The Drifter

by Anthea Hodgson

  ‘Cate? Yes, I’m sure she’s ready. My name is Ida, and don’t you worry about staying over in the old hut. My husband’s grandfather built it years ago. I know he’d be chuffed swaggies still use it now and again.’

  Cate rolled her eyes. Seriously.

  Henry gave her aunt a nod of respect. ‘It’s appreciated,’ he said simply, and glanced past her to Cate, standing like a spare wheel in the kitchen, waiting for the worst blind date of her life (if she ever decided to date outside her species). His stance looked impatient; she couldn’t see his face through the hair. Today was going to be one of those days when she really earned her penance.

  ‘Okay,’ she sighed. ‘Where are the keys to the ute, Aunty Ida?’ she asked.

  ‘In the ignition, dear,’ her aunt replied, as if she was dim.

  ‘Of course,’ she muttered, and grabbed her hat. ‘Come on, Swaggie.’

  The morning was already warm as they headed to the ute. Henry picked up Mac and put him in the back, then climbed into the driver’s seat. She climbed in next to him.

  ‘So. You’re driving, then,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘You can get the gates, Cate.’

  Excellent. She tried to remember where they all were as he backed out of the shed and headed up the race. The fences were holding up, mostly, although a few of the original jam posts were splitting and breaking down after too long in the ground. They would need replacing at some point, but perhaps not for a while. Maybe they would see Aunty Ida out.

  She glanced at the man beside her. He was utterly unreadable, and gazing out at a mob of sheep as they ran from the ute towards the bush. She wondered if he knew about sheep. Or utes. He knew about dogs. And hair. His full beard was grossing her out. She looked away.

  Eventually they reached the end of the race. She jumped out and unhitched the gate, then leaned against its weight and opened it. He drove through and waited till she climbed back in.

  ‘You know your way around, then?’ he asked, putting the LandCruiser into gear.

  ‘Yep. We used to live here. There were two brothers, Jack and Brian – my grandfather. They worked happily together on the farm for years, but it turned out my dad didn’t love farming, and the farm was too small to support two households anyway. So, when Grandad retired to Perth, we sold our half of the property and left when I was little.’ The heat was building in the cab, so she wound down the window.

  ‘And your aunt and uncle stayed.’

  ‘Yeah. Uncle Jack wouldn’t leave, and they didn’t have kids, so I guess they had smaller financial needs.’

  The small mob of sheep in the paddock was gathered around a trough. He pulled up.

  ‘And now your aunt is staying on.’

  ‘Yeah. She’s stubborn.’

  He pushed open the door, looking at the sad faces around the trough. ‘So why are you here? Really?’ he asked, glancing sideways.

  She shrugged and climbed out of the ute. ‘I like sheep,’ she said. From the shape of his eyes, it looked like his eyebrows had raised; she really couldn’t tell.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she added with great enthusiasm. ‘They’re so fluffy.’ He nodded at her slowly, dropped to his knees in the mud and slid the concrete cover along the trough so he could reach the spout. The ballcock was working, but the trough had filled with silt and slime, and there appeared to be a small leak halfway down the length of the concrete. The sheep had been standing in the mud and digging out a ditch as they tried to drink. Cate surveyed the slimy scene with what she hoped was interest. She reached under the cover to touch the ball, to see if she could halt the flow of water while Henry worked at the other end. His great hand flashed out and grabbed her wrist.

  ‘I’d get your hand out of there,’ he said, and let go of her just as fast.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Red-backs love cover, Princess. You can bet there’s a family of them under the concrete.’ She whipped her hand to her chest and rubbed it enthusiastically there.

  Her heart was jumping around and she wasn’t sure why. If she’d touched a deadly spider, she’d have a heart attack for sure; or maybe it was the freaky Spider-Man reflexes on the hairy man-mountain that had startled her. Her wrist was still tingling.

  Henry flipped the concrete block over and there they were, four or five red-back spiders, blinking in the sunlight.

