She had driven north again. Back to the quarters on Blue Plains, back to see Bob and Marg. To find comfort in some sort of home. But things up there had changed. She had changed. The grief had aged her. She had grown wiser, deeper and more solemn as she carried Tom’s death with her. Her dogs felt it too and they thrust wet noses into her palms as an offer of comfort. After a month, she knew she had to leave Blue Plains. Tom’s death was just as real there. It was too soon to try to go back to the life she’d known before. So Rebecca had just kept on driving.
In the motel room Rebecca turned off the shower. She knew she should be grateful for Charlie’s love and kindness. She wrapped the tiny scratchy towel around her body and stepped out into the bedroom. She gave Charlie the slightest smile and he was over to her, wrapping her up in his big arms, kissing the water away and loving her. Rebecca thirsted to feel the life of him, so she kissed him back hard. So glad to be with him again.
In their hired mortarboards and black flapping gowns the college graduates tucked their certificates under their clothes and ran from the building. They laughed as they ran in the heavy rain. Rebecca and Charlie ran with them. Like black crows they flew across the silvery wet road, down the street until they burst into the quiet warmth of the pub.
‘Hey Dave,’ shouted Gabs, ‘can we put our gear in your back room?’
‘Sure! No worries!’ said the barman as he looked up from the fridge.
The students pulled their musty smelling rain-sodden gowns from their shoulders and stacked them high in Gabs’ arms. Some balanced stacks of mortarboards on their heads and walked up the creaking stairs as if learning deportment. Helen gathered everyone’s certificates, diplomas and degrees and laid them safely in a pile in the back rooms of the old hotel.
At the bar alongside proud parents, the graduates began to drink. Rebecca raised her glass and chinked her rum and coke against the glasses of Gab’s parents. She smiled when she drank, but beneath the smile she felt a bitterness. A bitterness towards her mother who had told her she was too busy to come.
By six o’clock Rebecca was on the dance floor with sweat running from her scalp and down her cheeks. She and Gabs swung each other around in the midst of the other students. When Charlie came to her she grabbed onto him and jumped up and down on the spot. Then she yelled in his face, ‘Thank God your parents didn’t come, we’d be having dinner in some cheap restaurant by now and missing out on all the fun.’
He walked away from her and went back to sit at the bar.
——
The rain had eased to a fine mist which shone underneath the streetlights. Rebecca sat on the edge of the kerb and let the rain soak through her clothes. She shivered a little. To warm herself she tipped back her head and poured Stones Green Ginger Wine from the bottle into her mouth.
Behind her Charlie came out from the pub and stood above her.
‘For godsakes, Rebecca, just stop it!’ He tried to pull the plump green bottle from her hand, but she clung to it.
‘You’ve had enough. Come on, get up. We’re going back to the motel.’ She hugged the bottle to her and shook her head.
‘Rebecca. You don’t need to drink that much.’
‘Huh! Look who’s talking, Mr Basil Lewis. Whatever happened to your party animal nature? Was it just an act? To cover up the fact that you’re just a mummy’s boy deep down.’
‘Bec. You’re drunk. You’re baiting me. I’m not going to get into an argument with you just because you’re hurting over Tom.’
Charlie felt her flinch when he said Tom’s name. He softened his tones. ‘Destroying yourself with drink isn’t going to bring him back, Bec. And it’s not going to solve things at home. Just let it go. Let it go.’
‘What would you know?’ she screamed at him. ‘You’ve been brought up in perfect family-land …’
He tore the bottle from her hand and pulled her to him as she began to cry. ‘I don’t know anything, Bec. All I know is that you’re a very lost woman at the moment. And I love you.’
Rebecca let herself be drawn into him and buried her face against his woollen jumper. He was warm and dry and smelt of cigarette smoke from the pub.
After a while as they sat in the rain he said, ‘Come home with me, Bec.’
She pulled away and looked at his face.
‘Come home. We can fix the cottage up and move in there … away from Mum and Dad. There’s plenty of places you’ll find work. We can get a float and bring Ink Jet and Hank home … and I’ll build you some kennels for your dogs. We’ll get some sheep again.’
