The girls chatted and dug for a couple of hours with the younger women stopping occasionally to help Teddy drag the soil-filled buckets from the pit and dump them next to the shed. They stopped briefly at lunchtime for sandwiches supplied by Deirdre but by mid-afternoon they were tired. Digging was hard work.
‘Tools down!’ called Teddy. ‘Smoko!’ And the girls gratefully climbed out of the hole and sat about the cheerful fire with their mugs, removing their boots and toasting their damp sweaty socks in front of the flames. Margaret sliced up the carrot cake – some pieces of the chocolate cake were mysteriously missing – and cut the brownies into tiny squares, and piled it all up on the lids of the cake tins.
‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve all earned a break.’
Trish took a piece of chocolate cake and gazed into the fire. ‘Where’s Will?’ she asked, and Teddy glanced at Audrey, who stayed perfectly still.
‘He left for London,’ Teddy explained.
‘Oh, his next job started, did it?’ asked Lara.
Teddy blushed. ‘Yeah. He had to get back in time or miss out. I think he was pretty excited about it, wasn’t he, Audrey?’
Audrey smiled but her face was filled with regret. ‘Yes, dear, I think one of the larger universities gained access to a farmer’s field – it had held a marvellous trove for many years, and the professor Will sometimes worked with was certain there was more to find. It’s really very exciting.’
Teddy eyed the kerosene fridge and the mangled coffee table. Hard to believe it was going to be more exciting than that. She put a whole brownie into her mouth.
‘I suppose some of the stuff down here belonged to Vivian,’ Sarah said. ‘It must be strange to see it again.’
‘Where did Vivian end up, Deirdre?’ Margaret asked.
Deirdre sipped her weak tea. ‘Cemetery,’ she said.
‘She never came back?’ Deirdre shook her head.
‘Nope,’ she grunted. ‘Why would she? Not to see that horrible old bugger, that’s for sure!’
‘But to see you?’
‘We didn’t talk in the end,’ Deirdre snapped. ‘Too much water under the bridge.’
‘She was a lovely dancer, though, wasn’t she?’ Audrey remarked, smiling. ‘I always remember her drifting around Windstorm Hall like a princess.’ She sighed happily into her tea. ‘Beautiful girl,’ she murmured.
Deirdre made a grumbling noise and poked the fire. ‘She was.’
‘I never liked that man she ran off with. Terrible man, he was. Lazy and vain. I’m certain Viv could have done better than the likes of him.’
Deirdre snorted. ‘Well, he had me fooled, Audrey, and I’m not too proud to admit it.’
‘Deirdre, my dear woman, although I didn’t like to say so at the time, you were always too good for him. He had no character. I’m certain Viv lived a very difficult life, although we never really heard from her again.’
‘She didn’t keep in touch with anyone?’ Sarah asked.
‘No, I think she was ashamed of what she’d done to Deirdre. And then perhaps she was embarrassed because she had broken her sister’s heart for such a wretch.’
‘Viv broke your heart?’ Lara asked, and Deirdre shifted uncomfortably.
‘They both did,’ she said. ‘But I married Irwin and he was a good man. He didn’t drink much. He was kind and he was a good worker, too. Up before the dawn, shed always tidied up at the end of the day. When I had my boy he even took to milking the cows.’
‘Why did you have the cows, Deirdre?’ Sarah asked. ‘I don’t think many other farms had milking cows.’
‘No, they didn’t,’ Deirdre said. ‘I suppose it was duty at first. I felt I had to do the right thing. I had to prove to everyone and to myself that I was going to do the right thing – by my father, by the commitment I made to milk those cows.’
‘But they weren’t your cows, were they?’
‘No. They were part of the future I had planned with Harry. He made a joke about it, I suppose, in the letter my sister left me to tell me I had been betrayed. He asked me to look after the cows.’
‘That’s cruel.’
‘It is what it is. The cows needed looking after, or they’d run dry. I suppose I began milking them because I thought I had to, to keep their milk up for some reason. But then I kept them. Foolishness, of course, but I wanted to show him, to show myself, I was going to do the right thing. I’ve kept milking cows here ever since.’
