Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Jack had that five bob still jingling in his pocket, but by Christ, that was Mum’s money and that hungry bastard wasn’t getting it. “We’ll work it off,” Jack says, looking at the potatoes floating in enamel dishes full up with rabbit stew. Eating regular is a bit habit-forming, and we’d got the habit these last two days.

  ‘“Are you any good at fencing?” the big bastard says.

  ‘“Yeah. We done plenty,” Jack says.

  ‘“Righto. Two days’ fencing for two days feeding your horses and your dog.”

  ‘“What are they gunna eat for the next two days?” I ask, watching his kids sucking meat off rabbit bones. Then his missus asks, “Are you hungry, boys?”

  ‘“We don’t want to owe you nothing else, thank you kindly, m’am,” Jack says.

  ‘“I can’t see growing boys go hungry. Sit yourselves down,” she says, and the next thing we know we’re sitting at the table piling into rabbit stew and lumps of spud and thick hunks of home-made bread and dripping.

  ‘We end up doing three days’ fencing and four nights of trapping rabbits. We must have caught hundreds of the buggers, which his missus fed to us, fried and baked, curried and stewed. We never ate so much rabbit in our bloody lives, though we ate good. But after a couple of days of it, it got to the stage where every time we started eating, we’d start thinking of Mum and the other kids, knowing they wouldn’t be eating so good. We had to get that money home.

  ‘The bloke’s missus give us a loaf of home-baked bread and two baked rabbits; we’d squirrelled away a half a dozen raw carcases. She gave us a bit of sugar and a bag of spuds, so off we head down that road again.

  ‘Well, we’d gone no more than two miles, and what comes out of the scrub than that little red kelpie. She’s wriggling and licking and kissing us like you never saw a dog kiss. She’s yelping and saying, “Where have you been, lads? I got to worrying meself sick about you two.”

  ‘I loved that dog. I had her for years before I went off to that bloody war. She must have been sixteen or more before I come home again, but she was waiting for me, knowing I’d come home. She died two weeks later, her old head on my lap.

  ‘These pups here was bred from her stock, but only this little lady has got her eyes.’ He kisses the pup, fondles her ears. ‘But a man isn’t going to live long enough to raise her the way she ought to be raised, is he? No use fooling yourself when you get to my age. You’re a working dog, aren’t you Lady,’ he says to the pup.

  I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.

  Then he hands her to me, like he’s giving away something precious. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on her to keep her from being what she was born to be.’

  ‘How much?’ I say, reaching for my wallet.

  ‘You don’t sell your family, son. You look after ’em – and you’d better look after her for me, or by the bejesus, I’ll come back and haunt you,’ he says. ‘Now get going before I change my mind.’

  MORE BESTSELLING FICTION BY JOY DETTMAN

  Mallawindy

  Ann Burton was born on a river bank the night her father tried to burn their house down.

  Six years later her sister Liza disappears while they are staying at their uncle’s property. What Ann sees that day robs her of her memory and her speech.

  Ann escapes her anguished childhood, finding love and a new life away from Mallawindy. But there is no escape from the Burton family and its dark secrets. Ann must return to Mallawindy and confront the past if she is ever to be free.

  Jacaranda Blue

  Maidenville, population 2,800, a town where nothing ever happens – until one hot summer afternoon when the respectable skirts of Maidenville are lifted.

  Does something sinister lurk behind the neatly-trimmed hedges and white picket fences that divide this sleepy town?

  Then a sixteen-year-old boy goes missing. Few come close to knowing the horrifying truth – but after forty-four years of self denial and duty, Stella Templeton is beginning to blossom.

  Goose Girl

  Sally De Rooze is almost thirty. She survived the accident that killed her father and brothers. Her mother never forgave her for that. But she survived her mother too. Surviving is what she does best.

  Farmer Ross Bertram, who offers her his acres and safety, is the answer for a while. Until he starts pushing for a wedding. Sally wants . . . wants more. Wants to know great love. Wants to find herself. One year. That’s what she wants. One year of freedom in the big, bad city.

  Her survival skills are tested in the urban sprawl and she discovers more about herself than she had ever dared to imagine.

  From the bestselling author of Mallawindy and Jacaranda Blue, comes a moving story about being set free.

  Yesterday’s Dust

  Only the strong survive Mallawindy. Some get away, but even they fight to escape the town’s dark legacy.

  Jack Burton escaped. For six years he has been missing, presumed dead. Still, memories of him continue to dominate the lives of his family.

  His wife, Ellie, stands at the gate each night, waiting for him to return – until a man’s body is found.

  Once again, the Burtons’ turbulent history will be unearthed . . .

  The Seventh Day

  The world as it was has been all but destroyed. Those few who survived the Great Ending are now ruled by an all-powerful group known as the Chosen, whose walled city encloses a diminishing population riddled with plague and threatened with extinction. Desperate to repopulate, the Chosen send searchers to capture every surviving female still living in the wild lands beyond the city for their new breeding stations.

  There is a girl with a name neither of her companions can remember, who is found by the Chosen’s searchers living on a remote property. Since then, she has known little more than the life they enforce – a life dominated by their breeding program and genetic experimentation – while they immunise her and prepare to take her to their city.

  Then one afternoon a son of one of the Chosen arrives at the girl’s farm, a boy who has fled from a life that he has come to find unbearable. His arrival sets in motion a chain of events which change the girl’s life in ways she could not possibly have imagined – offering her a chance to regain the unthinkable – freedom.

  Henry’s Daughter

  Lori Smyth-Owen is balancing on the edge of adolescence. She has eleven brothers, nine living at home and the twins, who live with Aunty Eva. Then family life starts unravelling and the Smyth-Owen children try to save themselves . . . and in doing so, discover that blood ties mean everything.

  From the bestselling author of Mallawindy, Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl and Yesterday’s Dust, comes a story of love and rescue.

  ‘[Dettman’s] unnerving ability to maintain unflinching focus on the corroding effects of a ghastly marriage on a tribe of children is an achievement that begs more than fleeting comparison with Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children’

  WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

  ‘[Henry’s Daughter] doesn’t follow any predictable story arc. It’s as if Elizabeth Jolley wrote a girl’s own adventure inspired by a welfare story on A Current Affair’

  SUNDAY AGE

  One Sunday

  Early one Sunday, the town of Molliston wakes to the news that a young bride is dead.

  The year is 1929. The Great War with Germany has been fought and won, but at an immense cost to the small community. Death is too familiar here. So many sons were lost. So many daughters would never be wives; so many grandchildren would never be born. Racial hatred is like a bushfire in the belly of some.

  And the dead girl is found only yards from the property of old Joe Reichenberg, a German.

  Tom Thompson, the local cop, lost his two sons in Gallipoli. He believed he had come to terms with his bereavement – until that Sunday.

  Slowly, the true face of Molliston is exposed. By midnight, a full moon is offering its light – and a glimmer of hope.

  p; Joy Dettman, Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories