The Stockmen

by Rachael Treasure

  Meanwhile, out the back of the Glenelg Hotel, near the stack of empty beer kegs and cardboard boxes, another girl’s knees were buckling.

  Jillian Rogers had her head tilted back, her hands grasping Sam’s muscular backside and her pelvis jammed against his. Sam’s hands were under her top, moving over her small, pert breasts, and his tongue was deep inside her warm, Jim Beam-flavoured mouth. Just then, a ute revved around the back of the pub and they stood exposed, frozen in the dazzle of headlights like two copulating rabbits caught on the bitumen. Then the horn blasted out a Dukes of Hazard tune.

  ‘Dubbo, you bastard!’ called Sam. ‘Thought I’d been sprung.’

  Jillian tossed back her dark hair and laughed.

  Dubbo leant out of the window. His rounded red face, flop of sandy hair and good-natured grin were only just visible in the darkness.

  ‘Come on then, get in. Party’s at my place. Then I can get started on the grog.’ He tooted the horn again for good measure.

  Sam took Jill’s hand and led her to the ute.

  ‘But the horses, Sam,’ she protested.

  ‘They’ll be right in the racetrack stalls for now. Dubbo’ll get me up before dawn and I’ll go out and fix them then.’

  He ran to the back of Dubbo’s gleaming black Holden ute and began to unflip the strap of the tarp.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Jillian coyly.

  ‘It’s a good forty minutes out to Dubbo’s. My swag’s in the back. How about you and me have a little lie down on the way?’ Sam gave her a cheeky grin.

  Dubbo rolled his eyes. He’d stayed sober all day and now he’d be driving home on his own while his mate got lucky in the back.

  ‘Bloody typical,’ he muttered as he reached for his rollies. Sometimes he couldn’t help feeling pissed off with Sam. How could one bloke have that much luck in life? The best horses, the best land, the best dogs, the best women … several all at once. He even had the best ute. Dubbo flicked his lighter and puffed on his smoke as he drove out of town. He and Sam had grown up together, been to boarding school together, and Dubbo would always be loyal to him. But he couldn’t help feeling sorry for Sam’s fiancée. She seemed like the prettiest, nicest chick. A lot on the quiet side, but she deserved better than this.

  Still, as he sped on into the night, Dubbo glanced frequently in his rear-vision mirror, trying to catch glimpses of the tarp moving rhythmically up and down.

  Chapter 3

  Rosemary turned slowly into the wide main street of Casterton, driving her mother’s old Volvo. The whole town seemed hungover from the excesses of the day before, and the street was unusually empty. Bob at the newsagency was only just putting his signs out on the pavement. He stared at Rosemary as she drove by before putting down the poster that declared ‘NICOLE TO WED AGAIN’ and then, in tiny print, ‘Psychic reveals’.

  At the takeaway, Johnno was putting up his Peters Ice-cream flags while his wife, Doreen, lethargically swept the pavement clean of dust. She leant on her broom and watched Rosemary drive past.

  Rosemary parked at the back of The Chronicle office beside Duncan’s zippy red sports car. Climbing the rickety back steps, she turned and looked behind her at the Glenelg River. There, on the flats beneath the great river red gums, Billy O’Rourke was working a young thoroughbred filly. She pranced and snorted in the morning sun as he calmly urged her on. What would it be like to have that freedom? Rosemary wondered briefly. To spend your days with animals as bright and fresh as that filly? Feeling seedy from Chardonnay and too much sun the day before, she decided to talk to him later about the job he had for her. She pushed open the door and stepped inside the dusty-smelling office of The Chronicle.

  Duncan was there already, along with Derek, who barked excitedly and leapt up to scrabble at Rosemary’s legs. Duncan was standing at his desk, shaking his chunky gold bracelet along his thick wrist. Pools of sweat were already starting to darken his salmon-pink shirt. He was talking excitedly on the phone and running his hand through his wiry blond hair, which Rosemary suspected was dyed and even hairsprayed. Pen in the other hand, Duncan was making wild scribbles of buxom women on the notepad on his desk.

  ‘I thought your mother had sent you money for books? Yep. Ah-huh. Okay then. I’ll send you a cheque. But don’t spend it on dope. Or grog. No I’m not! How is your mother?’

