Stella lay back on the bed under Joe’s rushed insistence and allowed her underclothes to be removed. He kissed her only once. His lips were gentle on hers, and then he pushed himself hard inside her. The iron bed rattled and she concentrated on the pressed metal ceiling, counting the intricate scrolls and the recurring pattern in the design. He hurt her with his urgency, and she let him, realising it was needed, this final coupling, if only for her husband to finally comprehend that what they’d once had was now gone.
‘You’ve lost a lot of weight,’ he murmured, rolling onto his back. ‘You’re not as squelchy as you used to be.’ He squeezed her fingers, as he had in their younger years.
Stella sat up on the edge of the bed.
‘Seriously. I liked those pudgy bits.’
‘When are you going again?’ she asked.
‘You’re okay with it?’ he replied, propping his head in a hand. His naked body sprawled across the mattress.
‘I’m leaving you.’ She stood up and wrapped a discarded sheet about her body.
Joe sat up in the bed. ‘Stella—’
She lifted a hand. ‘I’ve tried to tell you how I’ve felt and you’ve chosen not to listen. Six years, Joe. Six. I’ve had enough.’
Joe pulled on his trousers, hopping from one leg to the next, and then buckled his belt. ‘You can’t divorce me. We’re Catholic. Anyway, there’s no money. If you think you can walk out of here and take a pile with you . . .’ he challenged.
‘I’m well aware there’s hardly any money. I read what you write in the ledgers.’
‘Wool prices aren’t what they used to be,’ argued Joe.
‘Nothing is like it used to be,’ countered Stella.
They squared off like fighters, the bed the only barrier between them.
‘Maybe if you’d been more interested,’ yelled Joe, picking up his shirt from the floor.
‘And maybe if you’d actually loved me,’ Stella flung back at him.
He said nothing to this. Stella couldn’t have received a clearer answer.
‘What does any of this matter now? I’ve made up my mind.’ She waited, wondering how she would feel if he apologised to her after all this time, what she might say if Joe told her that he still loved her.
‘I have no idea why this hasn’t worked out for us,’ said Joe, buttoning his shirt.
That was it. He was willing to relinquish her that easily. He’d merely been waiting for her to instigate the discussion.
‘I know you don’t. That’s what makes this whole thing so pathetic.’
‘Right.’ Joe tucked in his shirt and gathered up shoes and socks. ‘Can you wait until after shearing? I’d appreciate it.’
Stella calculated the weeks until mid-July and the time it would take for the wool to be loaded and sent to market.
‘Four months,’ she said. ‘Then I’m leaving.’
Relief rushed through her body, making her slightly giddy. She would return to Sydney. Apply for a typist position, perhaps even a secretarial role. She’d been exposed to business, understood ledgers, and was so used to keeping a record of station life in her diary that she considered herself to be as qualified as the next person when it came to keeping tabs on the running of a small office. And Angelina and Carmela. What a joy it would be to see them again.
‘Four months,’ he agreed with a single nod, lingering in the doorway. ‘I’ll ask for an advance on the wool proceeds. Organise some money for you that way. It won’t be much,’ he warned. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘Is this life really what you expected, Joe?’ replied Stella. ‘The risk and the hardship? You came out here with dreams of being a great pastoralist but you beg your living from nature and the banks, and now you’ve little money and no marriage.’
‘I don’t regret my decision, if that’s what you’re asking.’
He would never understand how much he had hurt her. ‘You’re very fortunate. Because I do.’
‘It was always too big a world out here for you.’
‘Actually it was too small. And you made it smaller.’
When Joe left, Stella sat down at the dresser. The generator was yet to be started so she lit the kerosene lamp, watching as the flame flared and then settled. She opened the drawer and took out the silver-backed hairbrush that lay within, feeling the aged bristles against her palm. Her body had failed her. There was no child. And now, after the endless loneliness, very soon she would be husbandless and homeless as well. But she would have her freedom, and that was worth everything to her.
