The Drifter

by Anthea Hodgson

  CHAPTER 25

  The sky was heavy as she drove out of Perth, and she realised that she was running out of time if she was considering putting in a couple of paddocks of lupins or wheat. Then she wondered why she was even considering such a thing when Ida might be home soon and so ill. It would just be another thing for Ida to worry about. Maybe she could pay the Riordans to harvest it for her. The golf club had fundraised by harvesting years ago, and it wouldn’t be a big job. She was glad she’d called the Riordans that morning. They would have solid advice.

  The road opened up in front of her and the city fell away, leaving space to breathe. It was good to get away again, and it would only take another two hours and she’d be back. If she was staying much longer, she was sorting out that bloody bed, that was for sure.

  Windstorm’s massive silos greeted her as she crossed the railway line and pulled up under the pine trees across from the co-op. She needed to pick up a bottle of milk on the way through.

  When she got to the farm, there was a light on at Ida’s. She hoped she hadn’t left it on for days. The old house was going to be even grimmer in this weather. She jumped out of the car, grabbed her overnight bag and trotted inside, hunched against the icy, blasting wind and the light spits of threatening rain. There was a pile of old mallee roots on the verandah. They hadn’t been there before. Henry. She stopped herself looking for Mac and she pushed the door open.

  ‘Henry?’ she said into the hallway. ‘Patrick?’ The house was warm . . . er. And she could smell smoke. She went into the lounge room, where Henry was laying a fire.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I meant to be gone by the time you got here, but I think the flue is a bit blocked. Don’t worry, I’ll get it going.’

  She hadn’t been worried. She had a bar heater and a couple of old grey army blankets if she got desperate. She put down her bag.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ she said. ‘I assume I should be thanking you for the woodpile outside?’

  He shrugged. ‘That was mostly the chooks,’ he said, blowing gently on some newspaper and a pile of kindling.

  ‘You’re in a good mood,’ she observed.

  ‘I love fires,’ he said. ‘I’m practically a pyromaniac.’

  She collapsed into her aunt’s armchair and settled in to enjoy the view. It was appealing on a number of levels. It was Henry and his freaky, amazing body. That’s nice. And he was doing work activity. Yep. Good. And it was about to make her very warm on a cold wet night. Even better. She glanced around in case a fairy was about to bring her a bowl of soup and crusty white bread. Nothing. Oh well. You can’t have everything.

  ‘Have the chooks been laying?’ she asked. ‘I can make us an omelette, if you like.’ She saw him hesitate. ‘It can be my way of thanking you for the wood.’

  He looked happy with the way the fire was going, its cheerful orange flames leaping up into the chimney, pulling a chain of smoke behind them. Its light flickered around the room, tossing careless shadows and highlights in the windows and corners. She could hear the wind pushing at the walls of the house and the hiss of the rain as it started to fall.

  ‘Come on, I’m not asking you to do anything crazy. Maybe eat something, watch TV in a warm house, and then go to bed.’

  His eyes flicked to her as he piled more wood.

  ‘On the semi-comfortable couch, in front of the fire, to make sure the house doesn’t burn down.’

  He didn’t speak, his large body stretched out on the carpet from 1973.

  ‘Really. I don’t see what the problem is,’ she pressed on. ‘The old house is going to be freezing and wet. Surely this is a better idea.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ he almost whispered.

  ‘Then why are you hesitating?’

  ‘I’m better on my own,’ he muttered at the floor, as if he was wishing it would swallow him. For a moment all she could hear was the rain and wind and earth that breathed around the little house in the dark.

  ‘Stay,’ she urged, wondering why tears were threatening. ‘And I will not speak one more word tonight.’

  He nodded, and she went to the kitchen to break eggs and fry bacon and mushrooms in Ida’s favourite pan, listening to its breath, as she thought of Mac up on the hill and the curlew down in the bush.