  Trying not to listen in on Duncan’s conversation with his daughter, Rosemary slumped at her desk and turned on the clunky old computer. It too whirred over lethargically like it had a hangover. She created a new file and started to type up the captions for her race-day photos.

  ‘Trying to hold in their after-luncheon farts at the Glenelg races on Sunday were, from left, Mrs Elizabeth Richards of Brookland Park, Susannah Moorecroft of Hillsville station and Margaret Highgrove-Jones of Highgrove station.’

  When Duncan slammed down the phone and clapped his hands together, she quickly began to change the first half of her caption.

  ‘Morning!’ he said, smoothing back his hair and bouncing up and down on the spot, like a football player warming up for a game. ‘All set for a big news week?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Rosemary quietly.

  She was about to hand over her film to the bouncing Duncan when her mother swept through the glass front doors in a waft of musky perfume. Margaret’s face was crumpled and contorted. Rosemary frowned at her, worried. It was the same anguished look her mother had worn when the sheep had got into her flowerbeds the day before the Open Garden Weekend, only worse.

  ‘Rosemary.’ Margaret faltered. ‘There’s been a terrible accident.’

  Duncan was instantly at her side.

  ‘Mrs Highgrove-Jones. Are you all right?’

  Margaret looked at her daughter, shaking and blinking back tears.

  ‘Mum? It’s not Julian? Not Dad?’ Rosemary asked as fear settled like lead in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘Sam. It’s Sam,’ her mother said. ‘Sam’s been killed.’

  On the window seat in her bedroom, clutching her knees up to her chest, Rosemary had been rocking backwards and forwards for hours. She’d been in her room now for three days. Today, though, she had to come out. Today was Sam’s funeral.

  She had replayed, over and over, the hours since she’d heard the news about Sam. The jolt. The sudden rush of fear. She remembered slipping off her chair at the office and crouching on the floor, her whole body beginning to shake. Then she felt Duncan’s hands on her, and her mother stroking her hair. Gently, they had lifted her and helped her out on to the street. Bob came out of his newsagency to stare, and Doreen, Johnno and their daughter Janine looked at her sadly from the takeaway. She had been bundled into her mother’s four-wheel drive. Her father was sitting stony-faced in the driver’s seat, waiting. They took her straight home and up to her room. She wasn’t sure what the doctor had given her, but she knew the curtains in her room had been drawn for days. In her mind too, she had felt heavy curtains close over like a fog. Every time the fog lifted the reality came flooding back and then she cried into her pillow until her head ached. She longed for Sam to drive up to the house in his shiny red Holden ute. She imagined him laughing, telling her it was just a bad dream. She waited for him to come. But he never did. He would never come again. The news had filtered through that Jillian was dead too. But somehow Rosemary couldn’t deal with that thought. Not yet.

  Now she must go to Sam’s funeral. She could hear her mother downstairs.

  ‘Not that tie, Julian! Have you got the wreath? Careful with it! Do you think people will know the flowers are from our garden? Should I make a card saying so? I’m sure it would mean more to his family if they knew I had grown the flowers. Gerald, help me fasten this clasp, will you?’

  Her mother’s booming, bossing voice reminded Rosemary of the time of her grandfather’s death. Her family had barely let grief in.

  ‘He had a good innings,’ was all her father had said. It was as if her grandfather hadn’t left the house anyway. His port
raits and possessions were still in place. The paintings of Rosemary’s great-great-grandfather and his wife still hung from the picture rail that ran the length of the hall, their walking sticks were still stored in the elegant hallstand and their china still stacked in the heavy sideboard. Their faces, pale and solemn, stared out from dark wooden frames.

  ‘You can see the bloodlines carried through in their features,’ Prudence said once as she toured the house. ‘The pedigree of Scottish aristocracy is as plain as day.’

  ‘Lucky the eyes-too-close-together trait didn’t pass on to me,’ Rosemary said. ‘Or the horrible hooked-nose gene. Or the fat-in-frumpy-frock tendency.’ She looked over to Prue anxiously after her last comment. Prue stood in the hallway, looking fat, in a frumpy frock.

  ‘Oh, Rosemary!’ gasped Prue. ‘You just don’t appreciate the past … Your past. It’s your heritage. It belongs to you.’