  He didn’t look at her again as she renewed her rubbing with vigour, but traced back along the trough to the end, where he found what appeared to be a large bath plug. He inspected it, went back to the ute and grabbed a wrench.

  Cate finally convinced herself that she wasn’t about to die, and watched the sheep move to a discreet distance from the water. Henry seemed to know what he was doing. He pulled out the plug, and what was left of the green-and-brown water began to sluice down the trough and onto the ground. He began cupping his hands in the slimy water and pushing it down, flicking it out onto the ground. It was kind of disgusting and satisfying. She bet his arm stank, and she was going to have to sit next to it. Him. The water kept rushing through the hole under the ball, hissing loudly and washing out the dust and silt.

  ‘Come on, Princess,’ Henry said. ‘Give us a hand.’

  She looked at the water as it flowed. ‘Maybe the next one,’ she promised. ‘And I’m not a princess.’

  His beard twitched low over the moving water. ‘No shit,’ he said.

  They checked the rest of the farm in the same manner, looking at fences, sheep and water supply. Some mobs would have to be moved because the dams were drying up, and a number of fences needed patching or replacing. The summer was dragging on, and the ground had gone grey from the foraging animals. They were down to clover burr, and soon they’d be eating sand. They pulled into the sheds again and Henry switched off the engine.

  ‘Maybe we need to feed them something,’ Cate muttered.

  ‘We could check the silos, see what’s there. Would Ida know?’

  Cate shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m sure someone could identify grain for me. How hard could it be?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What do they eat? Oats?’

  ‘I think so, and maybe lupins?’

  They stared at each other blankly. ‘I’ll look it up on my phone, if I can get coverage anywhere.’

  ‘I doubt you’ll get coverage out here,’ he said, lifting Mac out of the ute. He crouched down and rubbed his tummy, and Mac snuffled in delight.

  ‘How do you keep in touch?’ Cate asked.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘But what if something happens to you?’

  ‘It already has.’

  He was talking to Mac. He didn’t look at her, and she could see he was right. If the beard said anything, it said ‘leave me alone’. She glanced out to the distant horizon, fading along the edges where the sky was burning into the earth. It was flat, empty and endless. If something bad had happened, if he wanted to hide from the world, this seemed like a great place to do it.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cate spent the rest of the day sorting out the kitchen as best she could, scrubbing every surface and half-heartedly wiping dust off all the windows in the house. Sometimes her aunt bustled in to help her, usually by telling her important things she believed she ought to know.

  ‘Look at this old chair. Do you know, it was once owned by my grandmother, before she left for the country with my grandfather. She was quite a formidable woman!’

  Cate nodded and smiled and made cups of tea. After a while she started sorting out some of the paperwork in the kitchen, making a pile of the bills and receipts, trying to find out which had been paid, and filing them in an empty pocket folder she found in Ida’s office. She decided to go through them with her later.

  When they were sitting in the lounge she gestured to the carpet. It was a vivid-blue shag, like you could shake it and a member of the Rolling Stones would come flying out.

  ‘How long have you had the carpet?’ she asked.

  Id
a smiled. ‘Oh, this old thing? Nineteen seventy-three. I wanted a brown floral that we saw in Narrogin, and Jack wanted a burnt-orange carpet from the same place. Well. We argued and argued, and finally chose my brown – I didn’t want the dirt to show. Anyway, I felt terrible because I had really bullied poor Jack into my choice, so I called the shop and changed the order.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘Of course, you know what showed up, don’t you?’ She laughed. ‘The bluest carpet that was ever made! We laughed and said it’s so awful but let’s give it a home. What does it matter, really, the colour of your carpet?’ She was rubbing her shoes back and forth across it affectionately. ‘We’ve got better things to worry about than that! So here it is.’

  Cate was grinning; she’d probably have sent the ugly thing back, but her aunt kind of had a point. And now here it was, holding on to the floor like it knew it had been lucky to get in the door. She rubbed her feet on it too. She was all about second chances now, as well.

