Jillaroo

by Rachael Treasure

  Eventually he took her by the hand. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll cook you fish fingers for tea.’

  CHAPTER 38

  Harry surprised himself when he uttered the words to the tall, well-dressed girl.

  ‘So how is Rebecca getting along?’ The words came out jerkily and he couldn’t bring himself to look at Sally. She sat on the bench seat of the ute looking straight ahead as they bumped over the track in the river flat paddocks.

  Sally smiled gently, took her gaze away from what was left of the lucerne paddock after drought and overgrazing. ‘She’s fine. Just fine. And Charlie’s well, too.’

  She thought back to her phone call yesterday. Her heart had raced when she first heard Rebecca’s voice. She wasn’t sure how Rebecca would react to her after she’d dropped out of her life so suddenly. But instantly Sally could hear the smile in her friend’s voice. Rebecca had been truly joyful to hear from her. After Sally had discussed the possibility of swaying Harry into taking Rebecca back onto the farm, their conversation had turned to Tom.

  ‘I know I haven’t been around for you like I should’ve,’ said Sally quietly. She expected Rebecca to stir her along with a teasing remark but instead she said, ‘I can understand why. I know you felt partly responsible for Tom’s death, Sal …’

  Sally wasn’t sure how to react so she remained silent.

  ‘But it truly wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Tom had to pin his dreams onto something, and that something happened to be you.’

  ‘If I could turn back the clock …’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Rebecca had cut in. ‘You would never have suited Tom and we both know it, so don’t even think things like that.’

  Suddenly Harry’s voice snapped Sally back to the here and now.

  ‘Has she got a job?’ Harry asked.

  ‘She hasn’t been looking too hard. She’s doing great things on Charlie’s place … His family can’t get enough of her farming skills,’ she lied.

  Sally wasn’t going to give away too much. She’d play him along a bit. See where he stood when it came to his daughter’s future.

  Despite everything, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for Harry. She had been shocked when she drove up to the house. It had been the house she’d dreamed of when she was a child. Even though she’d spend weekends on her family’s hobby farm, her father’s brand-new brick homestead-style house never had much heart or soul. But Waters Meeting, the house, the land, the sky above, was crowded with ancient energies. Teeming with ghosts of people and animals gone by. History could be felt in the wood, in the tin, in the wilderness. As children, Sally and Rebecca had found the richness of the past everywhere – tiny fragments of pottery in the soil, a rusted nail in the daffodil patch, an old horn from a house cow long dead, the rusted chain of a dog none of them had ever known.

  She had envied Rebecca, growing up in the rambling homestead, nestled amidst the trees and paddocks of the picture-postcard valley farm. Her school holidays spent here were now golden memories of endless sunny days, riding ponies bareback, splashing in the warmth of the summer river. Of Frankie turning up with tiny orphan piglets, calves or lambs. Of bounding puppies and thick white bread and homemade raspberry jam. There was a chaos to it all but at the same time a peacefulness. As children they could find so much joy in all the living things around and find so much intrigue from the lives that had once walked the land.

  Now the house seemed dark. The souls quiet. The valley empty. As Sally had walked along the path to the front door she’d heard the wind wailing in the shadowy pines and she’d shivered a little. She’d thought of Tom. Did he hang himself from a smooth grey branch? She wasn’t sure where. Or how. She couldn’t help but look for ropes or marks on horizontal tree limbs. She’d shivered again and reached for the old cow bell at the back door which hung above a spidery nest of old boots. As the bell clanged, the black spiders inside it panicked and crouched further into their webs.

  When Harry opened the door, Sally refused to come in for a cup of tea. Instead she said in a voice that was too light, ‘Let’s get straight into it. Go take a look at the river. We can talk while we drive.’

  Harry was relieved. Even though he’d tidied the kitchen and swept it clean, he was not keen on fumbling around to make tea using slightly off milk. He was fearful of sitting in uncomfortable silence without even the tick of the clock.

