The House On Burra Burra Lane

by Jones, Jennie

  Had he been born with patience, or had he learned it? He appeared at ease, which suggested peace. But she had the impression still waters ran deep. There was a waterfall cascading inside him somewhere, but someone or something had turned off the tap and all that gushing water was trapped. He was too solitary most of the time. Too unperturbed, but she didn’t know if it was a trait, or a rule.

  ‘Your horses love you, Ethan.’ She smiled when he laughed. Liked being the reason for his pleasure.

  ‘Just like the rabbit,’ he said. ‘She loves me too.’

  The sight of Missy the rabbit sitting in Ethan’s hand had brought tears to her eyes. Such a big man showing as much respect to a small animal as he showed Goliath.

  ‘Are you a fisherman?’

  ‘Sometimes. Why?’

  ‘Just wondered.’ She saw him so clearly by the river. Stilled with concentration as he watched for brown trout. She didn’t have the tolerance to throw a line and wait until something jiggled it, but she could see herself watching Ethan do it, sitting on a picnic blanket, relaxed next to his deliberation.

  ‘I don’t get enough free time to fish the river.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. He was busy, but never appeared pushed to hasty. He just managed everything.

  ‘I’ll take you fishing if you want me to. The MacLaughlin recovers, despite the drought.’

  ‘No need. I’ll get around to doing it one day.’

  He’d helped her take up the crumbling boundary wall around the kitchen garden and stack the bricks; deep red, with bubbles of cream tumbling through. He was going to teach her how to rebuild the wall. He wasn’t charging her for any of these jobs. He’d said it was just something he was doing as he passed, on his way from porch to shed. He’d bought her sturdy workman’s gloves which were so stiff they laughed together at her inability to bend her fingers in them. He’d stretched and softened them in his hands before they began digging and clearing, uncovering the gravel pathway winding from shed to house.

  They hadn’t touched on anything more intimate than a first flush of closer friendship this last week, but it was calming knowing he was around, checking her down-gutters and rain tanks. He’d taught her how to use some of the tools she’d been collecting too.

  ‘I hope that chainsaw is still in its packaging,’ he said, butting into her very thoughts.

  ‘It is. But I’m dying to fire it up and trim the hedge at the back. I want to see the stretch of river.’ It was more of a long stream than a river, but she wanted to see it from the house.

  ‘We won’t be using a chainsaw to trim a hedge, Samantha. Don’t touch it. I mean it. You’re not to use it until I’m convinced you know how to handle it—and yourself.’

  ‘Tool snob.’

  He looked caught between astonished and embarrassed. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s easy for you to be bossy when I’m surrounded by your wild beasts. I notice you didn’t mention this in front of the guinea pig.’

  He smiled. ‘I needed better back-up.’

  She pulled a face but the sense of protection in his authority warmed her. A glimpse of the cascading waterfall, or perhaps the surprising dominance came from the dark cave sitting behind the falls. There were many levels of concentration in the looks he gave her with his secretive sky-blue eyes, and one look in particular kept surfacing. Sometimes, the daylight in his gaze deepened when he looked at her, making her think of long steamy nights, and the way young Julia had looked at him. She didn’t always want to meet that gaze, didn’t know if there would be a reciprocal luminosity in her own. It wasn’t the way friends were supposed to look at each other.

  Two afternoons this last week he’d been called out to farms or back to his surgery, and she’d missed him in those hours before sunset. The recollection unsettled her now as she stood beside him and his horses. She was here on her own. It was good to have a friend close by, but not acceptable to rely on support. That might put her back too many long-fought-for paces.

  ‘I’ll be good with the chainsaw but rubbish at fishing. No patience.’

  ‘You’d do well enough. You have patience in your hands and your heart. You just need to learn to transfer it to everyday tasks.’

  She pulled another face.

  ‘Come on. I’ll drop you home.’

  She patted Goliath one more time and followed Ethan for the short walk to his surgery.

  Ethan had finished for the afternoon. The porch roof was in place, and a job well done. He hadn’t been called to his surgery this Saturday, for which he was grateful, and regretful.

