The Homestead on the River

by Rosie MacKenzie

  Finn’s ex-wife, Dawn, came up for the funeral, having seen the death notice the funeral directors had put in the Sydney Morning Herald. Kathleen could quite understand what had attracted Finn to her. She was small in stature with shiny brown hair that fell over her face in unruly curls. She had a strong face and piercing blue eyes that looked as if they had seen their fair share of sadness, not least of which would have been the breakdown of her marriage to Finn and his untimely death.

  ‘If he sent the horses away like that, he must’ve had suicide on his mind for a while,’ she said to Kathleen and James as they sat on the verandah of the Telegraph Hotel after helping the Hogans and their staff clear up after a rowdy wake for Finn. She gave a huge sigh. ‘But why would he do himself in when you were coming?’

  ‘It does seem strange,’ Kathleen said.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t send the horses away,’ James said. ‘Perhaps they got out after he did the dreadful deed.’

  ‘Wouldn’t someone have found them?’

  ‘Perhaps they did and they have them in a paddock somewhere. Or they’ve sold them off.’

  Dawn pulled out a handkerchief from the sleeve of her navy blue cardigan and blew her nose. ‘He used to ring me from time to time. And sometimes send me money, even though I didn’t want to take it. I was always at him to make it up with his father. I know how much his poor mother must’ve been hurting. She promised her husband that once Finn refused to go back to Ireland to join the family law firm she wouldn’t contact him again.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘I never should’ve left him. He begged me not to.’

  Kathleen shook her head vigorously. ‘No one’s to blame. For whatever reason, it was Finn’s decision to do what he did.’

  James turned to her with a strange look in his eyes. ‘What if it wasn’t suicide?’

  Kathleen looked aghast. ‘But you’ve been in to the police again. They said it definitely was suicide.’

  ‘It’s just … well, I find it hard to believe Finn would kill himself like that. He often went on about his cousin shooting himself. What a selfish act it was. Leaving his family to sort out the mess.’

  ‘But when Finn decided to do what he did he must’ve been so drunk he didn’t think that through. All those whisky bottles!’

  ‘Even so …’

  Kathleen looked at Dawn. ‘You were married to him. What do you think?’

  ‘Drink drives a lot of people to do things they wouldn’t normally do.’

  Kathleen turned to James. ‘Are you saying it might have been an accident?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose I’m clutching at straws. Unable to imagine him being in such a state as to do something like that. As we all know, Finn was an alcoholic. But he wasn’t a maudlin one, was he?’

  ‘No,’ Dawn said. ‘It was more what he would do. Spend up big when we didn’t have the money. And sometimes he wouldn’t come home at night but roll in drunk in the morning. I was never sure where he’d been. Then again, when he was sober he was the kindest and most loving person in the world. You only had to see how many came to his wake to know everyone who knew him liked him, particularly the women, but he didn’t have affairs that I know of.’ She paused. ‘I think I wrote to you that I asked my friend Winifred here in Gullumbindy to keep an eye on him for me, to go out every so often to see if he was okay. She adored him.’

  Kathleen nodded. ‘Yes, I remember. Martha and Bill said they know her.’

  ‘I was sure she’d come to the funeral, but when I went to the corner store where she normally works they said she wasn’t working there any more. So I went around to her house, but …’ She paused and gave a small cough. ‘Her husband said she was in bed with a bad case of influenza. He wouldn’t let me in to see her in case I caught it. I must admit I’ve never liked the man. A real heavy drinker. I can’t understand why Winifred ended up with him.’

  ‘That’s what Martha Hogan said.’

  ‘Yeah. She’d know all right. With her and Bill owning this pub and all that.’

  ‘Will you try to contact her again before you go back to Sydney?’

  Dawn shook her head. ‘They don’t have the phone. And I’m catching the bus early in the morning to get the train from Tam-worth back to Sydney. So I’ll have to give it a miss.’

  ‘Can’t I drive you to the train?’ James asked.

  ‘Thanks all the same, but I’ve already got my return bus ticket. And I like the bus. Gives me time to think.’

