Nicholas shifted on her lap, reminding Susie that whatever she might think, she wasn’t quite alone. She stroked his little face, and resolved once more to be brave for him. This was their world now, and that was that. His face felt clammy; it was scorching inside the cab. The air vents on the dashboard and doors were open, but the air that rushed in was hot, like sitting under a hair dryer. She considered opening the window wider, but thought better of it. She didn’t want any more of the red dust inside the confined space, she could already feel the grit crunching between her teeth and irritating her skin.
Slade pulled a soft packet of cigarettes from his top pocket and shook one into his mouth. Susie watched as his dirty black thumbnail rolled the flint of his lighter and his cigarette sparked to life, revealing it to be a foul-smelling concoction that made her eyes water. The baby spluttered and coughed as he wrinkled his nose, before finally waking and instantly crying.
Slade stared at the bundle on her lap, ‘Ah, little fella’s woken up has he?’ He spat into the foot well and grinned.
‘Um…’ said Susie. Nicholas’s wails were growing louder. ‘I don’t suppose you could – you know – I mean, I don’t think he likes it much’. She looked meaningfully at Slade’s cigarette, hoping she hadn’t just mortally offended someone she had to spend the next seven hours with. Slade frowned at the offending object, as though noticing it for the first time, and promptly threw it out the window. Susie exhaled, thanked him, and turned back to Nicholas, unbuttoning the top of her blouse and holding his little face to her breast. A slow blush crept up Slade’s neck. Susie fixed her eyes on a point in the distance and stared straight ahead, trying to look indifferent and calm, acutely aware of Slade’s sly glances to his left.
Suddenly, Slade shifted in his seat, leant forward and reached out towards her breast and her baby. In his hand was a tin billycan, chipped, dented and grubby.
‘Here.’ He thrust the can towards her, his eyes averted.
‘Not for me, I’m okay, thank you.’ She raised her palm.
‘You may be okay now, Missy, but you won’t be soon if you don’t have some water. If you conk out, d’you think I’ll make a good substitute nursemaid?’
Susie fumbled with the large can, trying to get a grip. She placed the spout on her lips and tried to ignore the smell of cigarettes that lingered around the opening. She swigged the water, which tasted vaguely metallic.
‘Thank you.’ She handed it back to her driver and watched as he took several large glugs.
Several hours later, the truck pulled up inside the gates of Mulga Plains sheep station. If Susie was still holding on to any shred of hope that everything would be okay, she let go of it at that moment. Maybe she should have begged her parents for the money, maybe she should have told Nicholas’s father of the situation and asked him for help. Instead, the pride, stubbornness and scrambled brain that was the gift from Mother Nature for many pregnant women, had led her to this. Susie knew with a thudding certainty that her plan for a life in the sun with her baby had been a very grave mistake.
3
It might have been 1962 in England, but here in Willeroo it felt more like 1862. The sheep station was accessed through grand, ornate wrought-iron gates, each forged with the name Mulga Plains in their design. They were imposing, huge and gave the impression of a well-kept ranch and a happy farm, both of which were entirely false. In fact the gates were the only element of grandeur about the place and made the disappointment of her surroundings more acute, like removing the ribbon on a fancy box of chocolates and finding dirt.
The main house looked like it had been added to in a haphazard fashion over the years. The original grey stone structure had been extended with the addition of large, timber-walled rooms with flat roofs and wire netting over the windows to try and stop the invasion of bugs. It was ugly and sprawling, grey, brown and uninspiring. A wide veranda wrapped around the front of the house, and was dotted with benches, upended chairs and card tables that held well-thumbed decks and empty beer bottles. It looked like the aftermath of a raucous boys’ party. Susie was soon to learn that this was a normal, nightly occurrence. Her eyes widened at the sight of two shotguns resting like weary warriors, propped against a table. She instinctively held her son tighter.