  He washed up at a plastic-piped valve feeding from a tap outside the shed. He’d driven through the gate on Burra Burra Lane most days for two weeks and hadn’t expected to be confounded by more than the house, but something inside him wanted out. Brooding notions about some place he could forget his doubts and find enough security to contemplate the strange new thoughts about his future.

  He purposefully took his mind to the work he was here for. He’d pour concrete once he’d stabilised the shed walls. He could screed it himself. He’d already calculated the cubic metres he’d need to order.

  He knocked the dirt off his boots on the shed doorframe, stepped outside and lost all thought of work as the sun hit his face.

  She’d be outside, not in the house, it was too beautiful a day. She’d be fixing something, intent on the task, whatever it was. Must be hard on her, slaving in the daytime, surrounded by tools she didn’t know how to use but willing to pick them up and figure it out. When he left her at night as the sun went down, she was ready to go to work again with her drawings. She’d shown him some of her other artwork and he’d been baffled at the skill. Her portraiture art was sensitive and emotive, and she had an eye for absolute detail with the landscapes.

  He spent his evenings checking on any animals in the surgery, and taking the walk to the field to rug the horses. They seemed grateful for his company while he worked around them, refilling water troughs from the small creek running down the hill in the next field, taking his time and trying not to think about Samantha Walker at her dining room table, head bowed, pencil in hand.

  He recognised skill, particularly when it involved a person’s hands. He used his own for crafting wood and tending animals. He’d learned how to correct youthful impatience to careful approach, and believed there was artistry in what he did.

  It was good to have a friend, he reminded himself, pushing the idea of more behind him. He’d intentionally led them down a path towards easy friendship since that night in the bar but it was hard not to yield, and give the prospect of his new friend’s body further contemplation.

  He didn’t have to look far; she was painting the tall fence running along the side of her kitchen garden. The fence was leaning towards her, propped up with thick, rotting pickets.

  Gravel crunched under his boots until he hit softer earth.

  She turned, large paint brush in hand, arm stretched high, hair flying in the wind. She looked like the person he’d wanted to be a few minutes ago. Carefree.

  She wiped her free hand on a cloth hooked in her pocket. ‘Hello.’ Paint splattered to the grass from the brush in her other hand.

  ‘Aren’t you doing that the wrong way round?’ He took the brush off her and smoothed its wet edges over the pot. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to fix the fence and then paint it?’ He handed the brush back.

  ‘Not enough money, my friend, but a paint job makes it prettier on the eye.’

  He shoved his hands into his pockets to stop himself from brushing back the tendrils of hair falling on her cheeks. ‘Well, my friend, it could be you’re wasting your time. The fence is likely to collapse before you’ve got to the end with your paintbrush.’

  ‘At least I’ve made it look better on its last legs.’ She dipped the brush into the pot, sloshed the excess over the rim and lifted it to the fence panel.

  What was it about her that made him want to do so much for her? It wasn’t as though
she wasn’t capable, smart, and willing. She drew it out of him without asking. He’d kept himself absorbed in his work all these years so he wouldn’t feel responsible for others; interfering in their lives and trying to fix things for them. He hadn’t offered anything but a polite, professional distance to anyone since he’d returned to town. Withdrawn, they called him. It had taken enormous effort on his part to have them think that way. After a while, they’d accepted him and recognised he’d come back a different man. But every time he was around Sammy, the memories of his aggressive older brother snaked through his mind, along with uncomfortable thoughts about the woman Ethan had brought home as his wife … to the house Sammy lived in. He’d made a terrible mistake, marrying that girl. Her carelessness had ended in her death along with his brother’s, regardless of his good intent to set them both on a better path. He didn’t want Sammy tarnished by his history. She was making the house a home again. She was out of bounds for gossip and supposition. She deserved a chance.

  ‘How about you let me fix the fence tomorrow, then you paint it?’

  ‘Can’t let you do that, you’re doing more than I can pay for already.’

