Wheat dust scratched on his neck and he ran his fingertips against his sweat-gritty skin under the collar of his shirt. It was hot. Even in the shade, it was stifling. He felt the panic rise again.
He saw her stoop to unclip each dog from their chains. The steel supports of the skillion shed served as tethering posts and the corrugated-iron roof provided shade. It wasn’t ideal kennelling and she pouted over it like a spoiled child. Charlie had promised, after harvest, to build her a proper run. But there just hadn’t been time. The crops and the machines came first. Endless.
In the sunlight the dogs danced in circles around her in the dust. She pointed towards the long red road which led to the front gate and they bounded away. She walked slowly after them, whistling a stop command every now and then and raising a hand for them to sit. Charlie’s eyes followed her as she grew smaller, walking towards the shimmer of heat. She was walking to the dam. In search of water to swim in.
He turned his back to her shimmering shape and went inside the house, picking up the local paper from the kitchen table and continuing on into the darkness of his old bedroom. He had a vague sense his mother was standing near the stove, but he didn’t look up to say hello. He just shut the bedroom door. His parents’ house and his room seemed so different since Rebecca had moved into the cottage. It no longer seemed like it was his house at all. Nor his room. The ebb and flow of seasons, of harvests, ploughings, plantings and sprayings had been disrupted. The pattern of mother and father and two boys had shifted entirely since Rebecca had come. No one said a thing. But everyone now questioned where they would stand in the family’s new shape.
When she had first arrived and moved into the cottage, he had felt his parents’ prickly silence when, after dinner, he stood up from the table and said goodnight to them. He knew they sat and listened to the click of the gauze door as he made his way outside to sleep in her arms in the cottage. His mother had long since given up the pretence of each morning going into his room to make his bed. He had given up sneaking into the house before dawn and climbing in between the tight sheets. He liked the softness of Rebecca’s bed. Naked limbs entwined in soft crumpled sheets which smelt of her. It was too hard to leave her there in that tangled bed. It was too hard to keep up the pretence for the sake of his churchgoing straight-backed mother.
Now here he sat on the edge of his stark boyhood bed, feeling so much like a boy. He looked at the ad he had just circled and the black ink which read, ‘150 CFA ewes’. He wanted to buy them for her, then re-fence the killer paddock, so she could at least work her dogs a bit. But first he’d have to ask his dad. He’d need his father’s signature on the cheque. He let out a frustrated sigh and crumpled up the newspaper. In his head he’d phrased and rephrased the question … the question of how to ask his old man for the money to buy her a ring. He threw the paper on the floor and rolled onto his stomach on the bed. He buried his face in the gap left by his folded arms. He could feel the panic again. He was going to lose her. She didn’t fit here.
When they first arrived after graduation and he carried her bags to the cottage, she had sworn and raged in the tiny living room when he’d told her he would still live with his parents for a little while.
She’d thrown down the boxes and slammed the door, screaming through it, ‘Mummy’s boy! Frigging old-fashioned, hypocritical God-squadders!’
She was right. He was a mummy’s boy. He hated that. So many of the local girls who had seen him at B&Ss were stunned by his party persona. They would say to him as they ran their eyes over him, ‘If only your mother could see you now, Charlie Lewis.’
The soft voice of his mother still sizzled on his brain like a brand. She had put down the wheelbarrow and slowly pulled off her gardening gloves. Not looking at him.
‘Of course you’re not assuming you can move into the cottage too? At least not until an official engagement.’
He was too gutless to go against the flow of the family. He hated himself for it. Bec had shown him how free a spirit could be. He longed to be like her. To be able to turn his back on his family and walk away. But it was here, on this land that he’d always pictured himself, that he belonged. Even as a little boy he could see himself as an old man, driving up and down endlessly on a tractor. Turning the soil. It was his home. They were his parents. He’d been taught to obey. He’d tried so hard to please them all but Rebecca just kept challenging all of that. He didn’t know where he was going any more.