  Kathleen stood and went to the edge of the verandah and stared out at Gullumbindy. Oh, Finn, she thought. How could you have done what you did? Surely there must have been an easier way out. And I don’t mean to be selfish, but had you thought about us? She looked back at James puffing on his pipe and Dawn sitting beside him. What does the future hold for us now? It’s all very well for us to live in the Hogans’ house and look after the hotel. Still, even you must know, dear, dear Finn, we can’t do that forever.

  CHAPTER

  14

  The day after the funeral Martha Hogan took Kathleen back down to the Telegraph to give her a run-through. In the dining room the tables were covered with red and white tablecloths with salt and pepper shakers and bottles of tomato sauce and mustard placed in the centre. Some of the chairs looked as though they had seen better days and the flooring was scuffed in parts; however, like the bar area with its wood panelling and paintings of the Australian bush scattered around the walls, it had a warm, friendly feel to it.

  Out the back Martha introduced her to the cook, Nancy McGuire, whose cheerful face was as red and shiny as the tomatoes in the cane basket on the kitchen bench. With her hair roughly pushed under a net, she was readying tonight’s roast.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said, wiping her hands on her butcher’s apron. ‘I heard what’s happened to you and your family. A darn shame it is.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kathleen said, taking her hand. ‘It is a dreadful shame.’ She paused. ‘But I’m told you know this place like the back of your hand. I must say I’m glad about that.’

  Nancy chuckled. ‘Been here long enough. If I don’t know what’s going on by now, there’s something gone amiss.’ She seemed so down to earth and friendly that Kathleen immediately took to her.

  Upstairs, the guest rooms were furnished with heavy polished timber pieces and the beds covered in brightly coloured chenille bedspreads. On the top of each dressing table was a vase of dried flowers. Beside each bed was a small wooden table with a copy of the bible. Although the rooms looked a bit worn out from years of use, they seemed as clean as a whistle. By the time they came downstairs again with Martha chatting nineteen to the dozen and telling her what to look out for, Kathleen’s mind was like a bog of peat on a rainy day, thick and mushy. All she could think of was what they would do if the staff walked out and left the O’Sullivans to run the place on their own.

  Just then James came to join them and Kathleen threw him an anxious look.

  ‘Don’t be so worried,’ Martha chuckled. ‘The two of you’ll handle it — it’s a piece of cake.’ She handed Kathleen a notebook with instructions on how everything worked, and showed her where the phone numbers were for suppliers, the electrician, the plumber and anyone else they might need. She patted Kathleen on the back. ‘I reckon you’ll do a bonzer job. Now,’ she said to James. ‘Come … I’ll hand you over to Barney. He’ll show you the workings of the bar. As Bill’s told you, Nancy’s son’s available to help if you get busy. He fills in from time to time as it is. I reckon he’s there now, waiting to meet you. You head along to the house, love,’ she said to Kathleen. ‘I’ll be back there shortly.’ She beamed an encouraging smile. ‘And don’t you go worrying your pretty head any more about managing things. As I said, I’m sure you and your hubby will do a cracker of a job.’

  Kathleen took a deep breath. Even with Nancy McGuire and the others here she had grave doubts she would do a cracker of a job at
all. Nonetheless, she would just have to roll up her sleeves and make the best of it. She would need to summon greater reserves of strength than ever before. For some reason the harsh conditions in Calcutta during the war flashed into her mind. She could imagine Jessica’s amazed reaction. My dear, sweet thing, what have you gone and got yourself into? And that house you’re living in’s nearly as bad as a shack in the slums of Calcutta. Kathleen brushed a fly away that had got in through the open door. And those ghastly flies! Lordy lord, am I glad it’s you and not me.

  * * *

  When the Hogans finally left for Sydney in a cloud of dust, Lillie watched as Ronan and Dad took Marcus and Freddie outside to stack the wood they had helped Mr Hogan chop the day before. She couldn’t believe how their life had changed now that poor Uncle Finn had killed himself. When her parents had told her what had happened, she had been dumbfounded and found it difficult to sleep for nights on end, imagining him down that awful mine shaft, having shot himself like that. She also worried herself sick about what would happen to her family now that her father had no real job and they had no house of their own.

