‘Mrs O’Sullivan … Mr Lyons will see you now,’ the young girl said, coming around the counter.
‘Thank you,’ Kathleen said, and followed her down a long, dark hallway to an office at the end. Inside, a man wearing a white shirt and a pair of brown braces sat behind a desk. Although he was pleasant looking, his skin was pale, no doubt from endless days of sitting at this desk instead of being out in the sun. Even James had a good Australian tan already, as did the children. And Kathleen had quite a bit of colour despite wearing a hat whenever she was outdoors.
Mr Lyons stood up when he saw her. ‘Good morning, Mrs O’Sullivan,’ he said, moving forward to greet her. ‘Tim’s my name.’ He looked at the young girl. ‘Madge tells me you’re here about the office job.’
Kathleen nodded. ‘I saw it advertised.’
‘I’m afraid that position has been filled.’ He motioned for her to sit down on the other side of his desk, which was covered by a large piece of blotting paper dotted with blotches and doodles and numerous notebooks, pens and pencils and an overflowing glass ashtray.
‘Madge, maybe you could bring Mrs O’Sullivan a cup of tea,’ he said as he lit up a cigar.
Kathleen shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I haven’t long had breakfast.’
If there was no job available she could see no reason to prolong the interview.
‘I hear you’ve taken over Finn Malone’s stud out at Eureka Park,’ Tim Lyons said, ashing the cigar in the ashtray. ‘Sorry to hear of his passing. Damn sad case. Too many Aussie farmers do themselves in.’
Kathleen gave a sad smile. ‘So I believe.’
‘Well, not much we can do about the poor sod now.’ He paused, as if thinking something through. ‘Maybe you could do me a column. You know what I mean … being Irish and settling into a new life here in Australia. Show how you and your kids, and your hubby, are adjusting to the Aussie bush.’ He chuckled. ‘Snakes, kangaroos, all of that. A human interest column. Can you take a decent photo?’
‘I do like taking photos. In fact I’ve had some published in a couple of English magazines.’
‘That’s good. You can take some photos of the place. Drop in the negatives with your copy. Yeah. I reckon that sort of article could go down well.’
We may not be living at Eureka Park for long, Kathleen felt like saying. Not if Finn Malone’s debts keep mounting up like they are.
‘How much would you pay me?’ she asked bravely.
‘Depends how they go, love. Maybe three quid to begin with.’
‘And how many could I do a week?’
‘Steady on, love. Just the one. Friday. That’s the day that would work best. Then they have it for the weekend.’
‘Oh! I must admit I was hoping to earn a bit more than that.’
‘Well, let’s see how it works out. First of all I’ve got to see if you can write. Maybe you could send me a sample column.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘It’s a start, love.’
‘Thank you. I appreciate that.’
Tim Lyons stood up to indicate the meeting was over. As he saw her to the door he smiled. ‘I look forward to receiving your first column.’
Later, when she told James what had happened, he laughed. ‘You’ll be a bit like mother with her column in Ireland.’
‘It won’t bring in nearly enough money to pay back the bank.’
‘Every little bit will help.’ He paused. ‘When you were out I spoke to Brian Medlow and told him what I’d found out at the lawyers. He said two of his mares have come into season over the weekend. He wants to send them up for Caesar to service. He’s insisting on paying me a good fee. He also said he’d mentioned Caesar to a couple of his friends and they, too, would like to send their mares up. What’s more, he said he’d been mulling it over the weekend and he’d like to buy two of our yearlings. He’d been eyeing them off when they were with him. He didn’t want to say anything when I was down there in case I thought he was rushing me. Now as things turn out, I think we should take up his very kind offer. As you know, a couple of our mares are not long off foaling, so we’ll have others coming on line.’
‘What have we done to deserve that man’s generosity?’
‘Once we get on our feet, I’ll pay him back twofold. Rest assured I will. In the meantime, I think we should say yes to his offers. And with your three pounds an article I’m sure we’ll muddle through.’
‘The editor’s got to see my first column. He may not like it.’