‘But Harry never came back,’ Lara said.
‘No. He didn’t.’
‘So, you wasted all that effort to impress someone who didn’t care?’ she asked.
‘I cared,’ Deirdre said. ‘I cared. And that’s enough for some of us.’ She tipped out the remains of her tea. ‘You young people wouldn’t understand.’
‘But you grew fond of the cows over the years?’ Margaret persisted, pouring another tea from the billy. ‘I mean, to have kept some around all this time?’
‘No,’ Deirdre Broderick said. ‘I never did.’ She stared into the bottom of her mug, then she glanced around the gathering. She rose from her seat. ‘I have something to say,’ she declared and everyone turned to her in startled silence.
‘There is one among you who knows my secret, but only one, and while she may be unseen to you now, she is with me still. Sitting beside this fire. And I believe that this digging up of my history has made me realise that I have another story I need you all to know.’ The silence was complete and matched by utter stillness. Only the light cool breeze was immune, wending its way between them all like a softly whispered secret.
‘As you know, when I was a young woman, Harry Parkinson and my sister, Vivian, ran away together and broke my heart. I stayed here to look after my alcoholic father, to work the farm as best I could, to milk the cows, and then to marry Irwin and to raise my own family.’ She glanced about as if to make sure everyone was listening. They absolutely were. ‘What you don’t know is, I was pregnant to Harry at the time of my betrayal.’ The girls stayed silent.
‘I was horrified – ashamed and frightened of what would happen, and of the decisions I would have to make, each one more difficult than the next. Would I keep the child and be cast into disgrace? Would I adopt my child out, or go away for a time and return to Windstorm leaving people none the wiser? I confided in Ida, and she was my rock. She comforted me and made me feel less alone, less ashamed. And she kept my secret all those years and never breathed a word.’
‘The baby, Grandma – what happened to your baby?’ Teddy asked. Deirdre sat down heavily in her chair.
‘I carried her in secret for five months. I still couldn’t decide what to do. There was a place in Perth for unwed mothers, but I thought, what if I was discovered? Could I bear to raise the child myself? I continued on, unwilling to make a decision – until God made it for me. He punished me. By allowing me to fall pregnant to that man, by tempting him away from my side, and then by taking my child from me before I had even met her.’
‘What happened?’
‘I woke one day in terrible pain and a pool of blood, that’s what. My daughter delivered herself in my bed at two in the morning and I bit the pillow and screamed and cried, smothering the sound of my agony in case my father heard me. She was tiny and perfect, but she was dead. I held her in my arms and sobbed. Because I knew then who she was.’
‘Who was she?’ Trish asked.
‘She was my family.’
‘Why was God punishing you, Deirdre?’ Cate asked. ‘Why would you think that he was punishing you?’
Deirdre turned to look at her. ‘Because I prayed night after night that my father would die,’ she said. ‘So he took my baby instead.’
‘Oh, Deirdre, how terrible for you to go through that alone,’ Cate reflected. ‘What happened to her then?’
‘She’s buried at the cemetery in an unmarked grave. I wanted to tell you all so that you’d know where to find her. I like to think her grave could be marked one
day, so that she can be recognised as my daughter. I’ve not been a mother to her, but I like to think that I would have managed it, had she lived.’
‘What was her name?’
Deirdre stared into the fire. ‘Vivian.’
Lara and Trish, who had been standing in the hole, dropped down to sit on the edges, gazing at Deirdre in surprise. She looked back at them, daring them to judge her.
Teddy felt the weight of Deirdre’s loss deep in her stomach. ‘And what happened after – after she died?’
Deirdre laughed, but the sound was bitter. ‘What do you think?’ she snapped, as the wind scattered the campfire’s smoke. ‘I got up and cooked breakfast for my father.’
‘Ida! Ida!’ Deirdre’s knuckles were rapping lightly on her friend’s window, as the air whistled under the eaves. ‘Ida! Wake up!’ She glanced about at the dark yard and patted Dusty’s soft head to keep him quiet. There was a movement in Ida’s bedroom. ‘Ida! It’s me, Deirdre! Come to your window!’ More movement, followed by the opening of shutters and glass.
