Bec would cry out to the hills, ‘Who ya gonna call?’ Her brothers, leaping to her side with spray nozzles in hand, answered in unison, ‘Berry-busters!’ On long summer days Bec could hear Harry’s chainsaw ringing in the hills as he cleared the willows which had once choked the Rebecca River’s sandy banks.
Now, through the thick heat of the bush, Rebecca could hear the river gushing and rushing over smooth boulders. Rain had flushed the river fresh so she could smell its sweetness as she neared it. The dogs splashed into its coolness and swum with their ears flattened and their mouths pulled back as if smiling. Sitting on a rock, Rebecca tilted her head to one side and smiled sadly at them.
‘Not a worry in the world for you fellas …’ Mossy flopped her tail in a wet wag, acknowledging Bec’s voice. Stubby, a little black kelpie with tan eyebrow markings and tan paws, the most comical of her dogs, cantered out of the waters to her and shook silvery droplets from her short coat. Silver river beads landed in Rebecca’s hair and smattered on her shirt.
‘Piss off, Stubby!’ She smiled at the dog and flicked her hand in the air. The dog bounded away into the water, tail wagging.
As the dogs rolled and romped on the riverbank Rebecca’s eyes again filled with tears. Salty drops falling into the fresh shallow pools which lapped at the rocks. She thought of home, upstream. She had seen hate in her father’s eyes this morning. The tears flowed as she thought of her horse, Ink Jet. Maybe she could’ve hitched the float and taken her. She kicked the toe of her boot on the river stones. It was all so impossible. Her tear-smeared cheeks itched so she rubbed her face with her hands and pushed back the strands of hair which had escaped from her ponytail. Gazing into the cool green river water she peeled the papery bark from a stick.
Her mind wandered back to the past when she lived at home. Before she was sent to boarding school. Before her mum left.
In Bec’s eyes, Frankie had been a legend. Up and clattering around the big old homestead by five-thirty. Wood for the stove. Lunch for the kids and Dad. Dinner for that night in the freezer wrapped in Gladwrap and labelled ‘Tonight’s tea – just heat’. She’d get the three kids to the school bus by seven-thirty, then she’d be off to work for the day. Pulling calves, bleeding sheep to test for Johne’s disease, cutting the nuts out of cats.
Some nights her mum stayed in town with friends so she could go preg-testing early in the next valley. Or she’d arrive home in the dark, long after the chooks had roosted and the dogs had retreated to the warmth of their hollow logs. Frankie would bustle through the door in splattered overalls surrounded by a waft of cold air and the smell of cow dung. Her auburn hair awry in a halo of waves, her cheeks flushed a lovely pink. But within minutes of her busy entrance, the silent anger and resentment from her husband would drain the pink from her cheeks and she’d brush her hair flat and get on with the washing up. Rebecca now knew her father’s seething mood had been over an affair that had never existed.
Sometimes in the high-ceilinged hall Bec would hear the low growl of her father and the gentle pleading of her mother’s voice. She only caught glimpses, but even as a child she sensed what her mother felt. He’d wanted a country bride but had married a vet. He’d wanted farming in the grand sense but the wool prices had fallen, the beef prices plummeted and the yards and fences slumped further into the soil each year. His silent sulks when Frankie left for work turned into a seething mute rage that was taken out on the animals he ran for his livelihood. Harry’s veins bulged in his neck when a cow went down on her knees in the crush; electric jiggers stung and stung her until her deep bellows echoed in the hills. Sheep blocked in the race eventually staggered through the drafting gate with bloodied noses, tottering, punch-drunk. Harry’s ribby dogs felt the bones of his knuckles slam into their sides. As his bank balance fell, so did his love. Hope could be seen in his sons, but blame was laid on the females in the family. Rebecca felt it. She felt his hate and blame grow.
She remembered the day he said it. He was standing by the wood stove peeling an orange with his sleeves rolled up. ‘We’ve enrolled you at the Ladies’ College.’
‘Stuff that for a joke,’ she’d said and felt her ear burn hot with the cuff from his huge hand. The smell of orange lingered in the strands of her hair.