  When Bronwyn and Kel Riordan arrived, Cate knew she would like them immediately. Kel was a tall man in dark-blue overalls, and Bronwyn was his very elegant wife, with long dark hair and a quick mind. She had brought over a bottle of wine for Cate, which Cate received gratefully.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think I could imagine anyone sitting at this old kitchen table until I saw you there, Cate! It suits you!’

  Cate laughed. ‘Not yet, it doesn’t, although I’m faking it till I make it. I’ve been borrowing Ida’s hat, which seems to help.’

  ‘We might have to find you one of your own if you stay any longer.’

  Cate turned to Kel, who was finishing his tea.

  ‘So, what do you think? Any point in putting in a couple of paddocks of feed?’

  Kel nodded. ‘Yes, I would think so. You have grain here ready to use, so it seems a shame not to put it in. If you want to do the ripping up, we could come by in a couple of weeks and seed it for you.’

  ‘It would be an easy enough job for us with more modern machinery,’ Bronwyn added. ‘You’d hopefully get a good crop this year. Particularly with such a potentially good start to the season – I see we’re in for some good rains this afternoon.’

  ‘Wow, that sounds amazing – thank you very much! I’d love your help,’ Cate assured them.

  ‘Well, would you mind taking us out and letting me have a look at what your paddocks are like?’ Kel asked.

  ‘No, that sounds good,’ Cate said.

  ‘Great. I think I’ve got a fair idea of the type of country we’re talking about, but I’ll just refresh my memory and see what happened last year.’

  ‘Not a lot, I don’t think,’ Cate replied, ‘although I hear the Bernards put in a couple of paddocks they leased out.’

  They made a brief tour of the farm in the ute, with Kel offering very useful advice as they went. He seemed surprised to see some of the small changes that had been made in the past two months.

  ‘I thought that trough was out of commission,’ he commented. ‘And that fence had definitely seen better days. Have you been busy?’

  Cate felt enormous, silly pride.

  ‘Yeah, actually, but a lot of it has also been done by our workman, Henry. He’s a good worker.’

  Kel looked impressed. ‘Better keep him, then – good workmen are hard to find.’

  ‘So I hear.’ Cate grinned. ‘I’ll introduce you, if you like.’

  CHAPTER 26

  ‘Come over.’

  ‘Huh?’ The phone had been ringing as she had gone back inside. The Riordans had disappeared down the drive with a wave, leaving behind them the confidence that the seeding was going to be a great success. Well, maybe just a success, which would still be a win as far as Cate was concerned. ‘Who is this?’

  There was a dramatic sigh. ‘Alex. Come over.’

  ‘Oh, er – I’m a bit b—’

  ‘Just come over for an hour, then you can get back to work. Seriously, you have to have a break sometime.’

  ‘Okay then, but just really quickly, okay?’ She glanced out of the window to the workshop, where Henry was working on the scarifier.

  ‘Come past the house to the paddock with the open gate. There’s an old garden there. You’ll see me.’

  Cate trotted out to the car and was soon picking her way carefully through the paddock to a corner where she could see Alex’s ute, next to a large straggly hedge. She pulled up and he came across to greet her.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Welcome to my great-grandfather’s place.’ He gestured around. ‘This is all that’s left.’ She surveyed the overgrown bushes, the Geraldton wax, the golden daisies and the mother-in-law’s tongue. At the corners of the fence
were four scrappy pine trees, and about six conifers made a loose pathway towards the front road. There were a couple of beds of old rose bushes that had been pruned but were sleeping now, and pale-grey lavender was tall and loose.

  ‘They moved out years ago, and the house had to be knocked down eventually.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Rabbits. They dug under it and it started to collapse. I brought the front-end loader over here one day and made it official.’

  ‘But someone’s been pruning the roses.’

  He looked embarrassed. ‘Me, I’m afraid. They’re too beautiful to waste, and they don’t take much looking after. I use a chainsaw.’ He took her hand and she resisted the urge to pull away, not because she didn’t like him, but because she did. He was a nice guy. Don’t screw up, she told herself. ‘I made you a picnic,’ he said. ‘To cheer you up because Mac died.’