Chapter 36
Richmond Valley, 1949
From the earliest weeks on the Kirooma property, Stella had pointedly allocated Sunday mornings as a sacred time for prayer and devotion. She’d tried to address Joe’s tendency to treat the day as any other by telling him how important this weekly observance was to her. He’d argued that the land was his church, that the bush allowed him a closer relationship to the divine than any other form of religion or manmade structure. How could she dispute this line of reasoning? Joe was in love with his new life. He was a self-made man. And he had accomplished what many dreamt of but lacked the dogged persistence to achieve. Land of his own. For the grandson of an Irish tenant farmer, the purchase of Kirooma, unaided by family, was a mighty feat.
She thought of him now, as she left the house at midnight and with little thought headed directly to the boundary fence. Overhead, the sky was clear and bursting with the glow of the stars. She hesitated only briefly and then shimmied through the wires beside the cedar tree. She did it because she could and because it was forbidden, even reasoning that she was doing it for Joe. Or perhaps it was for herself. A penance of sorts. For what she had done.
She took two steps into the forbidden world, her fingers never quite leaving the tautness of the metal fence, her feet toying with grass that belonged to another. She was like a dingo, prowling in the dark. Not for prey but for answers.
She stood motionless, wondering what her excuse would be if she were caught by Harry or his sons, but at midnight, she hazarded, the only people who were still awake were old souls and those like her. People who were misplaced in the world.
The neighbouring houses backed onto each other in the gloom like soldiers napping while on patrol. Stella completed her initial reconnaissance, guessing the time it took to walk the length of the border, calculating the minutes required to negotiate the lawn to the large house, as if she were an illegal trying to cross into a new country. She’d never set eyes on her neighbours, never seen them tending their own backyard. She’d always felt pried upon, but perhaps they felt that the O’Riains were doing the same to them. She walked towards the house, her eyes growing more accustomed to the dark. Another ten steps she told herself. No more. To her right, a statue gleamed. A woman, cold and immortal in the starlight. Stella moved onwards, though she knew it was time to turn back, that her defiance of Harry’s rules had gone far enough. She had arrived as a helper, now she was a trespasser. It was time to leave.
The dog’s bark was loud. Stella froze.
‘I can see you,’ a man announced. The voice was scratchy with age. A veranda light came on. Stella shielded her eyes as a barking animal hurtled through the grass towards her.
‘He won’t bite,’ said the man. ‘Sit down, boy.’
Nonetheless, Stella remained perfectly still, berating herself for not running. Every criminal ran, it was a fact, instinct. Clearly, she had much to learn. The dog halted at her side and licked at her bare leg. She began to back away, hopeful that the dog was the same obedient kelpie that had walked the boundary a few weeks ago, shadowing her from the other side.
‘You’re Stella. Stella Moretti. The girl who married Joseph.’
She stopped at the sound of her maiden name and searched the veranda for the speaker. The light was still shining in her eyes. He was sitting a little off to one side but with the distance that lay between them, he was a mere silhouette, yet to be filled in with shape and
colour.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I should go.’
‘Why? You’ve crossed the boundary. That’s a small thing, I imagine, for a woman like you. Although there will be a hornet’s nest waiting if word gets out.’
‘And will it get out?’ asked Stella cautiously.
‘I’m not one to kiss and tell, lass.’ She heard him chuckle. ‘You’ve gone further than most in one lifetime already,’ he continued. ‘I’d be interested to hear about it, this place you’ve come from. I heard once that it’s the outer limits that the kangaroos leave first in a dry time. They head eastwards when things get tough, in search of better pasture. I figure you’ve done the same. I’m not calling through the night, lass. If it’s conversation you’re wanting I’m happy to oblige, but you’ll have to grace an old man with your presence up close in one of my fine cane chairs.’
A wobbly light patched the lawn and Stella realised that this stranger was lighting a path for her to follow. The dog rushed back towards the house. She heard the man’s breathing, slightly laboured, and the dryness of a cough.
‘I’ve whiskey, if you’re a drinker. If you’re not by now, you should be.’
