WARROCK STATION, CIRCA 1870
Splashing over the river on Bailey, the mob of Warrock strays picking their way up the river bank, Jack was excited at the prospect of seeing Warrock station. He had heard George Robertson was a Scottish cabinet-maker from Port Glasgow who had wasted no time over the past twenty years in putting his sawpit and his staff to good use. Now Jack would see it for himself.
When he saw Warrock’s homestead and outbuildings, Jack was certain he’d ridden into a small fairytale village. There were at least thirty buildings, all styled with finials that pointed proudly and prettily from the gables of the roofs. Each building was beautifully proportioned and decorated with gleaming paint, decorative shutters and timber latticework. As Jack ushered his small mob of Warrock sheep towards the shearing shed, he rode past a skin house, a branding fluid shed, a shambles filled with fat sheep carcasses for the station’s rations, all decorated with pretty finishes. Even the shearers’ lavatories had impressive timber designs.
A man wearing dungarees, his shirtsleeves rolled up, emerged from the gloom inside the shearing shed.
‘Not more of the woolly beggars!’ he said with the remnants of a Scotsman’s accent. ‘I thought our day was nearly done!’
‘They were out grazing on Dunrobin, where I work, so I thought I’d bring them by.’
‘Well, Mr Robertson will be mighty pleased with your deed.’ The young man jumped over a fence, his boots hitting the dusty ground with a thud. He undid a gate to the yard. Then, instead of walking around the sheep, he whistled.
‘Come!’ he called. Two black, prick-eared dogs scuttled out from somewhere inside the shed, their eyes wide, their tongues lolling. They cast around wide of the mob and steadily hunted the sheep through the gate where the man stood.
Jack looked back at Idle, who lay panting in the shade of a gum.
‘Could you learn from that in any way, Idle?’ Jack said as he jumped off his horse. He turned to the man. ‘Where’d you get your dogs?’
‘Oh, if only they were mine. They’re the boss’s dogs. From Scotland. The best you can buy. He’s very strict with ’em though. Only lets his senior men use ’em,’ he said proudly. ‘Archie McTavish,’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘Jack Gleeson.’ They shook hands firmly as Archie eyed the tall, fair-haired man before him.
‘Come, Jack, you can deliver the news to the men that there’s more sheep to be washed and shorn! But it won’t take long. We’ve twelve men on twelve stands in action. It’s a sight to behold when the blades fly. And because it’s close to knock-off the men are in good spirits. I’m sure they’ll only be mildly angry at you.’
Before the bell rang for the final sheep of the day, Archie ushered Jack out of the shed.
‘What say I give you a tour of the place before the sun is down?’
Leading Bailey about the station, with Idle and the collies at their heels, Archie proudly pointed out the shearers’ quarters further up the hill. Then he showed Jack the large dining room from which wafted the smell of roasting lamb.
‘You’ll find a place for your bed-roll in the hut by the kitchen fire after the men have had their meal. I’m sure Mr Robertson would be pleased for you to join them for their supper after the favour you’ve done.’
‘That’d be grand,’ said Jack, his face lighting up at the prospect of an evening with company.
‘There’s also a blacksmith’s shop over yonder, towards the homestead. You can stable your horse there. Mr Robertson is good to men who are honest and hardworking and I’m sure he’ll make no exception of you. He himself works tirelessly at his lathe. A man who loves wood. I’ll show you his workshop and saw pit, if you like, before I take you to his office.’
Jack was more anxious to see some of Robertson’s dogs. He’d noticed that the black bitch who tailed Archie had milk in her teats, so there must be pups about. Just then Archie led him past the finest kennels he had ever seen. They were made from red brick and from within the slits of the walls the muzzles of hounds sniffed and bayed. White wrought-iron posts spiked skyward to prevent the dogs leaping out.
‘Well, that would be more luxurious than my shepherd’s hut, to be sure!’ said Jack.
‘Aye,’ agreed Archie. ‘The kennelman is mighty proud of this abode. Here, take a look at Mr Robertson’s kangaroo hounds. The finest from England.’
Jack peered in through the slats of the solidly built gate. Four hounds with drooping eyes and ears bayed at him from their stone-floored kennel.
