‘Cripes, Leisha, he’s looking at you!’
Standing all alone at the bar, Leisha might have been panicking until she recognised Tommy, who walked directly up to her and asked: ‘Have you called your mother?’
Tommy gave her a lift a few miles into Turkey Creek to call me, then returned her to the rodeo. Tommy threatened to put her in the back of the paddy wagon if she didn’t call me immediately after the rodeo!
In a way, it was a proud moment: I’d looked after Tommy when he was a wayward little boy who’d come to me from Derby Welfare, and now he was looking out for my girls.
CHAPTER 21
The Darkest Dawn
July 1992 saw the beginning of a very painful period in my life, a time I still have difficulty understanding.
A black cloud had started to drift over our happy and beautiful life. It was to be the worst time since losing our beloved Kelly.
I had been surviving in a fluctuating marriage, ever since the grief of losing Kelly had come close to killing Bob. I went on willingly, because I had a strong and happy young family to look after and a husband who needed me and, I thought, loved me in his own mysterious way.
This day in July, I was at Kimberley Downs and Bob was at Kilto. The phone rang shrilly, breaking the peace of the homestead surrounds. I bounded towards the house.
On the line was a family friend, the mother of Fiona, a girl we usually took with us to the Fitzroy Rodeo. Fiona was another of the youngsters I had brought under my wing. A very confused and disturbed 16-year-old, she seemed to be battling some emotional problems.
Fiona had something to tell me, her mother said. As I waited, my brain hammered with maddening thoughts.
‘You haven’t picked me up,’ Fiona whimpered angrily. ‘Why haven’t you picked me up?’
That day I would normally have picked her up and driven her back to Kimberley Downs to take her with staff and family to the Fitzroy Rodeo. This time, though, I hadn’t included her on purpose. I was tired of taking responsibility for her and her wild ways. A lot of lonely young stockmen headed in for the rodeos, and I wasn’t sure I had eyes in the back of my head to check that she wasn’t wandering off with one of them.
I mumbled an excuse, and then she said she had something to tell me. I asked her to tell me on the phone, but she said there was much more to it. She needed to talk to me face to face. Organising Sandy to watch the children, I jumped into the new Mercedes, one of Bob’s unpredictable gifts bestowed on me during a trip to Perth, and headed for Fiona’s house, about two hours away. I was so angry and confused for not being told the problem over the phone, I came close to rolling the Merc.
As I drove, I thought about some other things I knew about Fiona. It wasn’t just the anxiety over watching her that had stopped me taking her to the rodeo. Once I had found many letters from Fiona hidden in Leisha’s untidy dressing table drawers. Reading and re-reading their contents had absolutely floored me. I don’t know why, but possibly because they were exposing some truths I’d long suspected, I photocopied the letters. They sickened me to the pit of my stomach. I knew I was invading Leisha’s and Fiona’s privacy, and didn’t want them to know, but I was too overwhelmed by shock and anger to let it drop.
In one letter the writer confessed to having sex with someone after a drinking binge, but in her bleary haze she couldn’t remember if there were more men. Her utmost fear was that she might be pregnant. Coming across this heart-wrenching but disturbing bundle of personal confidences was a mother’s nightmare. Written by a 16-year-old to my younger, 14-year-old daughter, it was unforgivable. Fiona and Leisha were as close as young girl friends could be, sharing confidences and girly stories. Fiona was a lovely girl, but seemed very lost and lonely. This was the reason I’d let her visit as often as she did. But I didn’t want her behaviour to affect Leisha.
Walking confidently into her family’s home, I found her in the kitchen with her parents. I asked her gently, ‘What’s wrong?’
There was some fumbling but no answer.
‘Are you pregnant, darling?’
I thought surely we could help her. To be pregnant wasn’t a death sentence. Her father withdrew to the back lawn and I was left sitting with Fiona and her mother. The feeling of watching a play came over me. I was standing on the perimeter looking in, my mouth dry, my heart hurting against my chest wall. This was surreal. She was the star attraction with her nervous – or was it stupid? – smile. Surely if something was so important, she couldn’t think it funny?