She climbed down from the cab while Slade fetched her case, which had thankfully dried out in the hot sun, leaving only a residual tidemark where it had been submerged in the murky water. She pictured her dad’s hand on the same handle as they arrived in neat hotels on the English Riviera. She’d barely been patient enough to wait for her parents to unpack before running down to the beach with a bucket and a spade. That memory belonged to another girl, from another life.
Slade marched around the back of house. She trotted in his wake, his boots kicking up a crimson cloud. Susie swatted her hand around the baby, trying to remove or at least distract the determined flies that buzzed around them. The things were everywhere, stamping on her arms with dirty little feet, settling wherever skin was revealed, collecting at eyes, mouth and nose: any place where they could nestle and feed. Susie opened her mouth to flick out a fly and several more landed on and around her tongue. She gagged and spat them onto the floor. Nicholas too was covered. She brushed his face and covered it with her palm. She wondered with a pang if she would ever get used to these filthy creatures. Clearly here, the profusion of bugs and flies were simply part of life.
Slade stopped outside a low building with a sloping corrugated iron roof. The walls were sheets of plywood that had been tacked together, and the front door, transplanted from a more solidly built house and quite incongruent, didn’t fit or shut. Susie wished Slade would get a move on. What was the use in pausing outside this shed when she wanted to get to her room, to get the baby washed, changed, fed and settled? It had been a very long day and she was exhausted.
‘Here you go, love, home sweet home!’ Slade kicked the door with his heavy boot and watched as it swung and fell open at a strange angle.
Susie laughed in disbelief.
‘Is this is where we’re staying?’ she couldn’t hide the edge of hysteria in her voice.
‘Yup.’ He looked abashed at her discomfort.
‘But, I… we…’ She felt breathless. Her head spun as she considered how she would live in the shed with her tiny baby, how would she wash his clothes, his nappies, keep him clean, cool and boil his water?
‘Are you sure this is where Mr Gunnerslake wants us to sleep? Is it a temporary measure?’ She tried to hide the quiver to her voice.
‘Temporary? Don’t think so,’ he shook his little head, ‘This not quite what you expected, love? It’s bound to be a bit different out here you know, and there’s a lot that live in worse. If you’d a come three days ago, there wasn’t even a door.’
Susie clutched her son to her chest, ‘Why is it so horrible here? I haven’t done anything wrong and yet everything feels like a punishment!’ Susie didn’t know how she summoned the strength to find her voice.
‘Well, given your situation, I reckon you did do something wrong. What kind of girl comes half way around the world with her trouble? How bad is it that she can’t stay in her own country and with a little ‘un?’ he spoke fast, out of the side of his mouth, and avoided looking her in the eye.
Susie’s bravery evaporated. Everyone knew what she had done, what she was. But she straightened her shoulders and gathered her last ounce of strength.
‘I want to see Mr Gunnerslake. I want to see him right now. I don’t think for one minute he can mean for us to sleep in here, surely to God. Are there no rooms in the house?’ As she pictured the state of the veranda and the guns carelessly abandoned on the porch, she wasn’t sure that the house would be that much of an improvement.
Slade frowned. ‘No love, no rooms in the house.’
‘He does know that I have a small baby?’ Susie refused to believe that anyone with this information would think this was acceptable.
‘Oh he knows all right, ha
d one of the boys give it a bit of a sweep for you.’ He made as if to say something else, but he stopped himself. Instead, he nodded once in her direction and strode away.
Susie took a deep breath and poked her head inside the cabin. She felt around the nearest wall for a light switch, but even before she felt the blank wall she knew that there would be no electricity in the shed. As her eyes adjusted to the dust-filled gloom, she spied a mattress on the floor. Judging by the assortment of unidentifiable stains and the wide indent where springs had collapsed and sagged in the middle, she wasn’t its first occupant. In the corner was a white, hand-painted cot with a vinyl covered sponge base. At least she would be able to scrub and bleach it. A square window, without glass, was covered with green netting. It was her only source of light.
For the first time in many years, Susie prayed.