‘And in the next kennel we have the Scotch collie dog litter from this wee sheepdog here. The dog and the slut were knotted on the boat sailing over, and this is the result. The best pups in the land.’
Archie stooped to stroke the ear of the black collie bitch who was patiently waiting to get in to her pups. Jack could hear excited and startled yaps from the pups as they woke up inside the shelter of the kennel. When Archie opened the door, five little black and tan and red and tan pups rushed to their mother and began grappling at her teats.
‘She won’t take much more of that rough treatment. They’re eight weeks old and about weaned.’
The pups squatted on their haunches and began to suck strongly, their sharp little claws kneading their mother’s teats. Their mouths worked like clamps. Each one sucked with all its might, bunting and nuzzling its mother as she stood with her legs apart and a pained expression on her face. As their bellies began to swell, the bitch turned to growl and bite at the strongest of the pups. Her teeth gnashed near the ears of a black and tan bitch. She walked away then, leaving the pups sprawling on the ground and looking about frantically to seek her out. She leapt up onto a box in her kennel, out of reach of her pups, and began to lick at her sore nipples. The pups danced about the box looking up and barking at her. All except one. The little black and tan bitch pup sat with a full belly and solemn eyes at the feet of the men. She looked up at Jack and gave one sharp clear bark before pouncing on his bootlaces.
‘May I?’ said Jack to Archie.
‘Go right ahead. The kennelman says the more handlin’ of them the better.’
Jack scooped the little pup into his hands and held her up to his eye level. She didn’t struggle or whine. She just relaxed in his hands and looked into his eyes with her deep brown ones. She sniffed slightly at him.
‘Oh, you’re a find, you are,’ he said to her gently, and the pup wagged her tail.
‘What would it take for me to buy this little pup?’ asked Jack.
‘Well,’ said Archie, ‘it would take quite a bit.’
Rosie clasped the tiny newborn pup in the palm of her hand and held it up to her face. As she gently set it back down next to Dixie, she heard the stable door opening. It was Jim.
‘How many did she have in the finish?’ he asked, squatting down beside Dixie and the squiggling mass of pups.
‘Um. Five. The last was born at ten.’
‘It’s almost twelve now. She’d be finished for sure.’
Rosie looked down at the collection of tiny blue, red and black pups that nuzzled at the nipples of their exhausted mother.
‘Ah. They’re a fine lot,’ Jim went on. Don’t you think some tucker would be nice for her during the night? I’ve got some in my quarters. I’ll bring it out for her.’
‘You don’t have to … I can …’
‘I know I don’t have to. But I’m offering.’
Rosie frowned at him and tugged a piece of straw from her hair.
‘Why are you being helpful now? Why didn’t you stay before?’ she asked suddenly.
‘You didn’t need my help. The book tells you what to do. Besides, how will you learn if you just sit back and let the men do it all?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I’ve been talking to your friends at the pub. James Dean and his lady. They told me about your troubles. I heard about your fiancé. I’m sorry.’
Rosie turned away from the kindness in Jim’s eyes, afraid she might cr
y. She decided to give up being angry with him. She turned back to him and smiled sadly.
‘Thanks for your sympathy – but I’m sure James Dean told you the real truth about Sam and our … relationship.’
‘You’re a fine girl, Rosie Jones, I’m sure,’ Jim said, patting her firmly on the back.
‘Thanks.’ She looked back to the pups and began to stroke Dixie’s flank.
‘Well,’ said Jim, ‘I’ll be seein’ you in the morning then.’
‘It already is the morning, you big Irish git,’ Rosie said with a smile.
Jim pulled a face at her and laughed a little before he went out to his quarters and shut the door firmly behind him. Rosie sank back down in the straw to watch the pups sleeping, their tiny sides moving up and down, their coats already glistening. She couldn’t bring herself to go back into the house and up to her own bed. She felt so alone up there. She had wanted Jim to stay … she wanted to know more about his life. Did he have brothers and sisters? What did his parents do? What did he really think of Rosie Jones without-the-hyphen and her mother and father with-the-hyphen? Rosie shrugged. For now she’d have to wait. Instead she turned to stroke the pups with her index finger.