In the misty rain she heard herself saying, ‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Yes Charlie, yes.’
She hugged him tightly and spoke into the warmth of his neck, ‘I love you so much.’ Then she stood up unsteadily and dragged Charlie back inside the pub.
Still drunk and wet through with rum and rain, Rebecca found herself with Gabs. They were watching the sun come up behind the clouds which hung low over the rooftops in the town. The rain had stopped and everything shone in a grey hue. Charlie had given up trying to coax her from the pub. He had walked back to their motel in the quiet wet darkness just before dawn.
She and Gabs sat in the centre of a roundabout amidst circles of neat flowers and bushes. Both girls had daisies tucked behind their ears and were raising their pub glasses to the taxis and delivery trucks which circled and drove on by.
‘I laaaaarve him!’ Rebecca said to the dull sun. ‘I laaa-ha-ha-harve him!’
‘I know you love him, you dork,’ said Gabs as she picked at her nose. ‘But you’re gonna hate it out there with his mum. And besides, there’s no mountains … and no sheep.’
Before Bec could argue, both girls spotted a police car approaching.
‘Yikes!’ said Gabs. They ducked and stifled their giggles in the forest of green flower stems in the garden bed as the police car pulled to a halt.
‘We’re standing out like dog’s balls,’ gasped Gabs.
‘Shhh!’ was all Bec could manage as they both dissolved into peels of laughter.
The policemen tried not to smile when both girls offered them a flower each.
‘Come on, girls. We’ll take you home,’ said the young one.
‘Home,’ said Rebecca, getting unsteadily to her feet. ‘Now there’s a tricky thing.’
CHAPTER 32
In the tiny cottage Rebecca looked up at the ceiling fan as it made steady high-pitched grating noises. The fan stirred the air around her shoulders and she felt goosebumps rise on her flesh. She was so sick of staring at it, she scrunched up a piece of paper and threw it into the blades. The ball of paper flew to the wall and fell onto the floor.
‘Four runs,’ Bec said to the fan.
She had waited and waited for Charlie’s crackly voice to come through on the UHF. She’d tried gardening until the sun stung too hot on the back of her neck. Then she’d come inside and slumped on the couch and waited.
She got up and began to fill the water cooler. His call came through at last. Charlie’s robotic sounding voice and radio static filled the kitchen.
‘Ready for another pick-up, Bec?’ She pressed the button on the handpiece.
‘Roger, I’m on my way.’
‘Who’s this Roger bloke?’ came Charlie’s teasing reply.
She smiled at the radio. ‘I’m leaving now.’
On the verandah she pulled on her boots, put on her hat and carried the cooler to the truck. As she drove past the homestead entrance she saw Mrs Lewis waving to her to stop.
‘Bugger,’ said Bec as she looked at Mrs Lewis in her long flowery summer dress and yellow apron. Bec ground the gears a little and backed the truck up to the gateway. She jumped down from the cab and walked towards Mrs Lewis who was wiping her clean, dry hands on her apron.
‘I heard you just then on the radio, that you’re off to help Charlie. I’ve baked him some scones – they’ll be two minutes. Come inside.’
Scones, thought Rebecca, in this heat? She
followed Mrs Lewis inside after kicking off her boots.
‘I’m making a casserole for tonight. Would you like me to prepare some extra for you and Charlie?’
‘No, we’ll be fine, thanks Mrs Lewis.’
‘Oh no. I insist. He’s got you running about so much this harvest, you must be pressed for time to prepare decent meals.’
‘It’s been busy, but that’s okay. I like busy.’
‘Any word yet about the office administration job at the grain traders?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be the successful applicant. You present yourself so … confidently. I’m off to town to do some shopping next week. Would you like to come? You’ll need some office clothes.’
‘Yes. Yes. Good idea.’ Rebecca tugged at her torn denim shorts and smoothed down her oil-stained singlet as Mrs Lewis bent to lift the tray of scones from the oven. She carried them over to the table and they tumbled from the tray onto the cooling rack.
‘Mmm. They look good,’ said Rebecca. Just then Charlie’s voice blared on the radio.
‘Rebecca are you on channel?’
‘Yep.’