The day she left for boarding school she’d stood before her brothers.
‘Seeya, shortarse,’ Mick, her eldest brother, had teased. He’d bunched up his big fist and jovially punched her on the arm.
‘Hope you come home a loidy!’
Tom, who was only eleven months older than Rebecca, hung his head and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his baggy jeans. She ruffled his sandy hair until he looked at her. His eyes were solemn and brown. Bec thought they looked like collie-dog eyes. Quiet and gentle. He gave her an awkward hug and simply said, ‘Seeya, sis.’
Tom had wanted Bec to go to the local high school with him. He was shy. The teachers labelled him ‘arty’, but as the other boys began to sense Tom’s differences, he soon learned to hide his talents. In primary school Rebecca had always stood up for him. Defended him against Mick’s taunts and the punches from the other boys.
‘Don’t worry, Tommy,’ freckle-faced Rebecca had said, ‘I’ll punch them in the guts. Then they won’t come near you.’ In the tiny country school, Rebecca and Tom had shared classes. She’d sat next to him and scowled at the bigger boys.
When Tom finished primary school their father had demanded both boys stay nearby to work on the farm, so they went to the local high school on the bus.
Now she was being sent away to boarding school Bec carried with her a quiet ache that came from the prospect of being separated from Tom. In the sandpit and in the river, or in the dark attic at night, the two shared dreams together. Whispering stories about Waters Meeting. Dreams about the farm and the animals that they might one day have when they grew up. Tom always followed Bec’s lead. Without her he’d sink into a quietness. Bec knew he’d suffer as much as she would while the school term stretched endlessly on.
From the car, Bec had watched her brothers’ shapes grow smaller and smaller in the distance as they stood and waved outside the front of the house.
‘Why didn’t you stand up for me, Mum? Why didn’t you tell Dad I shouldn’t go? Why?’
Her mother just shook her head.
‘We can’t afford it anyway, Mum … I know it. Why the hell didn’t you stand up for me?’
‘I can’t at the moment, Rebecca. I just can’t at the moment. You’ll understand one day.’ Her mother had stared straight ahead at the road, bolt upright as if a glance at her daughter would cause her whole soul to crack.
Bec had wanted to scream, ‘Why did you marry him in the first place? Why?’ but instead she’d looked out of the car window and watched the rush of gumleaves as they drove away from Waters Meeting.
The three dogs now came to lie by Bec’s side on the grassy patches by the river. They stretched out flat, the sun drying their coats, Stubby on her back with paws spread out in the air.
‘You ol’ tart, Stubs.’ Bec scratched the dog’s belly which was swollen with pups.
‘Oh what to do, what to do?’
She knew she could travel south to the city where she had boarded and where her mother now worked. Four hundred ks south and she could be there by dinnertime. Her mother might be home from the surgery by then. Frankie would open the door of her flat smelling of perfume and hibbataine disinfectant. Rebecca pictured her mother’s smile of greeting yet she’d feel the stiffness of her mother’s hug. Rebecca knew Frankie would be thinking, ‘What’s she done now?’, while rolling her eyes as they hugged. Frankie would fuss over what to do with the dogs because, like she’d said before, all the surgery kennels would be needed for clients. Bec would feel as though she was getting in the way of Frankie’s busy city life. But she’d turned up there before like that, when it’d all got too much with her father. And Frankie had fitted her in.
On the riverbank Rebecca looked
into the brown eyes of Mossy and sighed. It would be so easy to head south to her mother’s.
‘Bugger it, Mossy, let’s head north.’
When Frankie Saunders dumped her shopping down at the front door of her flat she was thinking about anal glands. The groceries she had bought from the twenty-four-hour Coles sunk down in the bags which sighed and rustled on the floor. As Frankie scrabbled in her handbag for her keys, she thought back two weeks ago to the consultation with a border collie–corgi cross. It had been one of the worst cases of blocked anal glands she’d seen in a dog for some time. She’d been in such a hurry to get the awful job over with that she’d only noticed the presence of the dog’s handsome owner when he was about to leave.
The man, Peter Maybury, had smiley blue eyes which were surrounded by lines of laughter. He was a little overweight but nice, in a big, soft sort of way.