That first night at Mulga Plains would remain indelibly etched in her mind. The cold creep of fear plucked at her muscles and shook her bones. She stripped Nicholas in the diminishing light, trying to keep her tone soothing and reassuring as she struggled to replace his soiled nappy in the darkness. She forced herself to ignore the scuttling sound in the corner of the room, the gnawing hunger in her stomach, and the flat, single note that reverberated inside her skull.
Susie was too stunned to cry, so instead she tried to sleep. She wouldn’t have thought rest would be possible, but eventually anaesthesia gripped her and, six hours later, she awoke to Nicholas’s stuttered cries. Once she had fed him and rocked him back to sleep, she wiped down her crumpled shirt and trousers, tucked her hair behind her ears, and made her way around the path to the main house. Beyond the garden, the landscape was flat and vast. Acres of red dust and spiky trees stretched in every direction under a big sky that held the vaguest tinge of pink. It might have been beautiful, were she able to study it with different eyes. Slade was already up and sitting at one of the card tables on the terrace, forking fried eggs into his mouth. A cigarette smouldered on the table edge, which he drew on between mouthfuls.
‘How was your first night?’ he asked. He had the decency to look abashed as tiny flecks of food flew from his lips and landed on the table.
‘I want to see Mr Gunnerslake.’ Susie pulled back her shoulders, trying to feign composure and courage.
‘Bit late for Mitch, he’s already up and out. But he asked me you to show you around.’ Slade pushed his oily plate into the middle of the table, and Susie watched as it was instantly descended upon by a gang of flies. As she stepped up onto the veranda she stifled a scream. In the corner, with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest, he was the strangest looking man she had ever seen. He wore a maroon T-shirt with a ripped sleeve, and khaki trousers that had been cut off at his calves. His skin was dark, and he had large, bloodshot eyes beneath hooded lids and a prominent brow. His nose was broad, with flattened nostrils that flared over thick, plum-coloured lips. His hair hung in beautiful, glossy twists, and his feet with their pale, dry soles were bare. He was fascinating. Susie raised her hand in a small wave, but he didn’t respond.
She followed as Slade strode ahead into the main residence of Mulga Plains.
‘Who’s that? On the terrace?’ she enquired.
‘That’s Elouera.’
She had hoped for a bit more. ‘What does he do?’
Slade grimaced, ‘Anything Gunnerslake tells her to. And for your information, he is a she, we call her Loulou.’
Susie opened her mouth to speak, but decided against it.
As they entered the house, her nose wrinkled at the musty tang that lingered in the air. She looked up, seeking windows that could be flung open at the first opportunity. The central hallway and main part of the house smacked of faded glory. Gold brocade wallpaper bore the marks of greasy skin that had rubbed along it. Smudged handprints covered the walls, evidence of someone trying to right themselves after a drunken stumble. A large wrought-iron light fitting hung in the double height hallway and held an ornate latticework of cobwebs. It was clearly years since anyone had wielded a feather duster in there. The doors that uniformly lead off the square hallway were unpainted dark wood, with tarnished brass handles. The bottom third of each door was spattered with all manner of liquid. Susie made out sploshes of what looked like soup, and drips of beer that had run down and formed a sticky fly-covered pool on the floor. One door had the perfect, neat imprint of a large boot stamped on it.
Thick, heavy curtains with braided, tasselled edges and co-ordinating tie-backs, hung at the filthy window. Susie prodded the fabric, regretting it instantly as a cloud of dust billowed into the space, filling her lungs and sitting on her hair and lashes. The heavy mahogany sideboard took up one whole wall of the dining room. Under a thick layer of grit, ornate soup tureens and matching serving dishes gleamed dully. The delicate gold leaf pattern and filigree work around the rim was beautiful. At some point, this house had been occupied by someone who took pride in their possessions. Susie felt sad for whoever it was.
