by Sarah Hay
‘You’ve got a new necklace?’
Susannah had noticed it before. It was a more delicate chain than the one Laura had previously worn. In the middle of the heart-shaped pendant was a cloudy, milky-coloured stone with flecks of blue. It looked like an opal. Laura’s hand reached up to clasp it.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Texas gave it to me.’ And she looked to Susannah’s left, towards the panel of louvres, her gaze limpid in the yellow light. Her focus returned and the colour was high on her cheeks. ‘He brought it back as a surprise. I didn’t realise he went into town to see his family.’
Susannah could see that she was in love with the stockman. It made her impatient and she reached for the glass of rum, staring into its contents before she swallowed. ‘Well, anyway,’ she said, looking up, ‘at least you’ve got your air ticket. If you ever want to leave.’
The girl’s eyes dropped to her glass and she moved it around in her hand. ‘I’m going to stay,’ she said. ‘I want to be with him.
I’ll make it work. I know my parents will be upset but once they meet him I’m sure they’ll understand and this life, it’s so . . .’ She paused, searching for the right word. Susannah waited. There were lots of words she could have inserted and the one Laura chose wasn’t among them. ‘It’s so exciting,’ said Laura with a bright smile.
‘Really.’
Susannah gulped down more rum. She knew there was so much she could say but she didn’t know where to start, and besides, why should she tell this girl anything? No one had told her.
‘But you must be used to it,’ continued Laura. ‘I guess it’s not the same when you grow up here.’
‘I didn’t grow up here,’ said Susannah.
‘Oh yes, I remember, you said you were from somewhere in the south.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well . . . what was it like growing up there?’
Laura’s entire body seem to sparkle with expectation. Susannah drained her glass and was quiet for a moment, remembering.
‘It was fairly flat country and we grew clover and wheat and barley and I used to help my dad with the sheep until I went away to high school.
‘When we were little my brother and I used to get dropped off by the school bus and my mother always had biscuits or cake that she’d baked and a glass of milk and Milo. I’d get an
Texas apple for my pony. She’d look out for you, her ears twitched forward, and she had this noise she used to make, and then I’d ride everywhere, all over the farm. It’s what I want for my kids. That opportunity.’
‘Oh,’ said Laura, ‘I can’t wait to have children.’
Susannah refilled her glass and pushed the bottle into the middle of the table. She leant back in her seat. Her eyes narrowed.
‘You’ve no idea, have you?’ The rum was like a charge sparking, igniting her fury.
Laura sat a little straighter in her chair, looking wary. Perhaps she could see it in Susannah’s eyes.
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ said Susannah. ‘You’re going to have children? What are you going to do, drag them around from one bloody station to the next? Stick a baby in a cot on the back of a horse, or under a tree while you go mustering?’
Laura stood up. ‘I know what I’m doing. I don’t need to listen to you. I think you’re jealous.’ She was at the door. ‘I’ve seen you, watching us, and I think it’s sick.’
Susannah was suddenly very tired.
‘Here, take a candle with you,’ she said.
V
Susannah woke when daylight penetrated the thin weave of the curtain and slowly she became aware of the soft worn sheets lightly covering her body and the empty space beside her and the louder than usual cacophony of bird sounds which could only mean that the generator was still turned off. Without it, there was no beat that helped determine the time of the day and everything that should happen within it. She felt vaguely disturbed, thinking it was probably the residue from the rum, remembering the conversation with Laura and regretting it.
Her thoughts changed shape and suddenly it became important to find Irish.
The twitters and whistles of birds punctuated the inevitable quiet. She had never been inside his caravan but he didn’t answer when she called out so she stepped up into the dim interior that smelt so bad it almost made her sick. What squalor.
How could anyone live like that? Her eyes took time to adjust and she could see the outline of the bunk and the rumpled blanket and the items of clothing and what looked like little white wings scattered over everything. She realised they were scrunched pieces of toilet tissue. She paused for a moment, holding her breath, thinking she should have checked in the engine room. He was probably already there.
The two blackened diesel engines sat side by side in the dense little room. She half expected one of the big wide belts to start moving of its own accord and she was glad to be back outside in the bright light of the day. She shielded her eyes with her hand and looked towards the line of trees that marked the creek and the pool where they were the evening before. Her shadow was long and thin and her elbow pointed like an arrow.
She looked away from the sun and over the sheds to the hills beyond the homestead.
Texas In the paddock behind the house the ground started to slope towards a crown of sandstone rock, but before it rose steeply there was a fence and something hanging from it. It was a piece of cloth, soft faded cotton, caught on one of the wire barbs. The sun lit the red-coloured earth and it glowed with an eerie brightness. Looking up at the ridge of rock that ran all the way along the top of the hills, it was like a deep red scar that interrupted the benign blue sky. She doubted he would have come this way but she’d have a good view from there and it didn’t seem too far to walk. She left behind the scrap of material, thinking it could have been there for weeks or months. Perhaps she would be able to see him from the ridge; if he was fishing or if he’d gone somewhere else. He certainly hadn’t driven anywhere. She remembered his old vehicle in the same place it always was, parked in the shed beside the workshop. A gust of wind rattled the nearby windmill and it swung around to catch the breeze, the piston moving up and down, making a solitary shushing sound.