  In the ute now the engine revved over their silence and bumps, rattles and jolts filling up large gaps in their conversation.

  Sally kept her questions simple and on target. She was there as a Landcare representative, not in her normal role as counsellor. She asked about weed control programs, the size of areas, previous revegetation work. She jotted his answers in her notebook in staggering writing as they jolted along the track.

  Relieved and somewhat impressed by her serious professionalism, Harry began to open up and quiz her about financial counselling.

  ‘Got many takers for the counselling side of the job?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. We can’t keep up at the moment … particularly since the drought. Most farmers find they can’t do without one,’ she said. ‘And because the service is part government funded, and part funded by the banks and private industry, it doesn’t cost the farmer anything.’ She knew from the look on his face that she was winning him over.

  Under a gnarled old rivergum, Harry stopped the ute. ‘This is the worst area. And there’s a bit of wash-up here in the creek.’

  Sally looked over the area. ‘If you’re prepared to fence that, we can get you back at least half of your fencing cost through an erosion control program. When the weather’s right, some of those blackberries further up the gully there could be burned and sprayed.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Harry said.

  After he waved her goodbye from the gate and watched the car wind its way up the steep valley, Harry suddenly felt very much alone. The cat was nowhere in sight. He’d wanted to ask more questions about Rebecca, but something had stopped him.

  He walked to the machinery shed, making sure he didn’t look at the garage. The tractor fired up easily and he was surprised at its steady, healthy sounding rumble. He drove the tractor to the side of the shed and backed it up to the three-point linkage of the fence-post digger.

  It had been over a year since it had been moved from the spot and long yellow grass tangled around its metal frame. Harry secured the pins and linked up the power take-off of the tractor. Adjusting the revs and pulling a lever, Harry made sure the digger still worked. The large spiralling borer spun around easily. He drove it back to the shed and flicked the tractor’s off switch. On the ute he threw some steel droppers, a roll of hinge-joint wire, a roll of plain wire and the box of fencing gear. Tomorrow morning he would begin. He would stop the erosion that was eating away his land.

  CHAPTER 39

  At first Peter thought it was Henbury whimpering which woke him in the darkest part of the night. It was not uncommon for the dog, who was getting quite old, to ask to go outside at irregular hours of the night. Peter leaned up on one elbow and looked at the black blob which lay curled up in the basket at the foot of the bed. Only little grumbling snores came from the shape. Then Peter realised it was Frankie who’d woken him. She lay with her back to him, shaking and crying silently.

  ‘Hey,’ he said gently and rolled over, taking her in his arms and brushing back the wet hair from her face.

  She tried to roll away from him, turn her back on him, so she could be left alone in her own private world of grief. Peter held on tight.

  ‘No you don’t, Frankie.’ She relaxed a little in his arms. He knew not to coax the words out of her. Despite what he’d learned in the student counselling seminars, talking about it was not always best. Especially in Frankie’s case.

  She bore the pain of her son’s death in a private, silent kind of hell. By day she put on her autopilot smile with her clients, and during evening meals in the flat she smiled at Peter and patted
him lovingly on his hand or knee. Nothing was ever said about the fact that Tom was dead. The fact that it was suicide. She wore the guilt as only a mother could, and it was beginning to drag the sides of her mouth down permanently and bring streaks of grey to her auburn hair.

  Nights were the worst. The darkness lay heavily on her. Each night she lay awake listening to Henbury and Peter snoring in an odd kind of rhythmic song.

  Tonight the insomnia interspersed with dreams of Tom and the river were too much to bear. She buried her face into Peter’s chest and felt the fuzziness of his flannel pyjamas on her cheek. She breathed in his smell. The guilt rose in her again, this time for the way she shut Peter out. She’d left him out there in the cold. His new bride running away with grief before they’d even had time to settle into their married lives together. As she forced herself to speak, Peter forced himself to be silent.