‘I’m sure he will. And even if he doesn’t, we’ll still manage. Besides, now that he’s given you that idea, I’m sure you’d be able to sell your photos and articles to other publications.’
‘Like the Women’s Weekly or Home Journal?’
‘Yes. Why not?’
But the editor did like Kathleen’s article and her negatives, which she also had black-and-white prints made of in a small camera shop in Quirindi. In fact Tim Lyons said he wanted to make it into a half-page column. Which meant she could include two photographs. Even though the three pounds a week wouldn’t go far, it was a start. And together with Brian Medlow’s offer, it’d surely allow the family to stay at Eureka Park. For the time being, anyway. Unless, of course, Finn’s debts kept mounting up and even the bank loan and the remainder of the twenty thousand pounds wouldn’t cover them.
This was something Kathleen refused to let herself think about.
* * *
Christmas 1963 was so unlike the Christmases the O’Sullivans had celebrated at Rathgarven that Lillie thought it was almost as though it was a different event altogether.
‘Do you think Santa will find us here?’ Freddie asked, concern etched on his face. The family was up in the bush behind Snake Gully Road cutting down a fir to have as their Christmas tree.
‘You don’t believe in Santa,’ Marcus snorted. ‘He only comes to those who believe.’
‘I do believe,’ Freddie snapped back. ‘Well, I sorta do …’
‘We’ll have to wait and see if he comes,’ Ma said. ‘I did write and tell him where we are, so hopefully he’ll find us.’
‘I bet he comes on a kangaroo, rather than a reindeer,’ Freddie declared.
Ma smiled. ‘That sounds reasonable. A kangaroo would know the way much better.’
So on Christmas Eve Freddie left a glass of milk and a biscuit next to the fireplace in the living room and dutifully hung a stocking from the mantelpiece for Santa to fill.
‘Yippee, yippee do!’ he shouted, waking everyone up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning. His stocking was full of little gifts. ‘Well done, Santa, you did find us after all.’
Before ten o’clock mass at the church on the hill in Gullumbindy, Dad handed the presents out from under the proudly decorated Christmas tree in the corner of the room. Lillie and her brothers had hung decorations made from different coloured crepe paper across the ceiling, and Lillie had strung the Christmas cards along the mantelpiece on a piece of string. They’d set up the crib in the empty fireplace. There was a card from Sheelagh, saying how much she was missing Lillie, and also one for the family from Clara, who said she and her mother were going to Dublin for Christmas, catching up with some distant relations. She was looking forward to seeing Alice at her hotel. Lillie wondered if Ronan had got a separate card at the Thompsons. If he did, he didn’t say. There were also cards from Grandma, Maisie and Paddy. Ma also showed Lillie the card Jessica had sent.
I ran into the Fitzpatricks in London. When they found out Clara and I would be in Dublin for Christmas they asked us down to Drominderry House for the first weekend in January. So kind of the dears. I’ve always had a soft spot for them both.
Lillie was excited to discover she had been given a transistor radio like Ronan’s. With the money she’d saved from doing odd jobs down at the stables, for which her father paid her half a crown, she gave her mother an apron with yellow wattle on the front, and her father a new pipe. Ronan got a second-hand pair of RM Williams bo
ots from his parents and Marcus was given a pellet gun. But the one who was most excited was Freddie, who got the bushman’s hat he had longed for. Lillie’s mother had tied shoe-laces with corks onto the brim, like the hat the sheep musterer was wearing.
At Rathgarven, Maisie and Kathleen would serve a huge roast turkey, ham and all the trimmings piping hot on Christmas Day. But here at Eureka Park, with the temperature hovering above 90 degrees Fahrenheit most days, Lillie helped Ma cook the turkey in the cool of the evening before. Jack and Ronan had killed the bird a couple of days earlier (much to Freddie’s consternation; he said he’d have none to eat, seeing as the turkey was his friend). After mass they lay out a smorgasbord on a long trestle table under the maple tree in the back garden where they had invited the Hogans to join them. Lillie was pleased that Jack was also there. Lillie really liked him. He was good fun and made her feel special. Whereas Ronan often made her feel silly for asking questions, Jack took the time to answer her questions, no matter how stupid he may have thought they were. One of the things she had been unable to work out was why snakes left their skins behind. For there was only one thing worse for Lillie than finding a snake, and that was finding its skin. It meant the snake was somewhere close by. Probably hiding.