Stella crept across the grass, her nerves frayed. She worried who might be awake and observing her, but was anxious about this stranger more, this old man who she was warned to stay clear of, who, she knew now, was the person who watched her by day and now sat waiting for her in the dead of night. Perhaps he might be able to explain the discord within Joe’s family. Yet it was more than that. She hoped he might be able to tell her more about Joe himself, and provide some reasoning for her own terrible actions.
‘Come now. I won’t bite.’
Stella stepped up on the veranda and sat in the chair next to the man, the powdery scent of old linen reminding her of the musty smells of the Kirooma homestead.
He held a kerosene lamp up to her face and in the shared flame she saw white hair that fell almost to his shoulders and mottled skin that hung from a skeletal face. The man seated next to her was ancient.
‘Stella Moretti O’Riain. You know, I’ve never been interested in how things were but rather how they could be. Which is why I sit out here staring through the binoculars at a family that refuses to learn from the past.’ He set the lamp down. ‘So, you’re Joseph’s widow. He chose well.’ He moistened his lips, his fingers resting on the field glasses sitting on the table between them. ‘And you’re a grower of things. Of beans and carrots and plush red tomatoes. A scant three weeks since your arrival and already you’re putting dreary Ann to shame in the vegetable stakes.’ He leant a little closer. ‘And you’re a strong young woman. You married into the O’Riain family and followed young Joe out into the scrub.’
‘He came to see you after we were married.’ She was aware her tone carried the pitch of interrogation.
The old man nodded. ‘I see we’re straight to business. Yes, he did.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘The birds and the bees.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Stella.
The cane chair squeaked as he readjusted his position. ‘So am I. A young buck needs some tutelage when he’s embarking into the murky depths of matrimony, especially your Joe. He was a late bloomer. Not that I’ve had much experience.’
‘Ann said that there was an argument between Joe and Harry after Joe visited you. Why? Can you tell me?’ asked Stella.
He looked away from her. ‘It’s complex,’ he said curtly, ‘and the quarrel began long before Joe sat in that same chair as you.’
Stella ran her hands across the arms of the chair, feeling the crosshatch of the rattan, trying to visualise Joe sitting in the very same spot. ‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘You can call me Irish. Just plain Irish. Australians love their nicknames.’
They shook hands, a single clasp of callused and papery skin.
From beneath the table Irish took a glass and a half-bottle of whiskey. He poured two nips into a tumbler, his hands shaky, and passed it to her, then he filled a pannikin for himself. ‘Drink.’
Stella did as she was told, grateful for the calming effects of the alcohol.
‘You don’t mind that I stare at you through a pair of age-battered eyes that couldn’t see half the distance if it wasn’t for these army-issue binoculars?’ he said.
‘It did bother me,’ said Stella. ‘Not so much now.’
Irish chuckled. ‘Ah, yes. Now that you’ve met me, I’m the harmless old man across the fence. You remind me of my youth, of a time when women threw me admiring gazes and men treated me as an equal and a thousand possibilities teased me to action.’ He leant slightly towards her. ‘I have to wonder at you coming back here, to Harry’s place. Have your family all died?’
‘No. They disapproved of my choice of husband,’ Stella told him, cradling the whiskey glass in her lap.
‘Rules and regulations, eh? Well, most families have them. I liked young Joe but he was a loner, and solitary men don’t make good husbands. And yet you chose him regardless, which makes me suspect that some kind of fault runs through you as well. The line’s not visible to everyone, but it’s certainly there. Deep beneath the surface. I see it sometimes when you stare at the mountains, your face creased with despair. The way you lift your palms to your face and press them close and then glance skywards as if the saints of your blessed religion were listening and could actually offer help.’
‘You don’t believe in God?’ asked Stella.
‘Religion ruins a people.’
‘What people?’