Her mother urged her to spill the beans. I was tired. I had travelled a long way. I needed to know.
On hearing her words, I felt total disbelief. My body was now burning, my blood raging. I shook my head slowly in denial. I rose, trembling, and walked steadily out of their house towards the Merc, down what seemed a long, dark, winding tunnel. Everything else was a blur. I closed the car door and drove with a very heavy heart towards Kilto to find Bob.
Crying one minute, angry the next, I drove erratically. I desperately needed Bob to level with me. Fiona hadn’t been to the police herself yet, as far as I knew, but she had spoken to a counsellor who had made a complaint.
I knew Fiona frequently bothered Bob at the Mango Farm while he was working there. Both of her parents worked, and she was often home alone. He’d told me many months earlier that she would visit him after school, and he would send her home. Then she would return again, complaining every time that she felt sick. After phoning one of her parents to tell them where she was, Bob would let her remain, though I’d warned him to be tougher with her. His humaneness could turn out to be his own worst enemy.
Driving frantically, seeing nothing, I wheeled the Merc around the sandy bend onto the two-wheel track leading to the Kilto homestead, careening to a halt in the heavy sand bog at the house paddock gate. It was 2.30 pm and stinking hot. Bob had heard the vehicle. He was walking slowly down the fence line towards me: one stooped, agonising step after another. He looked so sick, his pindan-covered clothes just hanging off his frame, and much older than his 63 years.
My mind in turmoil, body aching with anger, tears mixing with perspiration flowing down my face, I frantically tried to rock the heavy Mercedes back and forward in the fierce afternoon sun to free it from the sandy bog.
The closer Bob came, the more emotional I grew. With heaving chest and uncontrolled sobbing, I released my frustrations by thumping the steering wheel of my beautiful vehicle, my foot flat to the floor sending sand flying into the air, only digging a deeper hole and, finally, bellying it.
Bob’s worried look grew intense. He hadn’t seen me in such a state since losing our son. With his arm around me, my anguish subsided as we walked slowly through the wall of heat towards the homestead.
My composure returning, I relayed the dreadful news. I told him plainly that Fiona had accused him of indecent assault.
‘You are supposed to have touched her several times,’ I said fiercely.
Bob had heard me threatening many times to gut-shoot anyone who interfered with my children. Taken by surprise, he was struggling to make sense of what I’d said.
‘Try to think back,’ I begged him. ‘Please, think!’
By now I was fanatical, tears streaming again down my face.
Bob said, ‘If I had at any time, it was certainly not intentional.’ He would go to the police station first thing in the morning to find out what this was all about. I wanted to believe him, but I was confused. What had he meant by ‘not intentional’? I didn’t know, and didn’t press him. He seemed vacant – not really knowing himself what he meant.
Bob plodded off down the paddock to check the water supply to the cattle yard and dig the Merc out of the bog. I sat alone with a pannikin of strong coffee on the back veranda, confused and full of resentment towards everyone involved. I remembered a day, many months earlier, when Fiona arrived at the station to spend the weekend, as she often had over the years.
Bob had parked the Toyota by the big house, t
aking his travel bag in one hand and briefcase in the other. He moved to the veranda in his slow way, placing the bags down, while our children waited impatiently to welcome him home. They, and I, were out of luck. Fiona bustled forward and wrapped both her arms around him. Taken aback, I was cross with her and with Bob for letting it happen. I’d walked unhappily towards the cook house, needing to think for a while, and Leisha and Kristy came running and crying: ‘Mummy, Fiona won’t let us near Daddy.’
This was a red rag to a bull. Outraged, I spun on my heels, telling the girls to follow me as I hurried back to the veranda.
Fiona was still holding him. Fronting them head-on, I laid it on the line.
‘The children need their father too!’
I told Fiona to let go of Bob, enabling the children a chance to hug him after not having seen their father for several weeks. I silently interrogated Bob’s dark eyes. I loathed him for his weakness, not showing the strength of character to untangle himself from this sticky situation.