  In the kitchen she filled up the kettle and took it over to the stove. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Ma?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘That would be wonderful, darling.’

  After they finished their tea she and Ma spent the rest of the day moving some of their things into the bedrooms the Hogans had vacated, unpacking and doing a shop at the local corner store, which they discovered was overflowing with everything from sweets to garden spades, bags of potatoes, jars of Pond’s cold cream, gossamer hairnets and even kerosene lamps.

  On their return to the house, she went to the kitchen to poke the gum logs in the fire-box under the boiler. If this went out there would be no hot water for the bath. To wash clothes, the boiler in the outside laundry had to be lit and the water piped into the wringer washing machine. Once the clothes were washed they were hung on the wire line strung between two trees.

  ‘There’s nearly always a breeze,’ Mrs Hogan had told them. ‘And if it rains you can hang them on that night as lline running the length of the verandah.’

  That night as Lillie sat on her bed, she wrote a long letter to Sheelagh telling her all about it, though she doubted very much that Sheelagh would believe half of what she was telling her. The worst thing of all was the huge insects that flew in and out of the rooms. As she wrote to Sheelagh, one landed right on her head and she leapt up, shooing it away with her jumper.

  Yuk, she wrote. They’re disgusting.

  The next night, when she went to get into bed, there was a huge hairy spider on her pillow.

  ‘Ronan!’ she screamed. ‘Come now!’

  When Ronan rushed in he looked at the spider and laughed out loud. ‘You idiot! It’s a harmless huntsman.’

  ‘I bet you wouldn’t be so blithe if it was Clara who was so scared.’

  Ronan shook his head. ‘I don’t think Clara would carry on like that.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  He picked the spider up and put it outside. ‘It’s the ones with red backs you’ve got to worry about. A bite from one of those nasty critters and you’re dead.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’

  Later that night Lillie had to go to the loo. She grabbed the torch off the kitchen bench and gingerly made her way outside, keeping an eye out for snakes. Once she reached the dunny at the end of the path she shone the torch around the toilet pan. Ronan had also assured her that’s where the red-backs liked to hide and that they loved to come out at night. She was sure one sat on the back of the wooden toilet seat. Grabbing a piece of toilet paper, she swished it around. She was so terrified a spider might bite her on the bottom she could hardly do her business. She would have to make sure she went to the loo before it got dark, so she wouldn’t have to go later. But it wasn’t just the snakes and spiders she had to watch out for. There were lizards and goannas, too, who liked to sunbake on the rocks near the fence in the back garden. They looked like snakes, all slithery and slimy, but had legs and supposedly weren’t poisonous.

  Ma told her that Nancy McGuire over at the hotel had said the big snakes were often harmless, and it was the little ones that were the most deadly.

  ‘And,’ Ma added, ‘Nancy said they’re the hardest to spot, because they can hide in such tiny spaces … like the box where the hens lay their eggs in the chicken coop, or even in trees, where they can strike as you walk past.’

  ‘Gosh,’ Lillie exclaimed, her eyes popping out like marbles. ‘We better warn Marcus … And especially Freddie. He said it’s his job to collect the eggs.’

  Every time Lillie thought of the many things that could kill her and her family, it made her quiver all over like one of Maisie’s jellies. There were so many creepy-crawlies, and the crickets that never seemed to go to sleep, chirping day and night. And there were huge red anthills with the biggest ants any of them had ever seen.

  One morning Freddie came running inside screaming his head off. ‘Help, help … I’ve been bitten by a snake,’ he hollered, holding his big toe and jumping up and down squealing, ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die.’

  Lillie felt the blood drain from her face. This was one of her worst nightmares.

  After her mother got over the shock she hastily tied a bandage tightly as a tourniquet around his calf. ‘This will stop the poison spreading up your leg,’ she soothed Freddie.

