the eldest was to be handed the God-given right of inheritance. Joe once told her that. Now she truly understood.
‘Harry, you can tell me to mind my own business, but I was wondering, did your father leave the farm equally to you two boys?’ said Stella.
His attention had been diverted by the engine in the shed, which was beginning to sputter.
‘Yes, to both of us.’ He hesitated. ‘Joe didn’t tell you?’
Stella gave a single shake of her head. By now it came as no surprise to learn that Joe had been keeping other secrets; parts of his life that were taped tightly shut so that a knife was needed to prise open what remained.
‘Joe wanted to be paid out his portion so he could pursue his own interests, but I couldn’t afford to do it.’ His gaze roamed the sparse paddock. ‘Our father always said that if we stayed together, worked the farm together, then neither of us would ever starve. Joe must have known how grim it was going to be for us to pay him out, but he wasn’t interested in the mechanics of the situation. It was tough. We had some bad seasons. I had kids at school. Anyway, eventually Joe and I came to an understanding, about the same time you two were engaged. Ann and I had no choice. Joe kept at me like a debt-collector for his share of the money until finally we worked out a payment plan. I kept things amicable, however the bank wasn’t happy about increasing the overdraft, and we knew we were really going to struggle with the interest payable. Then out of the blue, Joe’s situation changed. After your wedding he informed us that he’d purchased Kirooma. So I figured he wasn’t desperate for the rest of the funds.’
‘The bank was pretty willing to lend us money back then, what with the boom in sheep prices,’ said Stella.
Harry ignored this. ‘You asked the other night what we fell out over. Money. That was one of the reasons.’ He toed the edge of the cement slab with his boot, kicking at a tuft of grass until it was uprooted. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting his share now. Well, it won’t happen overnight. I’ll have to get a loan from the bank.’
Stella looked at her husband’s brother, wondering at how to reply when she’d just been told that she basically owned a half-share in a cane farm, even if it was only on paper. She took a breath, understanding only that she was dependent on the generosity of the man before her.
‘Money isn’t the reason for my being here,’ she finally said.
‘And this job wasn’t offered out of guilt,’ said Harry, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Harry was far older than Joe. The age difference showed itself in a heaviness, as if his soul weighed him down at times. He was the only brother left. The last man standing. If he thought the choice to retain the cane farm at the expense of his relationship with Joe was a righteous one, then surely it was a win marred by loss.
‘Then why did you offer me the position?’ she asked.
‘Because Joe’s dead, you’re his wife and I needed help. Frankly, I thought it was pretty unlikely that you’d come. It’s not like you don’t have your own family. Anyway, I figured that no matter what occurred in the past, a woman shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s sins.’
The motor gave a final sputter and then stopped.
‘I have to go.’ Harry walked away, crossing the paddock and bending over to clamber through the fence. He walked with a lopsided gait, one shoulder slightly higher than the other, just as her Joe had done, burdened by the tasks at hand, by the implements they used, the livestock they tended and by the business they were desperate to retain, no matter the cost.
Chapter 28
Stella prepared Ann’s nightly cup of cocoa and carried it down the hall to her room. She found the patient out of bed and awkwardly shuffling to the wardrobe, her legs flung wide as if a foot-length of wood was wedged between her knees.
‘Can I help you?’ asked Stella.
‘No thanks.’ Ann took a shawl from the shelf. ‘I’m stiff but it doesn’t hurt quite as much.’
‘That’s good news.’
‘Small steps, I suppose.’ Ann was puffed, as if she’d been running. She returned to the bed and, with the steady movements of one guarded against pain, slowly lowered herself onto the edge of it.
Stella set the hot drink on the table and drew the curtains. Ann carefully manipulated her body along the mattress, lifting her hips to the left and right in a crawling movement until she’d resumed her normal pillow-bolstered position. Stella pulled the sheet up as Ann arranged the shawl about her shoulders and then she walked about the room, pushing the rubbish bin further into a corner, straightening the rug and gathering up a newspaper that had slipped to the floor. With these small tasks complete, she returned to stand in the doorway as she did every night.
Ann peered over the top of the book she was reading and held up a finger to signify she had almost finished a passage.
Stella dutifully waited until the book was put aside. ‘Can I get you anything else?’
Her sister-in-law reached for the warm drink and cupped it between her hands. ‘No thanks. How was your day?’
‘Busy, as always,’ said Stella.
‘Are my boys behaving themselves?’
‘I rarely see them.’ Occasionally Stella would wait up for the men to return, glad of their company and their tang of sweat and earth and honest work. It reminded her of happier times.
‘Harvest is always busy. And you? How are you enjoying
being here? We’re not working you too hard?’
‘No,’ said Stella.
‘I wondered if it was going to be a little too quiet for you, but then considering where you lived, I imagine that isn’t an issue.’ Ann waited for a response and when one wasn’t immediate, she picked up the book she’d been reading, sliding the bookmark up and down so that the tasselled cord attached to the card flipped over the top of the spine.
With each day Stella was beginning to recognise that she craved the familiar confidence of a woman to talk to. She missed the girlfriends of her youth and specifically her cousins Angelina and Carmela, with their unbridled loyalty and fierce criticisms. The closeness that she and her mother had once enjoyed. That level of understanding that only women shared. In her time out at Kirooma, all that had been lost.
‘The tomatoes are nearly ready to be picked,’ said Stella, lingering in the doorway.
‘You’ll be able to make us a famous Italian dish for dinner then.’ Ann gave one of her signature smiles. Pleasant, but slightly dismissive. Or perhaps she was simply tired. ‘You might have to use some salt for once, though. Harry loves his salt.’
‘I never use it. You look much better this evening,’ Stella said, keen to change the subject.
Ann lay back against the pillows. ‘I’ve been trying to wean myself off the anti-inflammatories. If I stay in bed much longer my muscles will shrink.’ She placed the book down on the bed. ‘Well then, what have you been up to?’ she asked as if recognising Stella’s need to talk.
‘I saw the cottage. Joe’s place.’
‘Ah,’ said Ann. She shifted slightly on the bed.
‘Harry was with me,’ she clarified, feeling the need to justify her exploration.
‘He took you there?’
‘Not exactly. I saw it through the trees,’ admitted Stella.
‘It was Joe’s decision to move in there,’ replied Ann, her tone defensive.
The Cedar Tree Page 18