“A blue heeler,” Josie said, her head cocked towards her shoulder, considering. “It would match your hair.”
I snorted. “I’m not that grey.”
“Yet. How about a kelpie, then?”
I shook my head. “Too much work.”
“Staffy.”
“They abscond. That would be a disaster around here with all the livestock. I need something obedient and good company.”
“Definitely a poodle.”
I shot her a withering look. “That wiry hair would attract grass seeds like mad. There’s a reason most Australian breeds are smooth haired.”
“Tenterfield terrier.”
“Too small. Great dogs, though.”
“What, then?” Exasperation threaded her voice.
“Blue heeler is the best. I’ve had a couple of them when I was a kid. Fantastic dogs.”
“I’ll keep an ear out for you.”
“I didn’t say I wanted one.”
“I know.” Josie’s hair crackled around her head in the dry air. Still no sign of rain. “But there’s no harm in looking.”
I changed the subject. “How about you and me going out?”
She stared. “I thought you’d never ask. But where would we go around here?”
It was my turn to stare. “I’m talking now. On horseback. Me on Smoke, you on Flame.”
“Ha ha…Smoke and Flame.”
“Well?”
“I already told you; I’m just not confident riding bareback.”
“You ride Smoke, then.”
She was silent. Then she said, “This is going to sound stupid, but I’d really like to be the one to ride my horse first. Her tack should arrive soon. I can wait until then. I’m sorry, Felix. You probably think I’m making excuses.”
I was beginning to wonder. It had been weeks now, and she was yet to get astride her horse. In the meantime, Flame nosed the bare earth in my paddock and ate an awful lot of hay that had to be trucked in from closer to the coast—a long, long way.
But it was her horse. No doubt she had her reasons.
“How about you ride Budgie the pony again, then? He hasn’t been out all week.”
“Sure. I like Budge. He’s fun.”
And so Flame grazed on in the paddock, and Josie and I rode out on my horses. There were no other guests riding; it was just her and me.
We rode quietly through the campground and waved at a couple of campers. Everyone else appeared to be out for the day. There were just a couple of tents hunkered down on the dry ground, including Josie’s blue tent in its customary position away from everyone else down by the creek.
“Those two.” She flapped a hand in the general direction of the grey nomads we’d just waved to. “They’re considering doing a farm sit around here. The Mellinses’ place. Two weeks to give Rhonda and Harry a chance to visit their grandkids in Perth.”
I wondered how she knew so much about people. Those campers had been with me for three days, and I didn’t know that.
“They came into the Commercial,” Josie continued. “Started asking me about the area. That’s how I found out.”
There was a pause as she steered Budgie around a stand of mulga. “I reckon tonight would be a good night to try out the campfire idea,” she said. “Those two would be in it. Who else have you got here at the moment?”
“Some English backpackers, a couple from Japan, and a pair of grey nomads from Sydney.”
“Perfect! Get a fire going at dusk, mix up some damper, boil the billy for tea—do you have a billy?”
I nodded. “Somewhere. But we’ve got no entertainment.”
“Try it without. Campfire chats, billy tea, and damper. That’s all the entertainment most of them want.” Her enthusiasm was contagious.
“I suppose there’s no harm in trying. If it’s successful, I could make it a weekly event. After all, there’s nowhere for them to go after dark.”
“I’ll help you find firewood after our ride, if you want.”
“You don’t have to. It’s your day off from work. You probably want to lie around with a book.”
“In this heat?” She snorted. “If I’m going to be hot and sweaty and outside, I may as well make it count for something.”
“I’ll need to think about firewood, though. I let the campers collect it from around the campground, but they only have small fires. There just isn’t much around.”
“There’s a bloke that comes into the pub sometimes who sells ute loads of wood. He doesn’t charge an arm and a leg. I could send him your way next time he comes in.”
“That would be good.”
We’d left the campground and were crossing the red open dirt. There were no trees, only the red domes of termite mounds studding the landscape.
“You could also sell firewood.” Josie encouraged Budgie to come up alongside my horse. “Campers like campfires. And they like being lazy. If you offered bags of wood, ready chopped, I bet you could turn a profit selling it. Do you have a chainsaw?”
I nodded again.
“Well, offer one of the backpackers a couple of free nights’ camping if they chop a ute load of wood for you. I bet they’ll jump at it.”
“I should hire you to be my marketing consultant.”
“I’d take the job.”
“No pay.” I concentrated on Ben’s ears. “I barely make enough to support myself and pay my bills.”
“Don’t worry. I know you don’t mean it.” She hesitated. “I wish you did, though. It would be nice to live somewhere like this.”
“You’d be bored in a month. Let’s face it, if an evening campfire is a social highlight, there’s not much else to do.”
Josie nudged Budgie even closer. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m good at entertaining myself, and others. I wouldn’t be bored.”
I brushed away a fly as I found myself hanging on her next words. When they came, they were low enough that I had to strain to hear.