‘What tiny miracles you are,’ she said softly.
Chapter 16
‘Venus Williams or what?’ called out one of the Moorecroft brothers as Rosie slugged a tennis ball over the net towards him. It bounced once and flew past him like a missile. Little did he know she was really aiming for his head, so in her mind it was a poor shot. Behind each slam of her racket, Rosie surged with anger.
For the past few weeks she had busied herself outside on the farm, despite Gerald’s silence and sighs. She had tailed Jim, watching, learning. Having a go at whatever it was he was assigned to do. She was like his shadow, even though she knew she got in the way sometimes. If time allowed, Jim tried hard to teach her as he worked. But Rosie couldn’t help feeling he only put up with her because she was the boss’s daughter. She bombarded him with endless questions and frustrated him with her cack-handed approach to handling wire or tools or driving vehicles. But still he encouraged her. Was it because he liked her? Or was it obligation? Rosie longed to tell him the truth … that she wasn’t Gerald’s daughter at all. But somehow she couldn’t say the words out loud. For now, she wanted to forget.
There were times, at the end of the day, when she hooked her arms over the yard rails and watched Jim handling his colt, that she felt like Sigrid Thornton in The Man From Snowy River. It seemed so impossibly romantic when she caught his eye and the corners of his delectable mouth turned up slightly in a smile. Then she’d shake the attraction from herself with a cold shiver. It was too soon after Sam – wasn’t it? Only four months since the accident. Though the guests at her mother’s end-of-season tennis party obviously thought she should move on. Margaret and her friends had been parading eligible men in front of her all day. Even Dubbo had been invited.
Men be damned, she thought, as she slugged again at the tennis ball. Sam had betrayed her. Her real father had obviously cleared off. Gerald ignored her, and Jim was somewhere on the runs being free in the saddle, riding his young colt out to check the ewes.
Rosie herself felt anything but ‘free’. Here she was in a crisp white tennis outfit, playing co-host at her mother’s annual Indian Summer barbecue and tennis match. She felt trapped, and miserable, and furious with her mother.
When Rosie first saw Dubbo, looking gaunt and pale and leaning on a walking stick, she felt a pang of sorrow for him. He had leant over and given her a kiss on the cheek, his fair hair flopping over one eye as he did. Still, Rosie felt stung. Dubbo’s presence reinforced the reality of Sam’s death. He had actually been there, there in the darkness when Sam and Jillian were killed.
‘Yikes!’ said Rosie’s opponent as a tennis ball slammed onto his tubby thigh, leaving a reddened welt.
How could her mother do this to her? Rosie glanced over at Gerald, who was hovering on the fringes of the party. He dutifully continued to pour Pimms and lemonade for his guests but he was so detached and remote from the general festivities, people gave him a wide berth. Rosie could tell Gerald had closed down. She had seen him withdraw before, and she could see it in his eyes now. Though he’d never been this bad. Rosie served the ball with a crack and the Moorecroft boy ducked.
Beside the court, lounging on Margaret’s new jarrah furniture, arrogant young men drank beer and stared at Rosie’s fine legs. Thirty-something Prudence sat among them, giggling loudly at their jokes and playing with her black curly hair. Despite her expensive tennis dress and glowing white sandshoes with matching wristband, Prue looked anything but sporty. Her chunky legs bubbled with cellulite when she crossed them and her upper arms flapped about when she clapped Rosie’s winning shots. Lapping up the new male guests at the Highgrove-Joneses’, she put on ‘the voice’ to impress them. Her over-enunciated words were delivered between lips smeared with hot-pink lipstick.
‘Good show, Rosemary! That’s one for the gals!’ she bellowed.
Rosie stomped off the court with some satisfaction, after whipping the Moorecroft boy’s fat little arse. But her mood soon plummeted when she heard Prue talking loudly.
‘Yars!’ Prue said to the boys. ‘I’ll be thar Fraa-day and you can buy me a Chaaardonnay.’ She looked out from beneath her dark lashes at the men who clearly squirmed at her request. Rosie slumped into a chair, threw her tennis racquet down and sighed loudly. Her mother sashayed up wearing her flattering navy tennis outfit, a silver antique fob chain draped about her neck.