Charlie reached out, opened the drawer beside his bed and pulled from it the glossy AR brochure. It fell open at Rebecca’s photo. The girl who was now walking along his family’s dusty drive had turned out to be so much better in real life than the dream. Better than the fantasy. Better than the photo. The real-life Rebecca was so not like his mother. He just loved that. He just loved her.
That night as he lay next to her warm sleepy-girl body, he could hear her breathing alter. She murmured in her sleep and rolled over. He pulled her closer to him and spooned her body so he felt her rounded backside next to his groin.
‘You okay, Bec?’
‘Mmmm?’
‘You all right?’
He could almost hear the river’s rush. She was dreaming again. Of her river. He wondered if she’d tell him about it in the morning. He cupped his hand under her breast and kissed her gently on the shoulder. He wanted to marry this girl, but not because of his mother, or because of the rules of his mother’s God. He just wanted her. In the darkness he stared at the curve of her shoulder and sighed. She was not the marrying type. Not to a flat-soil farmer anyway.
CHAPTER 36
In the sunroom a large fly beat itself against the window, distracting Harry from his newspaper for a moment. He cautiously sipped again on his too-hot tea and scanned the advertisements in the paper. One caught his eye. It was the symbol of the Landcare organisation. Two cupped hands meeting at the fingertips carefully formed the shape of Australia. He squinted at the print. They were advertising grants for riverside weed control and revegetation programs.
On the muster yesterday, as he ambled behind the slow-moving Herefords, Harry had noticed the dark green spread of blackberries along the edge of the water. Tangling outwards from the dark clumps were bright green leaves of young willows. He’d lost track of how long the boys had been gone, but the spread of weeds choking his beloved river tore at the last of his pride. Rebecca’s words had come to him, ‘You’re going to lose the lot.’ He’d said it again out loud and realised he’d already lost it all. His wife, his kids. Tom now gone. The river and its tangle of weeds didn’t seem to matter so much any more. Even though he still had his land for the moment and his mountains and sky, he had nothing. Nothing at all.
Ink Jet had splashed across the river in the wake of the ribby dull-coated cows. From her back Harry had looked up towards the homestead. It had been as though he were seeing the place for the first time in years. As if he shared the eyes of his father and his father’s father, riding up towards the sheds and yards. In the gentle afternoon breeze they’d come back from the dead, down from the plains, to see how their fortunes had crumbled into rotted wood and rusted tin. Because of him. All because of him.
As he’d unsaddled Ink Jet and hung the saddle up in the shed his fingers had lingered on the leather surcingle. How easy it would be to hang. To hang from the beams with leather around your throat. Harry had been about to pull the strap through the slits of the saddle when he’d felt the cat rub against his leg. He’d looked down and the cat had looked up.
‘Reow-wow,’ the cat said to him.
It had made him smile.
Today in the dozy sunroom Harry tore at the newspaper, around the edge of the advertisment. As he did the cat stalked into the kitchen, rubbed slowly against the solid wooden table legs and greeted him.
It then lay in a patch of sun watching Harry. It watched through narrowed eyes. Slowly Harry stood up, each muscle aching from yesterday’s ride. He cut some devon from a fat roll and threw it to the
cat. Then he shuffled over to the phone.
The first call was to the neighbours in search of hay for the cattle. The weather was still too cold to risk droving cows in such poor condition up on the high plains. He had to buy some hay to buy some time – enough time perhaps for the river flats to recover. A steady rain from the east had brought on some pasture growth, but it was so patchy with weeds that fertiliser and resowing would be needed, together with follow-up rains. God knows how he’d pay for pasture renovation. God knows how he’d get the breeder cows in condition for joining. He didn’t even have a bull.
The voice of his neighbor, Gary Tate, came down the line and Harry found it hard to begin. He cleared his throat, and for the first time in his life Harry Saunders begged. Gary at first was shocked to hear from Harry, then he began to lap it up. He didn’t have much time for the man, so he was enjoying the call.