‘Any people who have a tendency towards fanaticism. That’s why I don’t believe anymore. Joe was the same. He understood the cost of blind devotion. That it can become an excuse for unwarranted actions and lead rash men down dangerous paths. But I told him he’d have to allow you your foibles. The Sunday prayers in the music room. The ash you marked your forehead with at Lent. Especially out there,’ he said.
Stella drew back in shock. ‘How do you know that?’
‘He never told you? I assumed that was one of the reasons why you’d come to stay with Harry and Ann. To speak to me about Joe. Interesting. He was a cagey one,’ said Irish.
‘But who told you that? Joe?’ asked Stella.
‘Who else?’ said Irish. ‘He wrote to me quite often.’
‘To you? Why? I don’t understand.’
‘We were friends.’
Stella rubbed her temples as if the action might clear her mind. ‘But he never mentioned you.’
Irish shrugged and took a slurp of whiskey. ‘The opinion of those in the village is that you’re tough. That a woman would have to be, enduring as you did for so many years far beyond the range. But I don’t think you are. As I said, I’ve watched you. Crying. Praying. Walking. You’re brittle. Wounded. You carry your pain quite clearly – to me, at least. And there’s more to your story than you’re letting on.’ He had grown animated during his speaking, his whole body moving slightly in the chair so that by the time he finished, he sat back, clearly tired from his exertions.
‘Tell me about Joe,’ said Stella, feeling invaded by this man who’d clearly noticed more than most while observing her through his binoculars.
‘Don’t you like stories that start at the beginning and finish at the end?’
‘That depends if the story is relevant,’ she said.
Irish gave a laugh. ‘You are a feisty one.’ He skolled his drink, his throat making a small series of clicks. ‘Do you like our cedar tree, Stella? I guess it to be about one hundred and forty feet high. It survived the initial onslaught of the cutter’s saws nearly one hundred years ago only to watch as the grove that once sheltered it shrunk until only it remained, saved by being on the border of no-man’s-land. To my knowledge, only a couple of people have crossed the boundary since 1867.’
‘Including Joe,’ said Stella.
‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘Quite intriguing, really, when you think of the men involved. Sean
and Brandon O’Riain were the best of friends. They should have ridden through this country laying the boundaries of their new land by blazing trees with an axe. Each swing of their wiry arms should have marked out territory like dogs peeing.’ His voice lowered. ‘That’s how they became in the end, territorial. Defensive. First towards those who sought to denigrate them and then towards each other.’
‘You knew Brandon and Sean,’ said Stella.
‘Oh, yes. I knew them. In another time. That’s the worst of longevity, you remember everything and everyone.’ He dipped his head in the direction of the garden. ‘Examine the trunk of that cedar in daylight and you’ll see there are matching initials carved in the bark on opposite sides. The marks of warring cousins, once the very best of friends. In the end, even the tree formed a part of the quarrel. But I suppose that’s what saved it. And still saves it. Possession. Life has always been about who owned what. In the old country and the new.’
Chapter 37
Richmond Valley, 1867
Mr Truby was outdoors, sitting at his green-felt table. Brandon hoped to avoid him after the hours spent at the tallow works two days previously, however it was not to be. The Englishman called out to him, so he approached, noting the deck of cards was still in its case.
‘I’m sorry about Sean, sir,’ said Brandon. ‘The fight and all.’ He knew there would be a reckoning of some form. McCauley’s description of his employer killing a man had made for two sleepless nights.
‘I hope you’ve learnt that actions lead to consequences.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Brandon.
Mr Truby drank from a glass of water as a hot northerly wind gusted through the garden. He fished a leaf from the surface of the liquid and studied the foliage, so absorbed it might have been a sliver of gold. ‘Good. Come with me.’
He stood and walked up onto the veranda. At the rear of the homestead he opened the door, gesturing for Brandon to follow. Brandon hesitated, but removed his hat and entered a long hallway and then a large parlour. The room was constructed completely of cedar. The panelled walls, floor and ceiling glowed with the polished wood so that the interior shamed the ornate gilt-framed paintings and the crystal decanters sitting atop silver salvers.
The Cedar Tree Page 23