She climbed over the fence and stepped through the grass quickly where the ground was mostly level, but it was thicker than she thought and she was glad of her jeans and her sandshoes. Treading heavily as a warning to any snakes. She picked up a strong snappy-gum stick for protection. As she started to climb higher it became hotter. The breeze was behind her and every now and again she turned and paused to look back where she had come from, feeling the cool air wash over her face. She followed the thin wavering line of a cattle pad or a track created by some other creature and eventually the grass on either side thinned and there was more spinifex and gravelly rock. Her shoes slipped a little on the loose stones crunching beneath her feet and the sound of her pulse thumped in her ears. Flies were sticking to her skin, and unlike the flies down south they wouldn’t go away.
They seemed attracted to the moisture on her face. It wasn’t far now but it was steep and suddenly a rustle in a big clump of spinifex caused her to start and out of it ran a beautiful bird with a thin spike on its head. Too quickly it was gone and she was left with the memory of gold feathers scalloped and edged in black.
Just ahead was a small tree that twisted out of the rock and cast a small area of shade over a boulder that looked like a good place to sit. She was thirsty and she realised how stupid it was not to have brought any water. No one knew where she was. All she had said to Laura was to keep an eye on the children. The air was still and the sun almost overhead. She flicked the flies from her face, hearing the whine of other insects, and all around her the bush twitched with life. The distant homestead roof winked between the dense foliage of the garden’s trees, the bougainvillea a splash of colour amongst it. And beyond there and the dull gleam of the rectangular shed roof was the line of the creek that curved back and forth through the undulations of the land. It look
ed like the body of a snake and she marvelled at the way patterns were repeated, from the smallest thing to something more permanent like the shape of water. And then she thought how strange it was that the outline of an animal could be so obviously etched in the
Texas landscape, but her eyes saw further, to the far distance, where, within the folds of the ranges, a woman lay on her back, her breasts bluish-purple mounds. Between the woman and the snake-creek was the flood plain, variously shaded in ochre colours with dots for trees that grew densely in places and sparsely in others. The faint mark of a track or the line of a fence reminded her that it was a landscape used by men. And she wondered where were the cattle, probably keeping to the cool shade of the trees by the creek. Perhaps Irish was there? A kite wheeled above, the tips of its wings edged like fingers as it glided and drifted in spirals.
The familiar call of a crow was answered by another. She looked behind her. There, less than twenty metres away, the rock rose up as a sheer cliff face and before it was a small stand of feathery sheoak, or what she thought were sheoaks but they could have been something else, and in amongst the branches were three or four crows. A little to the left of the trees was a crack in the rock which seemed to widen into a small cave as it got closer to the ground and it was then she saw that he hadn’t quite made it. She turned back towards the safety of distance and her dry mouth suddenly flooded with saliva and she swallowed noisily. She didn’t move; she couldn’t. The crows cried horribly. And her eyes traced the line of the ranges and the pale cool light above them and she thought how refreshing it looked, far, far away from the heat and the intensity of the moment. She wouldn’t look behind again. She knew she ought to do something: cover him up or get help from the men. Call the Flying Doctor. Instead she stared out to the plain, so hard that her eyes blurred and she could imagine what it might have been like when it was an ancient sea floor and the flowing sea current shaped the hills and the ridges. Ripples solidified into rock. There were fossils to be found in the valley, she knew that, fossils that came before everything. It comforted her: the thought of other lives being lived, over and over again, and in that light her mother’s death did not seem so significant. The old man was gone. She thought of him climbing the hill, stumbling, falling in the dirt, unable to reach the cool darkness of the cave ahead, the liquid in his lungs taking his breath away.
Everything he knew was gone too. She imagined his head lying close to the earth, cushioned by mounds of grass. She hoped he was dead before the crows found him. But he knew what the country was like.
Then she remembered where her mother was buried. Her grave was among the grey concrete slabs and plastic flowers in the cemetery on the edge of town. At one end of the small fenced enclosure a couple of sickly-looking ornamental trees stood seemingly unnourished by the dead that lay around them.
She wondered how often her father visited. When any of their sheepdogs had died, her father dug holes beside different veranda posts, etching their name in the timber, and the grass that covered them always grew more greenly. She would write to her father and ask that he plant something for her on her mother’s grave. Her eyes felt hot and swollen but her face was cool from the moisture on her cheeks. And as she allowed the tears to fall it felt as though the tightness in her chest that had
Texas been there for so long was unravelling like a spool of cotton. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see anything. There were some things she didn’t need to see to understand.
When she descended, the slope was in shadow.
With a gun in his
fist he was ten
feet tall
I
Laura stepped out of her room and closed the flywire door behind her. She looked up. Texas was walking between the garden bushes towards her. His grin showed his teeth and her body relaxed into happiness.