  She then told Lillie to hold the fort with Marcus — Ronan and Dad had driven across to Quirindi to get supplies for the bar.

  ‘I’ll rush him down to the doctor. Fortunately it’s Tuesday and he does a visiting surgery today.’

  Lillie was so relieved when they came back half an hour later and Ma told her the doctor had said it was a bull ant, not a snake after all.

  ‘Well, it sure as eggs hurt,’ Freddie spluttered, seeming put out that he hadn’t been the first one in the family to be bitten by a snake after all.

  As she looked at him sitting there on the table, swinging his legs back and forth, Lillie thought how she would have been inconsolable if Freddie really had been bitten by a snake and died. She adored her little brother so much she couldn’t imagine life without him.

  She went over and gave him a kiss. ‘Well, I’m mighty glad it was only a bull ant.’ She pulled his hair. ‘Silly idiot, you scared the wits out of Ma and me.’

  ‘I knew it wasn’t a snake,’ Marcus put in.

  ‘How, smartypants?’

  ‘Because he’d be dead by now.’

  ‘Thank you, Marcus. That’s really helpful,’ Ma said. ‘Now … both of you go outside and play while Lillie and I prepare dinner. And make sure you watch out for snakes. And,’ she chuckled, ‘bull ants, too.’

  * * *

  It was Lillie who’d persuaded the Hogans to let them bring Dingo into their home.

  ‘Well, we can’t be leaving the young fella to fend on his own, can we now?’ Mrs Hogan said. ‘What he needs is a family to look after him. Besides, we’ll be taking Ned with us. And a house without a dog ain’t much of a home.’

  And so it was that Dingo became part of the family. Soon he perked up and started eating heartily. Much to Lillie’s chagrin, it wasn’t her he followed around and wouldn’t let out of his sight; it was Dad and Ronan he shadowed.

  In the meantime Ma told her that Dad was putting out feelers to try and find another house for them to live in and he was also looking around for a job. But houses were hard to find and there seemed to be no jobs around either.

  However, one morning when they were making a batch of scones, Ma said, ‘Father Fogarty is going to spread the word throughout the diocese for something. Mrs McGuire told me that’s how it often works. So I’m sure something will come up before the Hogans return.’

  ‘Has Mrs Hogan had the operation?’

  ‘Yes. And it was a success. They’re still going on up to Queensland to stay with her sister.’

  As it seemed they would be living here for a
while, Lillie helped Ma try and make the house feel more like home. First of all they took all the rugs outside and beat them with a stick to get rid of the dust, then they washed the curtains and filled what vases they could find with wildflowers from the garden and rearranged some of the furniture.

  ‘We can put it back as it was when the Hogans are due home,’ Kathleen said. ‘For us it works much better this way.’

  Lillie felt all they could hope for was that the holiday in Queensland dragged on for the Hogans. Otherwise her family would be out on the road. Not like a family of tinkers, but a family of Aussie drovers drifting from one campsite to another. Though without any stock. All of a sudden she felt homesick. Not only for Rathgarven and Grandma but also Maisie and Paddy, and most of all Sheelagh and her other friends at school. Would she ever make any friends here? Maybe once she started school she might meet some nice girls. Ronan must be lonely for his friends as well — not that he said much. But sometimes she found him sitting on the back verandah, looking vacantly across the back paddock with Dingo by his side. Only last night she had found him reading a letter, which she thought was from Clara, as she recognised the handwriting. When she asked him if it was, as usual he told her to mind her own business and go find something to do rather than annoy him. So she had left him and gone to help Ma get dinner ready.

  When they had first gone to Sunday mass at the small wooden church on the hill, Lillie was sure the whole congregation was watching them with curiosity, particularly as Ma looked so much more elegant than the other women. Her mother always dressed for mass. Today she was wearing a tweed skirt, a cream blouse and a fitted green jacket. On her head she wore a smart hat with a shamrock brooch pinned on the side. Dad of course was wearing a suit and tie and Lillie’s brothers wore ties as well. Lillie wore a grey skirt with a matching jacket and a pink pill-box hat that used to belong to Ma.