‘Bring him back in next week, Peter, if you could, and we’ll express his glands again for you.’ As she looked into his eyes and handed him the receipt their hands touched. Frankie felt a tingle run through her and she smiled back at him.
When he brought his dog, Henbury, in again, Peter lifted him carefully from the slippery surgery floor onto the table.
‘There you go, Henners, it’s all right.’ He stroked the dog firmly and slowly as Henbury stood on the stainless steel bench on his wonky feathery legs. Frankie asked all the standard questions and then started to gently pry a little. She liked this man.
‘He’s a touch overweight. Does he get plenty of walks?’
‘I walk him every evening,’ Peter said.
‘There’s no one else who has time to take him in the morning?’
‘No! No. Divorced.’ Peter shrugged.
‘Ahh,’ said Frankie. ‘You’ll have to cut back his food intake then.’
‘It’ll be tough. I love cooking and he’s so convincing when he looks up at me with those hungry eyes. You know that look.’ Peter tried to replicate a hungry look.
Frankie smiled and snapped on a glove. ‘It’s all right, boy. It’ll be over before you know it.’ She frowned as she inserted a curved finger. ‘The left gland is fine, the right is a bit full again … but I think the problem’s under control.’
With her ungloved hand Frankie gave the dog a piece of dried liver and held his muzzle up so he looked into her eyes.
‘Tell your dad, no gourmet meals from now on, okay?’
After he’d lifted Henbury onto the floor Peter went to take Frankie’s hand and said, ‘Thank you so very much, Dr Saunders. He looks much more comfortable now.’
‘Oh!’ She smiled and snapped off the surgical glove quickly before Peter shook her hand.
‘Call me Frankie,’ she gushed, smiling, and then blushing. The soft warm skin of his hand felt so comforting. She was used to the crackling dry roughness of farmers’ hands.
In the reception area she put a line through the pencilled-in words in the appointment book, ‘Henbury Maybury – Anal Gland’.
‘That’ll be thirty-six dollars, thank you.’
As she opened the till, Charlotte bustled in from the street, hitching up her stockings beneath her nurse’s uniform.
‘Sorry I’m a bit late, Frankie – long line at the bank … You head off to lunch. I’ll handle this.’
‘Lunch!’ said Peter. ‘Now there’s a good idea! Shall we, you know, we might as well, eat together.’
‘Why not,’ said Frankie, and Charlotte smirked.
Out in the bright sunlit street with the hum and roar of traffic rolling past, the two virtual strangers sat at an outdoor table of a café not far from the surgery. Henbury, tied to a pole nearby, settled himself down on the pavement. He placed his white paws neatly together as if surveying his nails, and occasionally twisted around to lick at his feathery bottom.
Peter brought up the topic of his divorce first and pulled mock-horror faces at the ‘custody battle’ over Henbury.
‘It was worse than the kids!’ He laughed with his eyes and then waved the issue away with his hand. ‘They had all begun university by then and had no need for me, the struggling teacher.’
Frankie found herself telling him about Harry and leaving Waters Meeting and her children.
‘I worry about Tom so much. He was always the sensitive one. He’s the middle child, yet to me he feels like the baby of the family. It’s him I have the most anxiety about since the break-up.’
Peter smiled gently at her and nodded, but said nothing, urging her on with his eyes. She felt safe with this man, so she took a sip of her coffee and continued.
‘Michael will be okay in life, he’s just like his father,’ she said dryly. ‘But Rebecca, ahh Rebecca, I worry about her every day. She’s a wild one. She was always running amok at boarding school. She has the brains to do anything she chooses but she wouldn’t stay with me here in the city after school finished last year. Had to go back to the farm. Back to the river. She’s dog and stock mad.’ Frankie fingered the thin paper tubes of sugar which stood in a glass before her, and Peter smiled understandingly.
‘It’s hard, isn’t it,’ said Peter, ‘carrying that guilt.’
‘Yes,’ Frankie said.