  ‘I don’t want it. It gives me the creeps. A house full of grumpy old dead people.’

  ‘Gosh. I’d love it if I had a big house like this and found a lovely farming lad to marry.’

  As Prudence prattled on, Rosemary stared at the paintings beside the family portraits. They were mostly still-lifes of dead pheasants, or hares lying shot and bloodied beside pewter mugs, with the weapon that caused their death carefully positioned and painted to perfection. There were also paintings of windswept Scottish moors and woolly Highland cattle with their maniac horns pointing upwards to stormy skies. Even though this was the area in Scotland where her father’s family came from, it was her mother who proudly quoted historic trivia about the Highgrove-Jones ancestors. But Rosemary couldn’t feel that it was anything to do with her. The river gums and the rolling hills of Highgrove were her landscape. She couldn’t understand her mother’s pride in the gloomy old paintings and their heritage.

  A gentle knock at her bedroom door interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘Rose, dear. It’s time to go,’ came her mother’s softened voice. She stepped in the room and tut-tutted when she saw her crumpled daughter in the window seat. ‘But you can’t go like that!’

  She stood Rosemary up. She straightened her suit, tugged a hairbrush through her hair, roughly puffed powder on her blotchy face and handed her a little cylinder of lipstick.

  ‘Put that on.’ Rosemary obeyed. ‘There. All better. Come now.’

  Rosemary reluctantly followed her mother down the stairs and past the portraits of the long-dead family members. Their eyes seemed to watch her as she went.

  In the church, Rosemary sat looking at the blue and white agapanthus that stood tall in an urn in front of the pulpit. She swallowed down a painful lump in her throat. Her mother sobbed gently next to her. Gerald sat beside his wife, his grey hair smoothed down neatly, his eyes watery. He stared up at the stained-glass window of Christ on the cross for the entire service. Julian assumed the same position as his father. In the pew in front of them was Sam’s mother, Elizabeth. She was a trim, straight-backed, precise woman, but today she was slumped in her husband’s arms. Rosemary glanced at Marcus, Sam’s father. He was so much like Sam that she felt an urge to leap over the pew to him and hold his strong brown hands in hers. But as he turned to look sadly at her she saw that it wasn’t Sam at all. Sam was dead in the coffin that rested on a silver trolley in front of them.

  When they had first come into the church, people had comforted Sam’s parents with gentle hugs and whispered words of sympathy. But no one came near Rosemary. They just cast her sad glances and passed by. What did they know, Rosemary wondered? The image of Sam and Jillian in the mounting yard after the race flashed in her mind. Rosemary choked down a sob as she stared at the gleaming wood of Sam’s coffin. She wanted to find love for him as she said her goodbyes, but all she could feel was the tug of fear and a suspicion that blackened her every thought.

  Afterwards, standing numbly outside the church in the summer heat, she looked everywhere for Dubbo in the crowd that flowed out from the church. She couldn’t see him.

  ‘Where’s Dubbo?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘Still in hospital,’ her mother said curtly.

  Rosemary wondered if Dubbo would have come to the funeral at all, even if he had been well enough. His best mate was dead, and he had been driving the vehicle that killed him. Would he have dared to turn up? Rosemary felt anger towards Dubbo prickle beneath her skin and she began to cry again. Her gorgeous Sam was gone.

  People didn’t stay long for the crustless club sandwiches and cups of tea served in Wedgwood china at the Chillcott-Clarks’ homestead after the funeral. They talked in hushed tones, placed comforting hands on Marcus and Elizabeth, then quietly left the huge old house. Rosemary sat upright on the couch, running her fingers over the dimples and creases in the brown leather. Glancing down at the ornately decorated rug beneath her feet, her eyes blurred with tears. She and Sam had made love for the first time on that rug. She had felt the plush wool pressing into her lower back when Sam pushed her skirt up above her waist and pulled her shirt from her body.

  ‘It’ll be all right, Rose. Trust me.’ She’d felt the rubber of the condom tug at her skin and as Sam thrust into her with increasing vigour, she had clenched her teeth and looked back over her head. Her eyes met the soulless, glassy gaze of a deer whose head was mounted above the marble fireplace.