  He’d had no inclination to push or prompt a reaction from any woman after his wife had left him but he’d been sent skimming sideways by his response to Sammy. He wanted a reaction from her—a woman-to-a-man reaction. Sitting quietly by the fire with her in the bar that first night, talking to her, looking at her, had put him into a soft frame of mind. A loving frame of mind, he supposed. She hadn’t accepted the offer he’d made when he’d dropped her home. He’d made a joke of it, but he would have taken her to bed that night.

  He wanted to nudge her again, test the water and put an end to his misery but he couldn’t ask for a few evenings of pleasure. It wouldn’t be enough for him anyway and it wouldn’t be fair on her. He’d leave her. He’d have to.

  If the abusive traits of his brother and his father were inside him, then he was damned sure he wasn’t going to let them out— but he’d seen it happen—men who had no control over what they did. If he got lost in Sammy …

  He looked up at her. ‘I want to help you. I don’t want your beautiful hands to get hurt.’ He closed his mouth. Not only had he made a stupid comment about her lovely hands, he’d overstepped the boundaries but the palms of his hands itched to touch her, stroke her, pause on her slender curves and pull her into him. He stepped back.

  ‘I’ll have to get used to blisters, Ethan, if I want to see results.’

  ‘Well, Miss Walker, everything you do is done well, but it seems a bit arse-about-face.’

  She laughed, wiped a splash of paint off her cheek with the back of her hand.

  ‘How about we sit down with a beer and write out a plan for you? Then you can do things in order.’

  ‘I’m not an ordered sort of girl. I get an idea and take off with it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well then, you go get a beer from my old fridge, if it’s still working, and I’ll finish my paint job.’

  ‘Let me fix the damned fence, Samantha.’

  She paused, lowered the paintbrush. ‘Am I making you mad?’

  He stopped himself from taking the brush from her hands, and looked down at the paint dripping onto the grass instead. ‘No. I just like to do things with the least complication.’

  ‘I’m not a perfect person, and I’m complicated too.’

  He couldn’t hold his interest any longer. Why was she here alone?

  ‘I’ve been told I’m odd and that I don’t make myself clear,’ she went on, ‘so I’m sorry if I’ve made you angry. I didn’t mean to. I don’t want you to think badly of me.’

  ‘Why the hell would I think badly of you? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘Old nonsense.’

  He took his hands from his pockets, found he had nothing to do with them and shoved them back. ‘Who says you’re complicated?’ She’d said ‘odd’ which was a strange word to use.

  ‘My mother.’ She straightened. ‘And some guy I knew.’

  A few words of explanation, nowhere near enough. ‘What guy?’

  ‘A guy my mother approved of.’

  ‘Someone you liked?’

  ‘Not as much as my mother, so it got a little ugly. A clash of wills and apparently I was the one not in touch with reality, so I got labelled complicated and annoying by both of them.’

  She was too bright and happy to have been affected by other people’s wishes, although it appeared she’d had some trouble. ‘Sounds like manipulation,’ he suggested.

  ‘I dangled on a few strings for a while, but like I say, it’s old nonsense now.’ She put the brush down. ‘Why don’t we go get that beer?’ Her voice rose brightly as she stepped forwards. ‘Before you go.’

  He blocked her way. ‘Why don’t you tell me about this guy and what he did to you?’

  She ran her tongue along her bottom lip. ‘This is a little more personal than I’d like just now. It’s not the sort of thing you discuss with a neighbour.’

  ‘I thought I was your friend.’

  ‘I don’t feel comfortable talking like this. I’m sorry.’

  He wasn’t in any position to sort her troubles out for her anyway. He was supposed to have made up his mind on that. ‘You don’t apologise to a friend, Sammy.’ He took hold of her hand. ‘Let’s get that beer and discuss the fence.’

  He curled his fingers around hers. Sammy—she’d always be Sammy to him now. Her mother and that guy probably called her Samantha.

  ‘And that’s my take on it, Ethan. Our kids need something to keep ’em occupied. How are we gonna keep ’em here without a trade? There aren’t any jobs around that don’t require them to travel a hundred kilometres to and from town.’