Now, back on Kilto, gazing down to my empty pannikin as the evening chill replaced the mugginess of the long day, that day’s suffering returned. Bob had gone to sleep in our bed. Unable to eat, I went and lay curled up beside him in a shivering foetal position until fatigue took over for a couple of hours. Attempting to talk to Bob seemed pointless. I could feel him on a hair-trigger, ready to explode against me if I confronted him.
But the next morning I was up early, emotions still churning in the pit of my stomach. I needed answers. In the kitchen, I again questioned my husband: ‘Did you touch her? Think back!’
He wouldn’t say anything; he wouldn’t even look at me. He was a vacuum, sucking all the emotion out of me into the open. It ended with me screaming and emotionally out of control. I denounced him for being blind, stupid and too weak. I collapsed to the floor in inconsolable sobbing, blaming myself for not having put an end to Fiona’s visits.
Bob helped me to my feet. I searched his vacant eyes for answers. Finding no response, I dropped my gaze. His tight grip was bruising my shoulders, his gammy hand and dead arm insensitive. He moved his hand from my shoulder to my chin, forcing me to look at him again.
‘You must accept whatever is thrown at me,’ he said, releasing me from his arms.
I cried uncontrollably once more, screaming, ‘No, No!’ and shaking my head from side to side.
Sternly he repeated: ‘You will accept.’
My torture turned from tears to confusion. My mind was caught in a massive cobweb. I was furious beyond belief. Accept? Why should I accept anything if he’d done nothing wrong?
Bob left for the police station; I waited at Kilto. He was told that there were no charges at this point, but he would have to come back to the courthouse later to be charged with indecent assault. It didn’t make a lot of sense to him but he did as he was told and returned to Kilto.
‘Charged with what?’ I demanded. ‘When? Where?’ How many times?’ I wanted to know. I was angry that he wouldn’t answer me. He seemed to disappear into that deep sealed-off place. My tears and tantrums followed, and of course he was confused and still trying to draft this mess in his own mind.
I called Brian Singleton, QC, a friend of many in the Kimberley, and asked him for help. Singleton arranged to find out exactly what they were charging Bob with. My confusion and exasperation were greater than Bob’s. I felt he didn’t really care what happened to him; he didn’t care whether he went to jail or not. He was a sick man and on morphine, still caught in his need to be strong and silent. I needed him to talk, to reason with me. I needed to know something. It was as if I was paddling our canoe upstream all alone in darkness.
During this time friends from Derby and Broome visited to show their support. Others distanced themselves from us. The hurt and anguish I suffered from this alone is indescribable. To point a finger at the accused was one thing, but to shake it at the children or myself was another.
The time came to sit Leisha down and I tried, without crying, to explain the circumstances that now surrounded her father. I told her how this was a nasty and awkward situation, with heavy repercussions for him. Most people, I told her, would believe any rumour; a few of those people would transfer the heavy cloud from Bob to enclose us, his family.
I asked her: ‘Has Daddy ever touched you in a way you felt wrong?’
Leisha’s answer was quick and aggressive. ‘Don’t be so stupid, Mum, Daddy’s not like that.’
That was the end of the conversation.
I had become an emotional wreck and was not sleeping well on the nights Bob was home at Kimberley Downs. He sat on the foot of our bed one evening.
‘You don’t trust me around the children anymore,’ he said solemnly. ‘You don’t sleep until I’m asleep.’
This was probably the longest sentence he had uttered in weeks. A realisation ran through my body: I had hurt him. I had begun to think Bob was impossible to hurt, that he felt nothing. Yet, looking into his black eyes, I was still unable to find the answers I was looking for.
‘I’m so sorry, but no,’ I whispered. Then, letting fly tearfully, I cried: ‘You’re an adult, for God’s sake, you should know better!’
I rolled over in the bed and turned my back on him.
‘I don’t trust anyone anymore,’ I said, and broke down, sobbing my heart out. He never touched me. He sat on the side of the bed with his face in his hands.
He was right: I didn’t trust him. I loved him deeply and had always trusted him fully, but these allegations had wiped my trust away. I had become a human lioness and my only real concern was shielding my cubs from all the innuendoes around us.