  After Sam had finished he said, ‘Careful of Mum’s rug, Pooky. It’s imported from England, you know.’ Rosemary had stifled a giggle. It wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined losing her virginity, but Sam had been so nice afterwards and brought her homemade ice-cream with glace ginger in it. They had cuddled on the couch eating ice-cream and smiling at each other.

  Marcus Chillcott-Clark came to sit by her now on the couch. She had been tilting her head sideways, trying to see the deer again, upside down.

  ‘How are you holding up?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she said in a hoarse voice.

  ‘Elizabeth and I would like you to come and see us whenever you want. Don’t feel you have to stay away.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, struggling to find the right words. ‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’ Then she sat staring at the rug as a coldness settled in her heart.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Pass the gravy to your father, please,’ said Margaret, sitting down at the dining table with a purple paper hat jammed over her hair and her cheeks flushed red. Rosemary picked up the gravy boat, but wouldn’t look her father in the eye as she handed it to him. She kept her gaze on the plastic trinkets and the torn, shiny Christmas-cracker paper scattered over the table.

  Julian began to read a terrible joke from the slip of paper inside his cracker, while Margaret served thick slices of ham and turkey and placed a plate in front of Rosemary.

  ‘Help yourself to vegetables. Freshly shelled peas,’ said her mother, proffering dishes from the sideboard.

  Rosemary felt sick. How could they act like this? Carrying on as if nothing had happened. Sam had been buried just three weeks. Didn’t they get it? She stabbed her fork into a steaming roast potato.

  ‘Shall we do the tree before dessert or after?’ Margaret said lightly.

  ‘Stuff the tree,’ said Rosemary suddenly.

  Gerald, who had been in his usual grumpy mood over the pre-Christmas shearing, cast her an angry look. Her mother stiffened and drained her large glass of red wine. With shaking hands, she reached for the bottle. Julian bowed his head and began to shuffle the food around his plate with a fork.

  The family ate in silence, the clinking of knives and forks the only sound.

  At last Margaret said, ‘Well, merry bloody Christmas.’ She threw down her white linen napkin. ‘I’ll get dessert and then we can do your stuffing tree, Rosemary.’ She stalked from the room.

  Guiltily, Rosemary began to clear away the dinner plates. On the way to the kitchen, she heard the old bell clang three times outside the heavy front door. Wondering at who it might be on Christmas Day, she set the plates down on the hall tabl
e and went to open the door. Her face lit up.

  ‘Giddy! Oh, Aunt Giddy,’ she said, falling into her aunt’s outstretched arms.

  ‘My darling girl,’ Giddy said as she gathered Rosemary up in a warm hug. Rosemary breathed in her aunt’s delicious smell of sandalwood.

  ‘My poor, poor darling girl.’ She stroked Rosemary’s hair and Rosemary felt tears prick behind her eyes. ‘How are you?’

  Giddy held her at arm’s length, looking earnestly at her face, searching for the pain she was carrying. Rosemary tried to smile but felt her face contort as emotion welled up. Giddy hugged her again.

  ‘Shush, my baby. I’m here.’

  She took Rosemary’s hand. ‘Is that sister of mine still bossing you around completely?’

  Rosemary nodded, looking down at the white Laura Ashley shirt her mother had insisted she wear for the day.

  ‘Well, come on then,’ Giddy said, looping her arm in Rose’s and picking up her basket, ‘let’s see if we can’t stir things up a bit.’

  Rosemary smiled as she walked with her aunt down the hall.

  ‘Lord, it’s quiet,’ Giddy whispered conspiratorially. ‘It’s Christmas for goodness’ sakes! Let’s get some fun happening here!’

  Giddy stopped dead in her tracks when Margaret appeared in the hall.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Margaret said coldly.

  ‘Merry Christmas to you too,’ Giddy said, her face giving away nothing. Margaret cast her an angry glance. Giddy slid her hand into Rose’s.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d stay away during such an awful time for Rose? You can’t always put yourself first, Margaret. It’s Rosemary who needs some comfort.’

  Margaret flinched, but gathered herself up tall.

  ‘Well, don’t think you’re staying the night,’ she said, ‘because I won’t have it.’ And she huffed off into the kitchen.

  On the couch in the drawing room, Gerald pressed a cool gin and tonic into Giddy’s hands. Julian sat at her feet absorbed in the Tim Flannery book she had just given him.