They had written their after-hours number on the soft paper serviettes which tore if they pressed too hard with the pen. Each had laughed when they shook hands goodbye. Frankie had watched Peter and Henbury walk away down the street. There had been a spring in Peter’s step that hadn’t been there before.
Now, entering her flat, the first thing she looked for was the red light flashing on the answering machine.
Had Peter called? It was after nine p.m. A diabetic cat admitted at five had held her up. He’d had plenty of time to call. Frankie threw her keys on the bench and went back to the doorway to retrieve her groceries. She pressed the play button on her way past to the kitchen area.
As she bent to put the milk away in the small fridge she heard Tom’s voice and paused, listening before she shut the fridge door.
She looked up at the clock on the wall. Sighing, she made her way to the phone to call her son back and tell him there was no sign of Bec here. To calm herself she said out loud in the stale air of her small flat, ‘Bec has done this sort of thing before.’
Rebecca had always been a feisty girl, but after the separation she had gone completely off the rails. Mrs Snell, the boarding school headmistress, would be on the phone at six a.m., complaining in her nasal best-of-British voice.
‘Saunders? Dr Frankie Saunders? Your daughter ran orf from the boarding school yet again last night. She’s back with us now though. We can’t have this, you know. We shall have to take disciplinary action of some sort. We can’t have her run the risk of a pregnancy or worse. It would bring down the school’s name. She’s influencing the other gals too, I might add. Of course we do take into consideration, Rebecca’s … errr, family situation, but something must be done. Family breakdowns are so disruptive to children. Would you be so kind as to pop into the school before you go to the surgery this morning? Shall we say eight o’clock? Sharp? Good. See you then.’
It was after another little episode with the school, when Bec smuggled three year-eleven boys into her dorm, that Mrs Snell finally said, ‘Take her away.’ She was allowed to attend as a daygirl, but Bec hated being crammed in the flat with her mother. Worst of all she missed her dogs.
Sometimes after walking home from work, Frankie found the carport empty, her car gone. Rebecca would’ve skipped school and driven the three-hour trip to see her dogs, even if it meant incurring the wrath of her father at the other end of the journey. Tom often covered for her. He’d only been out of the local school himself for a bit over a year. It was Tom who fed and exercised her dogs while she was away at school. It was Tom who hid the car down the drive and smuggled food to Bec as she slept in a swag in the hayloft so her father wouldn’t send her back to the city.
Tom will be so worried about her, Frankie thought as she dialled the number for Waters Meeting. Her
daughter certainly hadn’t been here in the flat today.
She heard Harry’s voice on the other end of the phone. He’d obviously been sleeping so his ‘Hello?’ was a gruff one.
‘Harry, it’s me. I’m looking for Bec. Tom seems to think she’s taken off with her dogs. What have you done to her?’
Harry’s silence on the other end of the phone filled Frankie with fear and panic. Whenever Bec pulled a stunt like this Frankie couldn’t help but whip herself with negative thoughts. That she was a bad mother. That it was her fault. That she put her career before her kids. Then the anger would rise towards Harry. If only he’d talked more. Been more of an emotional support.
‘For Chrissakes, don’t you care about your daughter?’ Her outburst was met with silence. Typical, she thought.
‘You know how she drives when she’s mad. She could be dead in a ditch somewhere, in a car accident. She’s young and attractive. She could be picked up by a rapist! Have you been out to look for her?
‘She’ll be right,’ was all Harry said.
‘She’ll be right? No she won’t be right. God knows … she’s not “right”! She could be anywhere! You’re the one who drove her away, Harry. It’s up to you to go and find her! For godsakes, take some responsibility for your children!’
‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ Harry said quietly.
Tears of anger welled in Frankie’s eyes as she slammed down the phone. She felt the guilt and the anger rush in. Then, as she sat on the couch, she felt fear. Fear for her daughter. She carried the feeling with her, in her gut, throughout the night. Her daughter was capable of anything. But then again, she thought as she rolled over in the tangle of sheets in her bed, her daughter was capable full stop. She could look after herself. It was on this thought that she drifted off to sleep to dream of her little girl splashing in the river and laughing. When the waters rose and roared and swept her daughter away, Frankie woke with a start to the electronic scream of the alarm clock.
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