  When the phone rang, she knew it would be her mother. She had left home quickly, and her parents had been confused by her determination to get out. They didn’t understand. They would never really understand her, and they were lucky. She couldn’t sleep in her old room another night; couldn’t wake up there, where she and Brigit had planned their lives so often, still so very alive.

  ‘Darling. How are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, good thanks, Mum. Aunty Ida says hi.’

  ‘And how is she, darling, is she going okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ Ida was reading an old New Idea, but she was sitting right there, so she was obviously listening. ‘She’s been very kind to me – I’ve got my own room, and we’re hanging out. We’re having a good time.’

  ‘Well, a change of pace is always nice, sweetheart.’ Her mother sounded hesitant. ‘Now, I did have to talk to you about the recent issue . . .’

  ‘Sorry, Mum, we’ll have to chat another time. Aunty Ida and I were just getting another nice cup of tea. I’ll try to call you later.’

  ‘Oh, okay, darling, if you’re sure. Only that lovely Helen Dowling has been on the phone, and I think she really would like to speak to you.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks, Mum. I’ll call her.’

  ‘Promise?’ Her voice was hopeful.

  ‘Sure.’ Cate was great at pretending stuff. She hung up the phone to find Ida watching her.

  ‘How’s your mum?’

  Cate shrugged. ‘The same as always, Aunty Ida. Busy trying to help everyone.’

  ‘And you’re to call a nice friend?’ Ida asked.

  Cate paused. Not really. ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll give my friend a call later. She won’t be in now,’ she said. And she wasn’t her friend. She was her lawyer.

  Cate was tired, and her back ached from manual labour by six o’clock. She threw together a salad piled high with spinach, roasted vegetables and feta, and fired up a couple of steaks on the old stove.

  Ida was smiling as she came down the hallway after her nap to the smell of cooking meat. ‘You’ve been busy, dear,’ she said. ‘It looks so much lighter in here.’ Cate had scrubbed layers of dust and grease from the cupboards and benchtops, and had knocked off cobwebs and years of grimy marks from the walls and ceiling. It made a good start. ‘And look at all this food! You must be very hungry.’

  She sat down and let Cate serve her, and they ate companionably, Ida answering questions about the farm where she could. Yes, there was some fencing gear somewhere that could be used for fence mending, and yes, there were oats in the silo for sheep feed.

  Cate started to make plans for the next day. She wondered where the sheep feeder was, and how to start an auger to get the oats out of the silo. She had spent a few school holidays following her great-uncle Jack around the farm as a child until she’d grown tired of the slow pace and the lack of other kids to play with. She had started to find excuses not to come back, and her father seemed happy to allow her to spend her time close to home. She didn’t remember much about her visits, except her uncle’s quiet voice explaining slowly and carefully how he ran the farm, and the order in which things must be done, and her surprise when she came back the following year to find the same thing happening again, as if the farm had forgotten Uncle Jack had already finished the work before him.

  She wondered if their new farmhand could help her get the auger going. What fuel did it run on? Did they have any? Maybe she should make a list. She’d never been good at lists, or at planning anything, really. Mostly her friends just told her where to turn up and she was there, slightly under the weather, with a set of heels and a smile. It had always been enough. No one had actually needed her to know anything much before. She could make coffee, type fairly well, answer the odd phone, but she never stayed long. Usually, a friend would arrive with a fabulous opportunity just as her latest three-month career was not taking off, saving her from imminent boredom, or death by photocopier.

  She hadn’t realised Aunty Ida would need her so much. Maybe she wouldn’t have come if she’d known. She thought she’d come and do a little ironing and cleaning, maybe read a book or two. Just as long as she was away and helping someone. Anyone.

  ‘Cate, dear? Are you in there?’ Her aunt had been trying to get her attention.

  She was looking at the fat she had speared on her fork, and it was looking back at her, wishing she’d commit to something, even if it was just heart disease.

  ‘Sorry, Aunty Ida. I was just thinking.’

  ‘Well, I was just thinking it would be good of you to take a plate of food out to that nice young man. He’s been very helpful today, and it might have been a while since he’s had such a healthy meal.’