The following week I arranged an appointment for Bob with the best psychologist I could find in Perth. I was becoming frantic in my desperate need for answers, or reasons. I travelled with him to Perth and patiently sat out his appointment in the waiting room, only to be left sitting there as he walked out past me, his black eyes expressionless. This was his first and last visit to a psychologist.
The wheels of justice turn slowly at the best of times, but it was excruciating for us to wait months and months for the police to work up the charges against Bob and take the matter to court. And yet, somehow, life still went on. During this time I recognised the fierce determination shining through in my dear Leisha. Kristy and Robby, on the other hand, were still little children. I thought I was keeping my family cocooned in warmth and love, but as I fell apart fate somehow handed that role to my 14-year-old, Leisha.
Sandy and Narda, our cook, kept Leisha on the rodeo circuit. With the hardened rodeo crowd behind her she walked with her head held high and never bowed to the humiliation or innuendo surrounding her father. She rode the rodeo circuit like never before. Between herself and her horse’s outstanding endurance she won 11 championship buckles. She also took out Kimberley Rodeo Circuit title for All-Round Cowgirl for the second year running, while still only a junior competitor, an achievement that drew our focus during this miserable time. I knew I had a leader in the family, a daughter of whom I was supremely proud.
I kept running the bores and mills. There was no end to the problems, with columns rusting, pumps full of mud, tanks leaking, wind drought and much more. Day and night I was either carting water with Bob’s tanker or offsiding Jimmy on pulling a bore, or dropping the pump further down a hole in search of water. Jim was an honest, caring and extremely hardworking man. I’m sure no other man would have battled along by my side, using and reusing old bore columns, joiners and jack pumps that had really seen better days. Even when we were both covered head to toe in heavy, black, coarse sump oil while pulling the jack pump off Boundary Bore he never complained. Many men would not have stuck around and put their heart into their job like Jim did. At a time of my greatest need, Jimmy’s dedication was a constant reminder of how good and true a man could be.
CHAPTER 22
Life Goes On
The build-up to the court case brought massive stress and illness. Bob, peeing
blood constantly, became too sick to either run Kilto or remain at Kimberley Downs. The local hospital transferred him to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth. Robby and I flew to his bedside. He had been operated on and was haemorrhaging, at death’s door.
His prostate and pancreas problems were getting on top of him, though he wouldn’t tell me precisely what was wrong. When I asked him, he’d fob me off. I felt as if I didn’t exist. Many, many get-well messages arrived for Bob. He showed no interest in any of them.
I sold the Mango Farm, my way of disconnecting us from memories of Fiona visiting Bob. Alone, I tried to manage Kimberley and Napier Downs, Kilto and our contracting business. I was becoming so worn-out trying to keep everything together, spending all day offsiding Jim, then racing to Kilto to check on the waters, arriving back at Kimberley Downs at three o’clock the following morning, I came close to chucking in the towel. I wondered what the hell I was doing. Then my children would run towards me, happy and full of laughter and stories about their day, and I would push my worries to the back of my mind and go on. I always knew I would keep walking towards that dim light at the end of the tunnel, and would not give up.
Robby was eight years old and in the past few months had started to wake with nightmares. He had never suffered from a lack of confidence, and I was sure this change was brought on by the stress in the household. Crying and screaming, ‘Mum, Mummy!’ complete with mumbling and gurgling sounds, his tossing and wrestling scared us all. I would fly out of bed with heart pounding and rock him in my warm embrace, assuring him that Mummy was here and would never leave him. Sometimes it would take me minutes, the longest minutes in my entire life, to calm him down.
When Bob came home to Kimberley Downs from hospital, he offered no support to either one of us. This was terribly confusing and hurtful, as Bob had never shown any unkindness towards the girls or Robby in the past. When Robby had a nightmare, Bob would lift his pain-filled body from the bed and yell, outraged at his own son. This, of course, caused me to retaliate. Once, while calming my son at some ungodly hour, I told Bob to put a sock in it or not bother coming home at all. When he was well enough, he returned alone to Kilto.
Diamonds and Dust Page 24