‘Miss me, eh?’
His voice rumbled in his chest and her head was against it and she looked up at him, wanting to say, I’ve missed you so much. I’m nothing without you.
‘How come you’re back?’
‘Clutch burn out on the post-hole digger. Ground too bloody hard.’
‘What are you doing now?’
‘See my woman, eh?’
‘What about the fence?’
Texas ‘The boss, he got to get someone to bring out the part for it.’
She reached down for his hand, his long slender fingers that were callused and rough.
‘Come with me.’
‘Sound pretty good,’ he said, laughing quietly as she led him into the quarters that they were about to share.
He sat on the bed and took off his boots and pulled the singlet from over his head. She placed her hand on his shoulder and it was hot from the sun and she noticed where his skin was lighter.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a mark where your singlet has been.’
‘Yeah I got sunburnt.’
She was kneeling on the bed and she looked at him in surprise. ‘Do you get sunburnt?’
He half turned, frowning. ‘Yeah.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought . . .’
She was embarrassed but he lay back on the bed, pulling her down with him. The fan rotated lazily above their heads and the movement of air was something solid that swept over their bodies and held them there.
‘Put that Johnny Cash tape on.’
Texas had brought over his ghetto-blaster from his room on the other side of the creek, and it was sitting on a chair between the bed and the wall. She reached over and pressed play, and they lay there, listening to the dense voice of Cash speak the words:
‘When Robert E Lee surrendered the Confederacy Jefferson Davis was upset about it He said how dare that man rescind an order From the president of the Confederate States of America Then somebody told him that General Lee had made the decision himself In order to save lives because he felt that the battle comin up Would cost about 20,000 lives on both sides And he said 240,000 dead already is enough . . .’
‘I’ve got to go,’ said Laura, sitting up. ‘Susannah’ll be wondering where I am.’
She leant down and kissed him but he held her arms playfully, preventing her from pulling away.
‘Maybe I don’t let you go.’
‘You can deal with Susannah then,’ she said lightly but with a slight edge in her voice that revealed her animosity towards the woman.
‘That missus, she’s all right, she’s like a fish trying to get back in the water,’ he said and he started laughing to himself.
‘What are you laughing at?’
He had let go of her arms and she fell back beside him, one hand holding up her head as she watched him. He turned to her, his grin wide.
‘I was thinking. That time when we got here to this place.
I was watching those people; they were looking like they were
Texas going to eat you all up. And I thought, that girl, she going to need a backstop.’ His smile was infectious.
‘Really, what do you mean by backstop?’
‘Like a . . . you know, a fella that supports another fella.’
‘Oh, so that’s why you seduced me,’ she said, gently poking his skin.
He looked up at the ceiling, grinning smugly. ‘What else is a fella to do when a pretty girl comes into his camp looking like she got an idea?’
‘It wasn’t all my idea,’ she said, a little defensively.
He glanced at her with eyes that crinkled at the edges.
‘Just a little bit your idea. Might be I was thinking about it when your elbow was sticking into me, that time you were sitting in the middle, between the boss and me.’ He lifted his arm and said, ‘Here, come here.’ Bringing her closer.
She walked across the lawn, wondering how he could make her feel as though they existed somewhere entirely separate from everyone else. It was as if everything that had ever happened to either of them had been leading to this, to this one thing. She’d never been so happy.
The head had fall
en off one of the sprinklers and it dribbled water into a widening puddle on the grass and little birds dipped in and out. The thick heat was almost impenetrable as she moved from the shaded area into sunlight, and it was all the more shocking for the contrast. Susannah looked up from the sink.
‘Can you finish here?’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go to the children.’
‘Texas’s back,’ said Laura, squaring her shoulders.
Susannah expelled air noisily in a short, sharp sigh, ignoring Laura’s eyes.
‘I s’pose he’ll need feeding as well. Get the salt beef out of the cool room and cut off some more,’ she said before the flywire door closed behind her. ‘The key’s above the sink.’
Susannah was like that now, matter-of-fact and impersonal.
It was as though Laura had never sat at her table. In some ways she preferred it this way. At least she knew where she stood.
Since John had returned from the city, working for Susannah was more structured and Laura was to be in the kitchen by six every morning, except Sundays. Lists of jobs were prepared and she worked steadily through them; cleaning windows and washing walls and floors. The mindlessness of it all left her open to other experiences, fanciful journeys of thought, where she imagined a life with Texas in a grand two-storey homestead of stone with wide verandas and views from every room. Horses with gleaming coats grazed in the fields below.
Laura sat down with Texas on the veranda. Sometimes Gerry joined them but he had gone into town for a couple of weeks.
He was taking his time off before the wet. At times she was nervous of the heat, wondering how much she could take and how long it would be before someone would tell her that it was the hottest day, like the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. It was impossible to celebrate a hot day, it was enough just to endure, to maintain the boundaries between her and its increasingly physical presence. Texas took a piece of bread from the middle of the table and placed it on his plate and spread margarine over it.