  She smiled and was surprised when tears came to her eyes. ‘Wow. Thanks. Too much, but thanks.’

  ‘Mac loved it here,’ Alex said. ‘He was Trixie’s boyfriend for years. He’d come over to visit, and he’d stay around a while. Then he’d jump on the back of the ute if I was heading out here to check the sheep.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe he wanted to help out on his missus’s place, as well. He was a good dog, that one.’ He pulled a bottle of lemonade out of an esky sitting in the shade of a pepper tree. ‘I think he liked to sniff out the rabbits as much as check that the garden was surviving okay.’

  Cate laughed. ‘Sounds like him.’ She took the cool glass he handed her.

  She looked about at the way the land fell away from the front of the garden into a shallow valley, and then swept up into a thick stand of trees along the distant fence line.

  ‘Why did they leave?’

  ‘My great-granddad died, and my great-grandma didn’t want to be here without him. She moved to Perth to be closer to her daughter, and left my grandad to it. The house lasted longer than she did. It’s gone now, but I like to see the little scar it left behind.’

  Cate glanced around and wandered across what would have been the lawn to the hedges. He was right. It was a small green scar on the landscape. A tiny corner for a lady’s garden. She stepped it out, imagining walking to the clothesline, and then up the front path to the house that was no longer there. She found a piece of the front gate lying under one of the pine trees, and the rusty wheels of an old bike leaning against the conifers, as if Alex had been tidying up fifty years too late. He watched her while he spread out a blanket in the weak sunshine. A cool wind had begun to blow, but the garden was sheltered by the trees planted down the side of the house years ago.

  ‘Come on,’ he called. ‘I promised you I’d only waste an hour of your time. Come and eat.’

  She grinned at him. He knew the way to a woman’s heart. She was surprised to discover it was through her stomach. Alex had laid out a simple but delicious picnic of lamb-and-salad rolls, with pesto, goat’s cheese and roasted beetroot, a brightly glistening fruit salad generously chopped into large pieces like Christmas decorations in a bowl, and a hazelnut cake so dark it was almost black. He saw her inspecting it with open admiration and winked.

  ‘The secret is dark chocolate,’ he said. ‘It’s too early to get you drunk.’

  ‘It looks amazing,’ she told him, laughing, and gratefully accepted her roll. They chatted happily for a while about the farm and Alex entertained her with lighthearted stories about his family. She was munching on fresh fruit salad sprinkled with mint and pistachios, when she glanced across and assessed him. Handsome, charming, considerate and successful.

  ‘How is it possible that you haven’t been snapped up by some lucky woman?’

  He took a bite of salad and looked at it like he deeply approved. ‘Not many around,’ he said, when he could speak again. ‘And I’m fussy.’

  ‘Fussy? What do you mean?’

  ‘This life isn’t for everyone. I guess I’m overly cautious – you hear the horror stories about meeting the right girl, except that she hates the farm, hates the community, is just after a semi-mythical rich farmer. It can become a disaster.’

  ‘But break-ups happen everywhere.’

  ‘Yeah, but here it can mean selling off the family farm, or never seeing your kids because they have to move to the city.’

  Cate eyed the cake. ‘Maybe you think too much,’ she said, and he stopped eating for a moment to look at her.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, it’s all just a leap of faith at some point, isn’t it?’ She smiled at him. She’d never really had to worry about whether a relationship would work out. She just took it as it came: the next dinner, who would sleep over, who had a work thing to go to. She had never thought about the bigger picture.

  ‘Maybe I’m stuck on the precipice,’ Alex said to the willy­-wagtail who had come to inspect them both. ‘Maybe it’s time to jump.’

  She blushed. And she hated blushing. She usually made a dumb-arsed joke to divert her latest victim from saying anything she’d rather not hear. She tried to think of one. Nothing came.

  She drove home thinking about Alex and his dedication to the family farm and she found that it impressed her very much.