  ‘It’s like he’s still there. It’s like it never happened. I wake up each morning and in my head I think, Mick and Trudy … in the city with baby, Bec and Charlie … farming cotton and wheat, Tom … at home on the farm. But he’s not home. He’s not there. And the dreams. They’re so vivid. So real. He’s looking at me and his face is so white. The river is always rushing and roaring so loudly. Oh God, Peter! I should never have left them. Never. I should never have left him there with that man.’

  Peter took the words in. Some hurt him. Some angered him, but he kept silent, rubbing his hand up and down her back. Then she said what he’d been waiting to hear.

  ‘I have to go back there. To Waters Meeting. I have to see for myself that Tom’s not there. I have to be in the places where he last walked.’

  Peter nodded understandingly. It was just what they’d said in the counselling seminar about confronting demons. He was about to say he’d take a sickie and they could leave first thing in the morning when they heard movement in Henbury’s basket and a loud yawn.

  Frankie rolled over. ‘For chrissakes, Henbury.’ She swung her legs out of bed and fumbled in the dark for her robe.

  ‘It’s alright, Frankie, I’ll take him outside.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’ll go.’ She was relieved to have an excuse to get out of the flat and away from the hellish feeling of not being able to sleep.

  As she stood in the doorway of the units and waited for Henbury to shuffle out of the tiny garden, Frankie looked up. It was the first time in a long time that she missed seeing stars overhead.

  CHAPTER 40

  Harry was so keen to get the fencing underway, he rose before dawn and lit the stove to put the old kettle on. The sun was just stretching up behind the dark mountain when he stepped from the house and began to drive the ute to the erosion site. He parked in the shade of a gum and stood with his hands on his hips trying to work out how long the job might take him on his own. He had to walk back to the sheds to pick up the tractor. It would take him a good half an hour, he thought. Normally he’d curse at having to walk, but watching the sun come up in a shimmering flame-red and golden ball above the mountain seemed to calm him. Insects skimmed on the surface of the river and fish jumped, making a sudden splash. For a time, the sadness in Harry’s heart lifted. He decided then, as he watched the river pass silently by, that he would find out from Sally where his daughter was. He would ask Rebecca if she felt she could come home.

  ——

  The spiral blade of the post-hole digger slipped easily through the rich black river soil. Harry had the first four holes dug in no time but, as he backed the tractor onto the rocky ridge, he knew the next fence-post hole would be tough to dig. He set the tractor on high revs and lowered the post-hole digger onto the surface of the soil where it spun, tossing up soil, severing blades of grass and stirring small stones from the earth.

  Metal hit rock and the machine laboured as a large stone was spewed up amidst the soil. The stone lay next to the rotating blade and scraped against it as the digger turned. Harry reached forward to grab at the stone. In an instant the whirring noise took on a different tone as shirt sleeve, then skin, then flesh, then bone grated against metal. The machine laboured as Harry screamed. With his free arm he reached up. His fingertips touched on the lever. He sunk to his knees, his weight bringing the lever down. The spinning digger stopped. Harry hung his head. Sweat beaded on his brow. His skin grew pale. Blood seeped into soil. When he opened his eyes he could see what was left of his arm, twisted into the machine. His hand, white, waved back at him from the other side of the borer. In horror he pulled back but realised his arm wasn’t completely severed. He was stuck there in the machine. His screams rang out around the hills and sent the black cockatoos screeching towards the mountaintops.

  CHAPTER 41

  The day was so still and the air so clear. Trees hung limp beneath a haze of chilly blue. The winding road hugged the curves of the mountainside, and leaves and fern fronds flickered and waved slightly in the short blast of wind from the car as it drove past. Frankie and Peter sat in a comfortable silence. Henbury stood on his tartan rug in the back, leaning hard against the door with his nose upturned to the gap in the window. By mid-morning, they had passed the Dingo Trapper Hotel without stopping.

  ‘No need to book a room for tonight,’ said Frankie as she smiled at Peter. ‘Hardly anyone ever stays there … I’m sure there’ll be a room when we come back later.’

  They fell back into silence and drove on.