‘They shed their skin so they can grow more,’ Jack had explained, picking a skin up with a stick and hanging it on the stable yard fence.
It was the way he said it that made Lillie feel grown up. He also spent ages teaching her how to crack a whip, and then taught Marcus and Freddie how to do it as well. Ronan, of course, learnt in one go. That was Ronan for you. Now, as she took a plate of ham out to the trestle table, she glanced at Jack sitting on a rock under the gum tree in the corner of the garden. Lillie had expected him to have Christmas at the Medlows’ place, where his brother was, but although he went down for a few days, he’d come back up here to spend Christmas with the O’Sullivans. Normally he wore a pair of blue jeans and a checked shirt, maybe a windcheater if it was cold. Today he had on a pair of cream trousers and what looked like a newly ironed blue shirt. His hair also looked different. Sort of smoothed down with oil or something. Like on Ronan, she preferred it when it flopped over his eyes.
The new stablehand, Arthur, had started a while ago, on his return from fruit picking in Victoria (much to the delight of Marcus and Freddie, he turned out to be part Aboriginal). He had gone home to his family who lived on the other side of Tamworth. It seemed to Lillie that he fitted in well with Dad and Jack. And he had a real way with the horses. He showed Marcus and Freddie how to throw a boomerang so that it came back. But the best thing of all was when he showed Lillie and her brothers how to light a fire by rubbing two sticks together. He said his grandfather had showed him how to do it. Lillie couldn’t believe it when the sparks started coming out of the wood.
‘Arthur’s a magician,’ Freddie had cried out in excitement. ‘He can do magic.’
‘Come and help yourselves before the flies get in first,’ Lillie called out to everyone, as she valiantly tried to keep the flies away from the meats and the salad she’d made from the lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers she’d picked that morning from the veggie patch.
When they were all sitting around the table out of the hot sun beneath the maple tree — and after Dad had said grace — he raised his glass of beer. ‘To our first Australian Christmas,’ he said. ‘And thank you to our new friends who have joined us.’
‘Hear, hear,’ reverberated around the table.
Later Lillie couldn’t help noticing Freddie take a second helping of turkey and stuffing. When he saw her wink at Ronan, he said, ‘He’s dead now, so I might as well have some. Otherwise it’d be a waste, wouldn’t it?’
For dessert was a pavlova Lillie had helped Ma make with their own eggs and dressed with blueberries and strawberries from the garden. Lillie glanced at her mother and thought how beautiful she looked, even if there was a slight sprinkling of grey in her hair. Her face was tanned from the sun and the blue and white dress she wore really suited her. Lillie smiled as she remembered how excited Ma had been when her first article, together with two photographs she’d taken — one of the horses down by the dam in the front paddock and one of Dingo playing with Marcus and Freddie by the river — had appeared in the Quirindi Advocate. Since that first article she’d had one in every week, which she told Lillie helped with finances around the place. Even so, Lillie knew that none of the twenty thousand pounds Uncle Finn had left them had yet come through, and she imagined her parents were worried sick as to where the next pound would come from.
CHAPTER
22
The gymkhana site was a paddock at the end of a dry, dusty road next to a community hall and a small creek. Lillie thought it was nothing like the shows in Kerry. No one was dressed up at all, even the competitors were just wearing jeans and bush hats, whereas at the Kenmare Show everyone dressed in jodhpurs and jackets and wore proper riding hats.
Deb had invited her to come along to this gymkhana at Werris Creek, and Kathleen was glad to see her daughter have a chance to get out. It was the second week of January, and still weeks from school starting.
‘Mum will drop us off on her way to visit a friend near Currabubula, and pick us up on her way back,’ Deb explained. ‘A gymkhana is sort of like a show. Not as fancy. They have all sorts of things. Barrel races, egg and spoon races and even cross-country. I’m not competing because my horse is lame, but I thought it might be fun to go.’