  Cate looked up. ‘Who? Henry? He’s fine,’ she said, and moved to the kettle. All meals in the country seemed to end with a cup of tea. Bleh.

  Her aunt was unimpressed. ‘Yes, Henry. Could you do it as a favour to me, dear? Just cook up one more steak and take it out to him with the salad? We owe the poor boy some hospitality.’

  ‘He’s not a boy,’ Cate grumbled, heating the pan.

  ‘Of course he is, dear. When you get to be my age you know they’re all boys sometimes.’ She got up and reached for a cup. ‘That’s what breaks your heart.’

  ‘Cate! Cate! Park here. Let’s make a run for it!’ Brigit was hanging out of the car window like an excited puppy, and the stream of red tail-lights stretching out along the country road ahead of them hadn’t moved in ten minutes. Cate glanced behind them to see the headlights of other cars waiting their turn, and glanced across the vineyards of Yallingup to the Wildwood Vineyard, where the support act had already taken the stage. ‘Come on! The band’ll be on before we even get there!’ Brigit dropped her roach in her empty champagne piccolo and it hissed softly as it died. She opened the car door, glancing hopefully back at Cate.

  ‘Okay.’ She laughed. ‘Let’s do it!’ And she pulled off the road and onto the verge, where people were already starting to mill about, too excited to queue for a park in the vineyard carpark. They ran, giggling, through the dark corridors of grapevines, the green leaves brushing against them, the gravelly soil crunching under their shoes, the breeze soft on their skin, and the driving bass of the support band pulling them closer to the glow of floodlights from the stage. They could hear clapping and cheering and the booming microphone and shouts and whistles, and then they were there, washed in light and darkness, surrounded by the crowd.

  This was life, Cate thought, swigging back the warming champagne from the bar, cadging cigarettes and joints from handsome men. Here was music and laughter and the endless possibility of falling in love, of being kissed. Here was the deep, dark sky lit from below, not just by the lights flooding the band and the crowd, but by their dancing and shouting, by their energy and fire and joy. This was life. Dancing with strangers, following the music, feeling the soft, warm air nuzzling against their skin and the welcome shards of alcohol in their throats.

  When Cate looked across the crowd to find Brigit, she was passionate
ly kissing a blond guy next to the speaker stand. She came up for breath, saw Cate watching her and laughed. She pointed at him and yelled out to Cate, ‘HE’S WITH THE BAND!’

  Cate edged out of the door backwards, bumping her backside against the flyscreen, hearing the squeak of the hinges that told how far out it had gone. She carefully turned and headed for the old mud hut, making her way quickly, before the light failed for good. She stamped in loudly, reasoning that there could be snakes or a hairy misfit guy with no clothes on. God only knew what weird things guys got up to in private; what they got up to in public was often pretty interesting.

  He wasn’t there. She glanced through all of the rooms of the hut, rooms being a term very open to interpretation. Where could he possibly be? She went back to the kitchen to look for somewhere to put the food where it wouldn’t get eaten by a rat. Or Mac, who was following her with great curiosity. She noticed a fridge in the corner, over thirty years old by the look of it; she suspected it was from the shearing shed. It was attached to a long extension cord.

  ‘Cheeky bugger,’ she muttered, and put the steak and salad inside. It wasn’t really stolen. It was still there. Mac gave up on dinner at that point and wandered outside. Cate followed him, surprised when he turned towards the paddock instead of home. She followed, and realised he was going down to the dam. They walked for a couple of minutes, then she slowly climbed the bank of the dam to look down to the water. A couple of mountain ducks were swimming on the low murky water, and willy-wagtails were flickering along the grass by the water’s edge, snapping up tiny insects.

  ‘Beer?’ came a low voice from a pile of hay bales engineered to be a lounge, covered in old blankets to form a barrier over the prickly stubble. Henry was looking very comfortable. In his hand was a Redback beer, and it looked cold.

  ‘I don’t drink beer,’ she replied.

  ‘Just stick to the champers, eh, Princess?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, that’s it exactly. I truly believe that my drink choice makes me a better person.’