  Frankie felt a tinge of excitement mixed with dread as they passed the Twelve Mile stockyards … They were getting nearer to Waters Meeting, nearer to facing Harry and the place Tom died. As she sat staring out of the car window, Frankie waited for the sudden expansive view which often shocked travellers as they rounded the hairpin bend on the long spur. She loved that sight. They hadn’t made this journey since Mick and Trudy’s wedding, and back then the valley had shone yellow from the dry. Now the paddocks were green, but Frankie could still recognise the damage the drought had done. There were long-running scars across paddocks where hay and grain had been fed out to stock. The animals were now nowhere to be seen. On stock camps on hillsides and in the corners of paddocks, weeds sprouted. The remaining pasture was patchy and short. But despite this, the valley from up here looked stunning. A luminous swathe of green, flanked by the deeper green-brown of the surrounding bushland.

  ‘Wow,’ said Peter as he saw the view for the second time in his life.

  Frankie looked at the silver river, edged with leafy gums. It snaked its way through the black soil river flats. A clump of green pines, silver birch, oaks and well-watered gums shaded the house from view but Frankie could just make out the machinery shed and the old barn and stable. The road wound down towards the river valley’s base and the view was gone, just as suddenly as it had arrived.

  She remembered the first time she had driven along this road. Fresh out of college. A graduate vet with the world at her feet. Ambitious, flirtatious and attractive, even in overalls. She’d driven into the property, peering through the trees at the two-storey house.

  ‘Wow,’ she had said as she’d driven past the house. It had loomed up high above the river flats. It was tall and proud. Roses flowered madly along the fence and lavender bushes scented the air heavily on the edges of its wide verandahs. Geraniums in boxes flowered from the upstairs verandah. Stunned by the beauty of the house and garden, the young vet drove on down to the yards.

  It was early morning and a golden light had crept over the mountains and shone on the wooden yard railings. It was then that Frankie saw him. Her mountain cattleman dream. Harry in a worn hat, handling a prancing young colt which quivered with nervous excitement. He smiled at her as the horse pranced about. A wicked smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes, ‘You must be the vet,’ he grinned.

  It was then that Frankie felt the sexual rush run through her. A desire that was so strong it sent a rosy flush to her cheeks. As she shook hands with Harry, she felt a charge run through her again.

  The colt was her first gelding operation since she�
�d graduated. The operation didn’t go terribly well, but Harry didn’t seem to mind. He spent most of the time leaning near her, breathing in the smell of her as she bowed her head to thread a curved needle with shaking hands.

  She didn’t sense any anger in the tone of his voice when Harry phoned a few days later to ask her to come back to treat an infection in the colt. As she swabbed away the pus, disinfected the wound and needled the horse, she felt the nearness of Harry again as he held onto the halter rope with his strong hands. She could smell him. A sweet male smell. They had made love there and then in the stable, in a flurry of desire amidst dank straw and the tangy smell of horse manure.

  Frankie could still see the shocked look on Harry’s father’s face as he entered the dim, musty stable. He turned his back on them and walked out, muttering he’d like a word with Harry. It was assumed from that day on that Harry would court then marry this woman, the vet. That was how it was out there then, in those days. That was just how it was and Frankie went along with it. It was her city girl dream. Harry was her stock-solid farming man and Waters Meeting her glorious country home.

  The first year of marriage had been exciting. The buzz of romance as they rose at dawn and saddled horses to ride to the hut on the plains. The sunny days spent in the garden with Harry’s gentle but insipid mother. But after a year or so, reality hit. Frankie was learning that the country manor house came with a price. Inside its walls, she had to mould herself around Harry’s silent father and mouse-like mother. She found herself wanting more. More from Harry. More to fill her head. The isolation, too, was beginning to tell on her. Too many days at home. Stretches of days that contained little more than farming and domestics. Too many days without something to challenge her mind. Conversations that were too one-sided began to wear her down, and Harry’s hardness at times scared her. Despite his pouts and silence she took on part-time vet work. Part-time work she desperately pursued.