‘Rose darling, why don’t you pop into the kitchen to get some fresh lemonade and glasses? It’s a heavy jug. I’m sure David will go with you to help you carry it.’
Margaret placed a firm hand on Dubbo’s shoulder and he quickly put down his beer.
‘Yep. Sure. Yep,’ he said, jumping to attention. Eagerly he limped after Rosie across the lawn and into the cool of the house.
In the kitchen, all the lunchtime salads had been covered with a tight film of clingwrap and were neatly stacked in the fridge like transparent drums. The bench was wiped clean and afternoon tea was already waiting, draped with clean white gauze embroidered with golden bumblebees. Pristine glasses were stacked on trays.
‘Lemonade’s in the fridge,’ said Rosie gruffly as she fished a tray of icecubes from the freezer. Dubbo’s brown eyes leapt her way nervously for a moment, wary of the angry energy Rosie was putting out.
Rosie glanced at him. What could her mother be thinking? Of course, in Margaret’s eyes, Dubbo had the bloodlines. His family had one of the largest grazing properties around, and important connections in the city! Never mind that this was the man who was at the wheel when Sam was killed! Emotions clustered and banged about inside Rosie as she thought back to kissing Sam here in the kitchen. She cringed at the thought of history repeating itself … with Dubbo. Although he had been Sam’s best friend, she barely knew him. Seeing him here in the kitchen seemed to open up the fresh scars of Sam’s death and his unfaithfulness to her. When she failed to budge the icecubes from the tray, she pelted the plastic mould at the sink and swore.
Dubbo looked up from where he was peering into the huge fridge, clearly startled at her outburst.
‘Let me,’ he said. He walked over and with his strong farmer’s hands twisted the ice out with ease.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rosie said, feeling guilty and awkward.
‘Understandable,’ said Dubbo. ‘I’m not sure what to say to you either …’
She summoned up a smile for him. The poor bloke, she thought, bearing her wrath.
‘I’m not angry at you,’ she said. ‘It’s my mother. She drives me nuts.’
‘Yeah. I know what it’s like. Since the accident my mum’s been treating me like I’m twelve again, at home from school with a bug. It’s been crap. Stuck at home with her fussing over me every day!’
‘So you haven’t got back to work on the farm yet?’
‘I’m getting there. I’m riding the four-wheeler about. Helping Dad with this and that.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, to be honest, we’re just working on controlling footrot in our sheep. They’re predicting a wet winter after this terrible dry so we thought we’d get stuck into them now. But don’t spread it about, will you? The fact we’ve got footrot.’
Rosie’s face lit up. ‘Oh! Me too.’
‘Sorry?’
‘We’ve been doing the same – footrot control. Did you use zinc sulphate or formalin?’
‘Zinc sulphate this time, but we’ll use formalin next time round.’
‘Jim, our stockman,’ Rosie said eagerly, ‘reckons it’s best to let them stand about in the yards a bit after you’ve footbathed them – gives the stuff more time to work into the hooves rather than let them straight off into the paddock. We drained them off on the grating in the shed this year, which is different to how Dad and Julian did it last year.’
Dubbo stood holding the jug of Margaret’s homemade lemonade with his mouth open. He had never seen Rosemary Highgrove-Jones at a sheep sale, like some of the other girls her age in the district, yet here she was chatting knowledgeably to him about footrot and zinc sulphate. She was a bag of surprises, he thought.
‘Don’t you hate it when you’ve got the sheep upside down and you’re working on the back hooves and the sheep lets a warm smelly one rip?’ Rosie went on with a smile.
Dubbo raised his eyebrows and then nodded.
‘Yeah! Pure methane!’ he agreed.
‘I reckon you breathe in so much of it during the day, at night your own farts smell like sheep farts.’
‘Can’t say I’ve actually noticed.’
‘Next time, think about it. I’m sure it’s true. Give yourself a mutton dutch oven.’
Dubbo looked at her for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed. Rosie chatted on as she put the icecubes into a dish and arranged the lemon slices the way her mother liked.
The Stockmen Page 12