‘It’ll cost, I’m afraid,’ said Gary through a small thin mouth. ‘Although we’ve got the irrigation, we still need some bales on hand for our own stock and, as you know, hay’s in short supply … It’s getting dearer and dearer by the day. Not enough rain.’
Harry bit his bottom lip and agreed with what Gary was saying. He held his breath when Gary told him the price. When he hung up the phone Harry almost turned to stalk down the hallway to the dining room and the dark, dusty cabinet which contained old decanters of bitter-tasting sherry. But instead he picked up the phone again and ran his finger along the 1800 number printed in the Landcare ad. A smooth-voiced lady switched his call through to the local Department of Ag office.
‘I was after the Landcare fella,’ he said to another female voice on switchboard.
‘I’ll just put you through …’
He heard a click and listened to the hold music – Vivaldi, he seemed to think. He watched the cat in the sun lick its back leg.
‘Hello …’
Momentarily confused by the youthful female voice, Harry stuttered. ‘Ahh. Yes … I was ringing about your river revegetation program … um …’
Sensing Harry’s confusion, the light and cheery voice on the end of the line helped out. ‘Yes, you’ve got the right person … I’m the new Landcare facilitator and rural counsellor for your region. Who is it who needs help?’
‘It’s Harry Saunders here. From Waters Meeting.’
There was a pause.
‘Well, I’ll be. It’s Sally here, Mr Saunders. Sally Carter.’
The name at first didn’t register. The voice tried again. ‘Rebecca’s friend.’
Harry stood stock-still. It was the first time he’d heard his daughter’s name voiced out loud for nearly a year. Sally sensed his apprehension and immediately stepped in. ‘If you’re free tomorrow I can be out there by ten a.m. We can discuss some options.’
‘Ahh …’
‘Fine. I know my way. See you then.’ She hung up the phone quickly.
Harry stood in the kitchen for a while. Thoughts of Sally flooded back into his head. He pictured the skinny well-spoken doctor’s daughter as she splashed and swam in the river with his daughter. Harry smiled, moved over to the sink and then turned on the tap. It was time he did the washing up.
In her office in town Sally sat back in her chair and stared at the phone. He wasn’t backing out of that one, no sir-ee, she thought. She was less than two hours drive from where Harry stood in his socks in his kitchen. She’d have to reschedule some of her on-farm appointments, but she wasn’t letting this chance go.
She stared at the fish which swam about on her computer screen. Then swallowed and sighed. ‘Rebecca’s friend.’ She didn’t feel like Bec’s friend. They’d barely been in touch since Tom’s funeral. Sally couldn’t help the guilt over his death. She hadn’t even contacted Bec to tell her about her new regional job. It sounded so flippant now, that she’d given up chasing suits and city living. It was Tom’s death which had sparked the change in her.
So many times she’d started a letter to Rebecca. Her words becoming more and more dramatic and emotional. She would write a page, read it, then crunch it between her slim hands. She’d start the letter again, tears in her eyes. Then she’d give up. Now she knew Harry’s call was giving her a chance. A chance to save her friendship with Rebecca and a chance to somehow make it up to Tom.
In blue ink she scribbled in her diary, ‘Waters Meeting, ten a.m.’ Thoughts of the business plan flooded back. Where had she put her copy? She thought of the box of university books sitting in her bedroom at home. She’d reread it tonight.
She reached for her address book and looked for Bec’s details. There was a series of numbers scribbled in and crossed out. The last one was Rebecca’s share house at Tablelands Uni. Sally had heard Bec had moved out to her boyfriend’s farm. She scratched her head with her pen. What was Basil’s real name? Charlie? Charlie … Lewis.
A monotone voice at directory assistance asked, ‘Homestead or Cottage One?’
In an instant Sal said, ‘Cottage One.’ It could be the workman’s house, but Sally guessed there was no way Rebecca Saunders would shack up with her boyfriend’s parents. She dialled the number, and when she heard Rebecca’s familiar voice say, ‘Hello,’ on the end of a crackly line, goosebumps ran over her flesh.
‘You’ll never guess what,’ Sally said excitedly into the phone.