  ‘It’s tough for those who stay, Mr Morelly.’ Ethan settled his weight on his hip. He had fifteen posts for Sammy’s fence stacked on the ute and was eager to be gone, but young Mr Morelly had an old bee in his bonnet. At least the conversation was familiar, because he couldn’t keep his thoughts off Sammy and the damned fence.

  The ping of the hardware store’s old silver doorbell gave him his break. Young Josh Rutherford walked in, followed by an older resident, shopping bag in hand. Mr Morelly sprang to assist.

  Ethan gathered his other purchases from the wooden counter. The whole fence should be torn down and replaced but she couldn’t afford it. So she’d compromised over a beer. She’d promised to let him fix it so it didn’t lean and he’d said he’d help her paint it again. She’d given in to him because she felt it was what he wanted. He’d coerced her—hadn’t compromised on anything, he’d got what he wanted.

  Rational thought was hard, even though he’d put so much effort into it earlier in the week. He’d pushed her into accepting his terms, and couldn’t steer himself from the fact he was glad he’d done so. He’d do the same again if he had to, and given her stubborn attitude, he’d have to. Problem was, it was for all for his benefit. He didn’t want her hands to get hurt.

  ‘Ethan.’

  Ethan turned. ‘Hi, Josh. Got your motorcycle yet?’

  Josh shrugged. ‘Mum said I have to pay for it myself so I got a job at Cuddly Bear Toy Shop.’

  Ethan attempted to keep his surprise, and more importantly, his amusement, hidden.

  ‘She doesn’t want me to have a bike in case I leave town,’ Josh continued. ‘So I’m stuck working in a toy shop. She doesn’t want me to have anything.’ He’d rolled the sleeves of his T-shirt up, showing off the brawn of his biceps like young hellraisers did in the movies. He’d even stuck pack of chewing gum in the cuff.

  Ethan let his smile grow. ‘She’s got your best interests at heart.’

  ‘Yeah, like I don’t know that.’

  It sounded familiar.

  Josh sauntered closer, his sneakers bigger than his feet, his jeans shimmying down his hips. He was a perfect male triangle, broad on top, lean beneath. Except he hadn’t grown into ful
l manhood yet.

  ‘Have you thought it over?’ Josh asked.

  ‘I have, I told you I would.’

  Josh pulled the pack of chewing gum from his sleeve and slipped a piece out. He offered one to Ethan.

  Ethan shook his head. ‘No thanks.’ He took a breath, moistened his mouth, giving himself time. ‘I can’t take you on, Josh. I haven’t got the resources a builder has. I don’t even have a receptionist for the practice, it’s just me, and at present I don’t have an assistant vet either.’

  Josh stopped chewing, rolled his shoulder and looked out of the plate glass window with its large curly-scripted sign, Morelly’s. ‘Okay, thanks anyway, Ethan.’

  Ethan didn’t know what stung more; having to refuse the kid a job, or hearing Josh take it so casually. ‘I’ll see if there’s anyone taking on apprentices, but you’d have to travel.’

  Josh looked back at Ethan, and chewed his gum. ‘Don’t want anything stupid, like digging holes, I want to work with wood.’

  ‘Carpentry isn’t my main business. I have to look after the practice first, my other work is … ’ A skill. A craft Josh had the ability for. The kid had the strength in his shoulders and the nimbleness in his hands. He should be apprenticed to a carpenter, or a builder, but his mother, Patricia Rutherford, wasn’t in the best of health for him to be gone from home right now.

  That sounded too damned familiar too. Patricia had brought Josh up alone and done a fine job. She was the same age as Ethan, they’d even gone out a few times all those years ago before he’d made his way to the city, forgetting his would-be girlfriend in his rush to fix others’ lives. He silently commended Patricia for the way she’d brought Josh up. He wouldn’t have had the ability anywhere near as well at such a young age.

  He nodded his goodbye and left Josh with his troubles.

  He breathed the late afternoon air, glad to have got the deed done and sorry he hadn’t taken the time to visit Josh and his mother, given the kid bad news sooner. He’d let them down by not doing so.