  ‘What are you doing?’ It was Henry. He had disappeared after the Riordans left and hadn’t re-materialised until now. She had wanted to check he was okay down in the old house, but she didn’t want to invade his privacy again. She looked up from the pile of newspapers she was dragging out of the spare room.

  ‘I’m tidying up. The girls are coming tomorrow for a couple of hours to help get the house ready for Ida, in case she can come home for a while.’

  ‘Shit. You didn’t tell me that was tomorrow.’

  A couple of West Australians from the mid-nineties fell off the top of the pile.

  ‘You didn’t need to know,’ she said, pushing them back on. ‘It’s probably mostly women cleaning and putting down non-slip mats. Then I’d say we’ll eat stuff. Plus, I’m never sure when you’re actually talking to me, anyway, so sometimes it’s just easier if I leave you alone.’

  He smiled almost shyly. ‘That doesn’t sound like me.’

  ‘Don’t lie to a Church Committee lady – we know Jesus and you don’t want to piss him off.’

  ‘Um, is that in the rules? Are you allowed to threaten people with the wrath of the Lord?’ He quickly squatted down and picked up the papers. She gestured to the verandah.

  ‘They haven’t given me the manual yet. It was mostly just a cardigan and a recipe for mince.’

  He casually dropped the papers next to the front door. ‘Pity it wasn’t a recipe for cake – you’ll be baking again.’

  ‘Oh, fuck! Shit shit fuckety fuck! Are you serious?’

  ‘Didn’t you just say some country women were coming here?’ he asked, as if he was stating the obvious. ‘Get baking, Princess.’ And he wandered off to the workshop, his short dark hair shining in the mild sunlight and the wind pushing at his broad back, trying to get under his shirt.

  ‘They said I didn’t have to!’ she yelled across the yard.

  ‘They lied!’

  He wasn’t going to get away with that. He owed her some baking advice, and later she made him deliver with the quick, quiet efficiency of a baking black belt, gruff and shy all at once. His huge arms amused her as they beat the batter, and his gentle hands directed hers folding in raspberries and chocolate pieces. He directed her swiftly through the cupcake process within twenty minutes, and was making coffee while they baked cozily in the oven.

  ‘Of course, with the baking, you know you’ve given something away,’ she said later, as they had the coffee and a taste test in front of the fire. He fixed her with a patient stare.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You love your mum.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In Victoria?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does she know where you are?
’

  ‘Not specifically.’

  ‘And your dad?’

  ‘The same.’

  She nodded slowly, considering him. He was watching the fire and pretending she wasn’t.

  ‘Well, Patrick, that was more intensely personal information about your life than I’ve heard in a while.’

  He didn’t offer a response. There was only the pop and crackle of the fire. She turned to the fire herself so that she wasn’t facing him. ‘Why were you a swagman?’ she asked quietly. His body had been relaxed, with his long legs stretched out to the fire. That was why she noticed when he froze up.

  ‘I’m still a swagman. I just shaved, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you leaving again?’ She almost whispered it. She sounded kind of pathetic. What did she care?

  ‘Yeah, maybe sometime after seeding. Who knows?’ He wouldn’t look at her; he was gruff again and shutting her out.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m beginning to want to stay.’

  Late at night Cate was alone again, her hands busy with her knitting, swiftly making little holes in the wool, little loops, little knots. In, around, under, off. There had been a silence that followed his words, and he’d used it to stand quickly and apologetically, and to leave, so they could both pretend it had never happened. Except that here she was, sitting late into the night with her knitting, desperate to get the damn thing finished in case he left tomorrow and it was all he had to remember her by.

  CHAPTER 27

  Just after nine o’clock the cars started coming up the drive. Deirdre was there first. She liked to be early because she got up at five o’clock to milk her cow and she liked everyone to know it. Sarah, Fiona and Tricia showed up next and filed into the house in sturdy shoes and gardening gloves, followed by Audrey and Lara, all of them looking about the place with the cool appraisal of busy-bee ninjas. They had a thousand years of busy-bee experience between them, and they were going to get the job done. Margaret came screaming up the drive after another half-hour.