“Neither would you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Her meaning was clear. But I’d never been good at flirtation. I tried to think what Moni would say. She always had a quick comeback for any occasion, but my mind sizzled and went white in the heat.
She stared at my face, waiting for my answer, but my hesitation must have given the wrong signal.
She eased Budgie further from Ben. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to jump your bones at the campfire this evening.” She switched her gaze to the horizon, a shimmering line of heat haze where the red dirt met the blue sky. “Shall we gallop?”
And the moment passed in a thunder of hooves and a face full of dust as Budgie’s little hooves leapt away.
CHAPTER 6
Josie and I drove around that afternoon and succeeded in finding enough wood for a fire. As Josie said, it didn’t have to be an inferno. Indeed, the evenings were now warm enough that a fire wasn’t necessary. It was all about the ambiance.
Luckily, she hadn’t taken offence at my lack of response to her flirting. I guess she simply thought I wasn’t interested. She hadn’t changed in her friendliness nor withdrawn her offer to help at the campfire. But the exchange weighed on my mind.
Because, I was interested in Josie. I often thought about her long after she had returned to Worrindi. As I attempted to keep up with the accounts, or as I sat on the veranda with a beer before going to bed, I’d catch myself smiling at something she’d said earlier. She would be good, undemanding company for the quiet moments like this.
But I wasn’t sure what to do about my attraction, especially since I’d effectively rebuffed her with my silence.
When we returned with the wood, we built a small fire in the best fire pit, which was over to one side of the campground. It was good too, in that the prevailing winds generally blew the smoke away from the campers.
“Do you have a noticeboard?” Josie asked when we’d finished. “I don’t remember seeing one.”
“No,” I admitted. “Never felt the need.”
“There’s live music in the pub?”
“Girlfriend, where have you been for the past few months? There’s live music once a month.”
“Oh.”
“What about letting campers know your trail ride prices, or that you have a book exchange in the corner of the camp kitchen? You need a noticeboard.”
“When you put it like that, I guess I do.”
“Anyway, in the absence of a noticeboard, you’re going to have to walk around later and tell each camper individually. No one can resist a personal invitation.”
Which we’d done. And then Josie said she was going to have a shower, and I went back to the house to mix the flour and water for damper in a large bowl and cover it with a cloth.
We’d told the campers the fire would be going from seven. That was after dusk for atmosphere but not so late that the early-to-bed people couldn’t still be tucked up by nine.
I carried over the damper, butter, a couple of homemade jams from the ladies of the Country Women’s Association and a cast-iron skillet for the fire.
Josie eyed my preparations. “Are you going to cook the damper for everyone?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
She grinned. “I thought you were a bushie! Come with me.”
She led me to her tent by the creek. I figured she was going to get something from within, but we passed on to where the gum trees grew in disarray.
“Look for green sticks,” she said. “About a foot long, straightish. Break them off the tree, don’t pick up fallen ones. We need one for everyone.”
I did as she asked, and we soon had an array.
The fire was quickly alight and crackling with merry warmth. The campers started wandering over in ones and twos, bringing their chairs and beer or wine. Immediately, I could see Josie’s idea was a good one. They chatted to each other and swapped stories of where to go and what to see.
Josie nudged me. “The hive mind at work. One big storytelling collective.” She raised her voice. “Who’s for damper?”
She cut the block of butter into chunks and left it in a bowl by the fire. Then, she picked up one of the sticks and started peeling the bark from it, leaving it green and supple and clean. With swift movements, she picked a ball of dough from the bowl and shaped it like a sausage around the stick, leaving about six inches free as a handle. Then, she squatted and held the stick over the embers.
She didn’t have to tell people what to do; she simply led by example. Soon, there was a ring of people busily turning their damper over the embers. When Josie judged hers was cooked, she twisted the damper off the stick so that it came away clean and steaming.
“Pass the plum jam, please, Felix.”
Carefully, she filled the hollow area of the damper with plum jam, then dunked it in the melted butter. Her mouth glistened in the firelight as she bit into it with care. “Delicious!”
The idea was a brilliant one. The campers laughed as their damper caught fire or dropped into the flames, and then they ate the blackened dough slathered with jam and dripping with melted butter. It became a shared experience rather than just watching me fry up damper on the pan.
I put water in the billy for tea, and when it boiled, Josie added some fresh eucalyptus to the handful of tea leaves I threw in. “For authenticity,” she said.
Now that everyone was obviously enjoying themselves, Josie returned from her position at the fire. We sat in silence, side by side, watching the campers.
“Where did you learn that trick with the damper?” Our chairs were close enough that if I let my hips relax, our knees would touch.
“National Park in Victoria. One of the rangers there. Kids love it, but it seems adults do too.”
I looked over to where the Japanese couple were licking butter and jam from their fingers and trying to talk to the retired couple from Sydney. There didn’t seem to be much shared language, but there was shared laughter.
My knee wobbled. It would be so easy to let it touch her smooth, brown thigh. I stared at it, rather than look at Josie. “You’re very much a people person.”