‘Have you left yet?’
‘Nope.’
‘Good. Could you grab some oil before you come out. It’s in that yellow drum in the big skillion … near the Honda.’
‘No worries. See you soon.’
‘Look forward to it, babe.’ Charlie’s flirtatious voice crackled across the kitchen and Mrs Lewis stiffened and her face hardened.
‘They’re very public things, radios. A lot of others in the area are on the same channel.’
Rebecca looked down at the holes in her socks. She felt guilty for being so negative about Charlie’s mother. Over the past few months Mrs Lewis had been so kind. She’d given Rebecca space to grieve and looked after her as much as Rebecca would allow. But there was always a distance … and that silent sense of disapproval. Mr Lewis had it too. Rebecca noted how he looked her up and down from head to toe each morning. At first she’d turned up, in her work clothes, every morning at seven in the machinery shed. Reporting to work like an eager young soldier keen to go into battle. But after a few weeks, as Mr Lewis continued to refuse to give her a job, Rebecca just gave in and took to sitting with Charlie for hours on the machinery, or handing him shifters or screwdrivers in the shed.
‘For Chrissakes, Charlie,’ she had screamed one morning, ‘he might as well tell me to my face that he thinks I belong in the kitchen or in the garden! He’s worse than my dad!’
Charlie tried so hard. He comforted Rebecca’s tears over Tom which came to her in the dark of night. He stood patient and calm between his mother’s fussing and tugging and Rebecca’s defiance. But as always he bent to his father’s will. If Mr Lewis ordered Charlie to do a job, one that Rebecca could easily do, Charlie never challenged him.
Charlie continued to promise to set aside a weekend to pick up Hank and Ink Jet from Waters Meeting, but the weekend never came. Rebecca loved Charlie, she knew it, but the resentment began to rise and sometimes she’d find herself making love to him not just with passion but with a kind of anger. Anger for all that had happened in her life and for what wasn’t happening in her life. She felt out of control. Lost. It was as though she was watching another girl. This other girl living in a cottage, throwing cushions at the wall, rocking back and forth, trying to picture her life before, with Tom and her dogs on Waters Meeting. Trying to work out what life would be like without Charlie – whether she could stand life alone, with no home.
When harvest arrived and the district began to buzz with activity, the Lewises found they had to rely on Rebecca more. She had a truck licence after all. At first Mr Lewis only let her drive the truck on the property, but as the urgency rose to get the grain to the silos before rain swept across the huge sky, she found herself boring down the road away from the property towards town. A touch of freedom in a truck.
Today, as Rebecca drove with the bundle of Mrs Lewis’s fresh-baked scones on the passenger seat, she stifled a yawn. The harvesting days were long, and Rebecca and Charlie’s days were separated by the vastness of the crops. They were always travelling in the opposite direction, Charlie in the header, she in the grain truck. They would meet in the paddock when the bins were full and he would wave to her as she set the grain auger up to fill her truck and take it to the silo. There was no time to stop. It was harvest time and the sun was shining. After the last front had passed through, the weather bureau had forecast that there’d be no rain for weeks. No excuse to stop. After the grain harvest, there was hay to be made. Then there’d be soil to prepare for the seeds to be sown and it would begin all over again. The years repeated ahead of her endlessly in this strange flat place she didn’t belong to.
There were times, however, when being with Charlie made it all worthwhile. When the harvest had first begun there’d been excitement in the air and Rebecca had started to have fun. She and Charlie had begun skylarking on the radio together.
‘Roger-dodger, Ranger One, this is Smokey Bandit Jail Bait reading you loud and clear.’ Flirtiness and fun flew between them on the airways. But Mrs Lewis had just put a stop to that, Rebecca thought.
She looked at Dags who sat on the floor of the truck salivating at the smell of the scones. ‘Well, life is pretty dam serious after all,’ she said to him. ‘There’s not too many jokes in the Good Book, if you know what I mean.’
Dags put his paws on the dashboard and peered out the windscreen, looking for nonexistent sheep amidst the yellow wheat stubble. Bec ran her hand along his smooth firm back.
‘Sorry Dags. We’ll get you some sheep one day soon.’