CHAPTER 37
Charlie’s veins bulged in his neck and his face flushed red as he yelled at Rebecca. He paced up and down in front of her in the tiny cottage and ran his fingers roughly through his short black hair. The anger and fear in him was so strong. The look in his eyes terrified her.
When he grabbed her on both arms and searched her face for a reaction, she cracked.
‘I can’t take any more of this,’ she screamed. She shook off his grip and ran out of the cottage, slamming the door.
In the shed she fired up the four-wheeler bike and rode it away from the homestead area, past the vast paddocks of yellow crackling stubble. The wind blew her tears along the side of her face so they spread and itched in her scalp.
‘Where is there to run in this country?’ she said to herself. Her words, spoken through gritted teeth, were whisked away instantly by the wind that ran through the wheat stubble surrounding her. She wanted the closed-in feeling brought on by thousands of trees, all living, all breathing around her. She wanted the weight of the mountains, millions of tonnes of rock, all cracking, expanding and contracting with the touch of the sun and the frost. She rode towards the only rise she could see. An irrigation bank. Weeds grew up its red surface. Strange melons on prickly vines reached out across the dirt.
She switched off the bike so that all she could hear was the wind in the stiff stalks of the beheaded wheat. She ran up the bank and sat on the edge facing the water. Deep and brown, it swirled past her. She found no comfort in it. It seemed sinister. Man-made and sinister. Rushing past too fast, water stolen from rivers. Water that would bring more salinity to the land. She looked along the stretch of it and then stared at the scuffed toes of her boots, wishing she’d brought a dog with her so she could cry into its fur.
It was Sally’s call that had sparked the fight. After she’d hung up the phone Charlie had looked at her, waiting for the news. She sat cross-legged on the couch and he brought her a stubby. As they drank she recounted Sally’s conversation.
‘She’s got a rural financial counsellor job in the region, and she’s doubling as a Landcare facilitator for the moment until they find an extra person. Dad called her about river revegetation funding, not knowing it would be her. Sally’s got an appointment there at ten a.m. tomorrow.’
Charlie took in the news and nodded, trying to be positive, but alarm bells rang in his head. As she talked excitedly about the possibility of returning to Waters Meeting, Charlie’s fear grew.
‘Now that he’s asked for help outside, there’s a chance, don’t you see? He’s realised. He’s seen he can’t do it on his own. If Sally can open the door just a little, just a gap, he’ll realise he
needs me back there.’
‘But Bec, do you really think your father deserves you to help him out? What about all the pain he’s caused you … He’s treated you like crap. And what about Tom? Have you forgotten what happened to Tom?’
When Charlie said Tom’s name out loud, it hung in the air between them.
‘How dare you! You just want me here to be the perfect farmer’s wife, like your bloody mother! Look at me! I’m lost here and you know it. And how dare you bring Tom into this! If I don’t go back there, Tom has died for nothing! Don’t you see? Where do I fit here, with your mother crowding us and your father controlling our future? You change, Charlie Lewis, when you’re on this place. It’s not you, it’s not the Charlie I kissed in that river. You lose your strength. You lose yourself.’
‘Huh! You’re a fine one to talk about losing yourself! You would’ve drunk yourself into a hole by now, Rebecca … like your father has. Don’t you get stuck into me about my family issues. I’ve put up with yours long enough.’
The emotions in Charlie had come unstuck and the years of repression had hurtled out. He didn’t want Rebecca to go. She heard the panic in his voice. She had clamped her fists to her temples and begun to cry as he yelled at her.
And now here she sat on the irrigation bank. A tiny dot on a huge patchwork of massive squares divided by straight lines of swirling water. Rebecca in this landscape with no river.
She heard the ute before she saw it. Charlie drove towards her steadily, then parked it by the bike. As he stepped out of the vehicle she stood up. He climbed the bank and without saying anything took her in his arms and held her. He just held her. She held him back and felt the life in him, felt the goodness of his soul. She loved every cell, every inch, every part of him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
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