A couple of judges stood in the centre of the ring, judging the riding and jumping competitions. Other officials were getting the next lot of competitors ready. But it had a very casual feel to it, particularly the flag and barrel races in an adjacent paddock. All around the outside of the ring were horse floats and horses tied up under the gum trees, some of them eating out of nosebags, others standing watching what was going on. A few had their eyes closed against the hot wind. Most of the horses had fly veils over their eyes to protect against the hordes of blowflies buzzing around their heads.
‘It’s all the horse manure,’ Deb said, as they wandered around the ring looking for a spare spot to watch the competitions.
It turned out that Jack and his brother were competing in the jumping event on a couple of horses his brother had floated up from Medlow Stud. As Lillie watched Jack enter the ring she thought what a good rider he was. As he rode past she threw him a smile, but he didn’t seem to notice. When he finished his round, knocking one pole down, the next competitor rode in on a big chestnut horse with a white star on his forehead.
Deb let out a low whistle. ‘Wow. That’s Brad Hickey. He’s a real dish. He wins everything with that horse. I’ll introduce you to him later. His father’s a friend of my dad’s.’
Later, when Deb and Lillie were buying an icy pop from the ice cream caravan, Deb pointed to where Brad Hickey was standing talking to a pretty blonde girl wearing a white top and jeans. He had, of course, won the jumping competition.
‘You want to meet him? That’s his girlfriend. They’ve been going out for yonks.’
Lillie felt shy and was about to say she didn’t want to be introduced, when Brad saw Deb and waved.
‘G’day, Deb,’ he said, wandering over with his arm around his girlfriend. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Great,’ Deb said. ‘Congrats on your win.’ She looked at Lillie. ‘This is Lillie O’Sullivan. She lives out past Gullumbindy at Eureka Park.’
‘Ah. The O’Sullivans, eh. My old man said you’d taken over out at Finn Malone’s place.’ He held out a hand. ‘Brad Hickey.’ He indicated the girl at his side. ‘This is Sally.’
Lillie took hold of his hand and smiled at Sally. Brad Hickey had a mop of dark hair, eyes the colour of a broody sky and skin burnt brown by the sun. Lillie thought he was the best-looking fella she’d ever seen in her life.
After he’d moved on, holding Sally’s hand, she turned to Deb. ‘Gees … no wonder he’s the local heart-throb.’
‘Yeah. But h
e’s also a bit up himself. And in any case, as you can see he’s well and truly spoken for. Now,’ she said, pointing to the other side of the ring, ‘let’s go and watch the barrel race. I always like that.’
As Lillie watched Brad Hickey and his girlfriend disappear into the throng, she wished she had a boyfriend to hold her hand. Lately she’d found herself thinking more and more about the opposite sex. Maybe it was because Sheelagh had skited in her last letter that she had a steady boyfriend. Sheelagh Cassidy’s head-over-heels in love, she wrote. And he’s the best kisser in the whole of bloody Ireland. Or was it because Lillie’s breasts were starting to fill out, making her no longer feel like a child? Even though Jack had never hinted that he liked her in any way other than as a friend, she couldn’t help fantasising about what it’d be like to kiss him. But maybe that was only because he was around all the time. Now she found herself wondering what it’d be like to kiss Brad Hickey. Gees, you’re warped, Lillie O’Sullivan, she told herself. Neither fella would give you a second thought.
* * *
When it came time for Lillie to start boarding at St Dominic’s in late January, Ma drove her into Tamworth and bought her new underwear and two new nighties, which they took in and packed away in the tiny steel cupboard next to the bed she’d been given in the stark dormitory. There were no other students there, so Lillie and Kathleen had it to themselves.
‘I’ve got even less space than I had at school in Cork,’ Lillie complained, trying to squeeze her things in.
‘Here, let me help,’ Ma said, and grabbed Lillie’s socks and knickers and put them in the cupboard. When she stood up Lillie realised she had tears in her eyes.
‘Ma, what’s the matter?’
Kathleen wiped her eyes and smiled. ‘I’m being silly. It’s just that I’ll miss you when you’re up here.’
The Homestead on the River Page 21