On the single strip of bitumen road she waved to Mr Lewis as he bumbled by in the cotton harvester. He was headed for the neighbouring place on a contracting job. Bec steered the truck back onto the centre of the road after he had passed.
‘Old mongrel,’ she said. Dags looked up at her and stopped panting for a moment. ‘Not you!’ Rebecca laughed.
She thought about Mr Lewis. She recognised her own father in him. When he spoke so condescendingly to Charlie, she felt her anger rise. It was bad enough that Mr Lewis virtually ignored her, but when he cut Charlie short every time, it made Rebecca so angry. Charlie’s shoulders seemed to slump when his father entered the room and a silence settled on him like a cloud. Charlie had so many brilliant ideas for the farm, which he shared with Rebecca. He was bursting with passion for farming, yet he had no room to move.
‘Minimum till is the way to go with soil like this,’ he’d said one day. ‘Conservation farming. It would boost yields out of sight, and we’d use less water on the irrigation country … It would be great all round.’
Rebecca had discussed his ideas with him and then, with unbridled enthusiasm, pushed him to mention them to his father. Part of her eagerness for change came from her frustration that she could do nothing with Waters Meeting. With Bec’s strength and encouragement behind him, Charlie had begun to speak his mind. But then the arguments between Charlie and his father had started. Shouting in the machinery shed. Bikes and utes revving away from each other. Angry silent gaps at the dinner table. Mrs Lewis casting glances loaded with blame on Rebecca. Mr Lewis’s disapproving sighs at the thought of his son ‘shacked up’ with a girl.
Rebecca would’ve packed up and left one hundred times, if it weren’t for Charlie’s sake. A terrible fear lay in the pit of her stomach that if she left, like she had left Tom, the worst could happen. A lovely, lonely farm boy. Isolated. Shut out.
Dags pushed a wet nose under her hand and Bec smiled at his sensitivity. She brushed her depressing thoughts aside, pulled down the radio handpiece and pressed the button, putting on her cheeriest voice.
‘Where are you now, Charlie?’ During the pause before he answered, she imagined his brown hunky hands reaching up for the radio.
‘On the eastern side.’
Eastern. Eastern? She had trouble out here in all this flat coun
try knowing which way was where, but she soon spotted him. She changed down a gear as she swung the truck into the crop. She leapt out, calling Dags, and stood with her hands on her hips in the heat, watching the machine roar to a stop. Dags sniffed the air, wagged his tail at the sight of Charlie, then lay in the shade of the truck to snap at flies.
Charlie jumped down from the cab and walked towards her. He was wearing shorts and she could see his leg muscles flex with every step.
‘Hello, schpunky,’ she said, reaching up to kiss him.
‘Time for a break,’ he said and he popped the top of the cooler and drank deeply from the opening.
‘I thought that thing was airconditioned,’ Bec said, nodding towards the header.
‘It is. Come on, I’ll show you my air vents.’ He led her by the hand and she followed him with a smirk on her face.
‘Oh, hang on. Your mum’s scones.’
In the squash of the header cab amidst gears, gadgets and dials Charlie bounced up and down on the well-sprung seat.
‘Good suspension,’ he said.
‘Here, let me try it.’
Bec straddled his lap and locked her fingers around the back of his neck. She began to kiss him there, on his neck, and then moved her lips down to his chest. He smelt of wheat dust and oil. Unbuttoning his shirt she kissed his skin lightly down to his belt buckle. At this point she stopped and turned her blue eyes up to him with the Look, which he now recognised.
‘This will give a whole new meaning to the term header,’ she said, as she roughly tugged at his belt buckle.
Charlie’s sighs could be heard amidst the hiss of the chair’s suspension as it rocked up and down. Charlie gripped tightly on her shoulders and shuddered when he came.
The scones lay cooling in a tea towel on the floor of the header.
CHAPTER 33
Harry watched the last of the beer boxes smouldering in the incinerator and turned back towards the porch where he tipped dried cat food into the bowl and sung out, ‘Puss Puss.’ There was still no sign of the cat, but the food was being eaten during the night. It was possibly a good sign, thought Harry.
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