The kitchen at the back of the house was functional but large, easily big enough for her to ensconce Nicholas in a play pen or a makeshift bed, meaning she could keep him close when she was working. A huge dresser housed all manner of crockery, none of it matching, but much of it pretty, if slightly old-fashioned. It reminded of her Grannie’s collection, which she had last seen nestling on shelves in the cellar at home, alongside abandoned croquet sets and rusting bikes. Here, the delicate pink floral painted teacups and pale glazed milk jugs seemed incongruent to their surroundings. The cooker was a wood burning stove that she could tell would, on the hottest of days of the year, make the room insufferable. Luckily there was a large, shuttered window that opened up like a hatch to the outside world. The fierce oven seemed to have two settings, roasting or off. She was sure it would take her a good few weeks to master it, not that she cared much if every chunk of meat she served was dry and singed.
Thankfully, the laundry room was in a spare block only yards from her own cabin. It was a long low building, housing an industrial sized twin tub and oversized ceramic sink with a washboard placed across it. Washing lines had been strung like fat spaghetti across the roof space and back again. In the corner, a tap dripped fresh water. Susie smiled, she would be able to clean their dirty clothes and boil up Nicholas’s nappies, and she would be able to fetch water to drink. Above the tap, on a scrubbed shelf, two paraffin lamps and four fat candles made her stomach leap with the knowledge that she would not need to be in total darkness tonight. For the first time since she arrived, Susie felt a glimmer of hope. Perhaps her stay wouldn’t be as bad as she had thought.
Two days later, Susie stood in the kitchen admiring her handiwork.
‘What do you think, Nicky? That’s a bit more like it isn’t it?’ Nicholas lay in the empty tea crate, lined with a thick, fringed velvet table cloth that Susie had found in a drawer and which she had washed twice. She had scrubbed the entire room from ceiling to floor, and although it now stank of bleach, it was at least dirt free, without a cobweb to be seen. Susie jumped as she heard the sound of heavy boots treading the wooden floor outside. Slade had clearly been avoiding her since she’d arrived, so it was unlikely to be him. She turned towards the door to see a small, offensive-looking man in his early seventies, wearing snug jeans and a grubby shirt. Thick hair hung to his shoulders in grey, wiry loops, framing small, bright eyes, like chips of amber glass. His tight lips housed teeth that were neglected. The stubble on his face was dark and reached from the top of his cheekbones to the base of his throat.
The man walked forward and stood with his arms a few inches proud of his body; his legs too, slightly bowed, didn’t meet between the thighs. The man looked to be full of gaps.
‘I’m Mitch. You Susie?’
In any other circumstances Susie would have made a joke, No, I’m another English girl who happens to be standing in your kitchen while you look for this Susie. But there was something about his fixed expression and twitchy fingers,
which told her he was not a man who liked humour.
She nodded.
‘Find everything you need?’
‘Yes, thank you Mr Gunnerslake. I’m getting there. It’s good to meet you; I wanted to say thank you for our sponsorship.’
He didn’t respond. She tried to be more direct in an attempt to engage him, ‘I’ve got a couple of questions if that’s okay?’
He shrugged.
‘My son, Nicholas, is a baby,’ she pointed towards the makeshift cot in the corner, ‘and our cabin is so hot and as far as I can make out, the only water is in the laundry, which isn’t that close and in the dark it makes it tricky to get to and from, are there any rooms available in the house? We don’t need much space and he is a very good baby.’ She added the last bit in case the fear of Nicholas crying at all hours of the day and night might have been a concern.
‘Keep him away from the machinery; it’s no place for kids.’
Susie opened her mouth to speak, but was unsure how to respond.
‘There’s fourteen mouths wants feeding twice a day including my Jackaroo, a hand full of Abos who run my stock, ringers, boremen, and Slade my manager who I believe you’ve met.’ She nodded resignedly. Slade had evidently passed on her requests, and if Gunnerslake had any mind to help her out, he would have already done so. ‘Supplies come in twice a month, make a note of what we’re low on, give it to Slade. You get meat daily, with over three thousand head of sheep, there’s always some available if you get my drift. We don’t eat nothing fancy. Meat, veggies, potatoes, pie, stew, that kind of thing. Loulou’ll help you with anything; just tell her what you need.’
Stories From The Heart Page 21