She shrugged. “I just watch and learn.”
“No, you’ve got the knack. Extrovert.”
“Don’t be fooled. I’m an introvert who does a very good impression of an extrovert. I can talk to people, and I like to do that, but equally, I like to go home and close the door and be alone.” She paused. “Or be with someone I’m comfortable with.” This time the pause was longer. “Are you like that too, Felix? Do you like to be alone?”
“I’m usually alone.” When had my words sounded so forlorn? I enjoyed being solitary. Indeed, it was my natural state, but Josie’s words had a resonance to them. I would like to be with someone. Not a campground full of strangers, not friends. One person. Someone special.
I cleared my throat, which had unaccountably tightened. “I should get that poodle.”
She laughed, and her knee nudged into my thigh. It was warm. “Blue heeler. Best dogs. But there’s alone, and there’s the quiet closeness of being with a special person.”
I glanced at her. Her face was half in shadow, and the firelight made her wild curls seem alive.
“Are you with anyone?” The question was belated, because I’d already made assumptions about that. Her peripatetic nature made me think she was single, but now she’d been in Worrindi a couple of months, long enough to form a relationship. And flirting with me didn’t mean she wasn’t attached.
“Nope. Not at the moment. I’ve had relationships, of course, most of them very short lived.”
I was silent. I wanted to ask her more, to find out about the sort of person who could hold her interest, but it seemed too nosy.
She glanced under her lashes. “Go on. Ask. I can see you wibbling about it from here.”
I tried for a dignified silence, but curiosity won out. “So what was your last partner like?”
“Girlfriend. I’ve only ever had girlfriends.”
“I didn’t want to presume.”
“Her name was Lois Lane, and—”
“No way! No one could be called Lois Lane.”
“She was. Her parents had a sense of humour.”
“Obviously.”
The tea had steeped enough by the fire, and I rose to see to it. I hadn’t thought to provide mugs—indeed, I wasn’t sure I had enough—but the campers had mostly brought their own, and the Japanese couple disappeared and returned with some cups from the camp kitchen.
I poured tea for those who wanted it and explained how it was usually drunk: strong and black, as there used to be no reliable way of keeping the milk from going off. Most swaggies had carried a twist of paper containing some sugar.
When everyone was chatting around the fire again, I returned to my chair.
“Two months. That’s how long I was with Lois. She lives in Scone, New South Wales. We split when I moved on.”
I filed the information away. I’d think about that later.
“My longest relationship lasted nearly two years. Dee and I travelled together. Picked fruit in the Riverina, travelled the Birdsville Track, then on to Darwin. Worked on prawn trawlers in the Gulf.”
“What happened?”
“Dee wanted to settle down somewhere. She wanted somewhere to grow vegetables, to get to know people for more than a few weeks. I wanted to keep moving.” Josie cupped her mug of billy tea. “I really didn’t get it at the time. Why would anyone want to settle in one place?”
I was silent, not wanting to interrupt her flow of words.
“But now, I’m starting to understand a little. Oh, I haven’t decided I’m totally ready to stop travelling, but I can at least see the appeal. Worrindi’s a good place; that’s why I’m still around.”
“That’s why you brought Flame here?”
It was her turn for silence. “Yeah,” she said eventually. “That’s why.”
Now that the tea was drunk and the fire had died to the red glow of the heartwood, people started to slip away, back to their vans or tents. Most of them thanked both of us, probably assuming that Josie and I ran this place together. After Josie’s contribution this afternoon, I was beginning to think the same.
That left only the English backpackers laughing quietly around the fire. They had stubbies of beer, not tea, so I figured they’d be up for a while.
I looked over at Josie’s profile in the firelight. She looked pensive, different to her usual lively self. She stared into the embers as if they held the answer to a major question in her life. The curve of her cheek was gilded by firelight, and that wild hair, shot through with her string of beads, curled underneath the brim of her hat. I wanted to reach out and take her hand and hold it between my palms, just to see what she felt like, to learn what she would do. But I feared the rejection in front of the backpackers.
Instead, I leant back in my chair and looked up at the stars. The Milky Way was brilliant, a long ribbon of stars running across the sky. I cradled my mug of tea and emptied my head of everything except the here and now. It was something Mum had taught me not long after she’d been diagnosed with the cancer that had eventually killed her.
“Live in the moment, Felicity,” she’d said. “Don’t worry about past mistakes or things you shouldn’t have done or said. You can’t change them. Try not to worry about things that haven’t happened. They may never eventuate. Enjoy every moment. Because then it’s gone forever.”
I’d been silent. I was a great one for worrying. But if Mum could put aside her fear of dying in order to enjoy the present moment, then I surely could. It was good advice, even if it was hard to put into practice. But I managed it, more or less.
So I relaxed in my chair and enjoyed the night, the background murmur of conversation from the backpackers, and the taste of strong black tea.
Josie was silent. I couldn’t know what she was thinking, but I was sure that she, too, was enjoying the moment.
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