‘Deirdre? What on earth are you doing?’ Ida whispered. ‘Is it your dad?’
‘No, not him. Come out with me now.’
Deirdre’s voice was failing her, her face was wet with tears and her hands were shaking like they were never going to stop. Ida heard her voice and knew. She didn’t run for the door. She climbed out of the window and pulled Deirdre to her.
‘The baby.’
Deirdre sobbed into her arms and led the way to the ute, where little Vivian lay wrapped in a towel.
‘She’s so beautiful, Deirdre,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t believe she died.’
‘God wanted it so,’ Deirdre said, bitterly.
‘No god ever wanted the death of a child.’ She stroked the baby’s head. ‘What shall we do, Deirdre?’ she asked.
Deirdre started to speak. Stopped. Took a breath. She gazed out of the ute window to the heavens, at the stars and at the moon. This was her child, her beautiful child who would never leave her. Not like the betrayal of her mother, her sister, or the slow, wet betrayal of her father. She held in her arms her daughter, in whom her wishes had started to grow like stars. She cleared her throat.
‘The cemetery,’ she whispered. ‘I’d like her to be buried where she belongs. Fetch a shovel.’
They pulled into the Windstorm Cemetery, with the lights of the ute already out. They got out without speaking, collected their shovels from the back, and they walked, side by side, through the gates. A cloud slunk across the sky and the thin moon came out to bathe the headstones in a deep grey light, a colour so dark it seeped into Deirdre’s heart. Grey. The night she buried her daughter.
‘Where do you think, dear?’ Ida whispered. Deirdre glanced about. There was the grave of the old butcher, who had always so disapproved of her, and of Timothy Wiggett, who had died of cancer two years before. Her grandparents were buried side by side to the east, and Mr Honeyman’s sister was under the banksia. She couldn’t use that side of the cemetery, because she couldn’t guarantee her daughter’s tiny grave wouldn’t be dug up as the years passed by. She shuddered, and turned to the west.
‘Over there,’ she whispered, pointing towards the perimeter fence. ‘We’ll choose something permanent nearby, so we always know where she is.’
‘Good idea.’ Ida began walking slowly to the left, staring at the ground, trying to assess the best spot; where the new graves would never reach, where Vivian could stay undiscovered.
There was a fence post there. It was huge, and it marked the corner of the cemetery. ‘We’ll use this,’ Ida murmured.
‘No good. It could rot or get replaced.’
‘Yes, but it marks the back corner of the cemetery. The bush is crown land. If we step it out from here we will always know, because it will be on every map, and every survey. Only we will know what lies five steps east and five steps south.’
‘We will never speak of this again, Ida.’
‘No, dear woman, it will be our secret,’ Ida promised. She took both of Deirdre’s cold hands in hers and held them in the eerie light of the cemetery. ‘But you can always talk about your baby to me, Deirdre – just so you know.’ She gave her fingers a squeeze. ‘Always.’
And so they dug together in the night. The dirt was hard, and the digging was slow. They dug without speaking, they cried sometimes as they worked, and their tears fell into the tiny grave, until at last it was done and they turned to the tool box, with the little bed made up inside. They took Vivian in their arms and kissed her tiny face; they cried, they smoothed her skin. Then Deirdre closed the lid with a metallic clunk. They placed her deep into her grave and sent up prayers to heaven, until Deirdre picked up her shovel, lifted the first clod of earth and offered up a final prayer of her own.
‘Take her back then, you bastard.’
The assembled girls were silent for a long moment before the murmuring began again.
‘I’m so sorry, Deirdre,’ Margaret said, handing her a cup of tea. ‘Let’s identify the grave and mark it immediately. I’m so very sorry you didn’t feel you could tell anyone.’
‘It was a different time,’ Deirdre sniffed.
‘I lost a baby once,’ Audrey stated. ‘It was so sad and lonely. We didn’t like to talk about it then, of course. Too painful. Too awful to have the town immediately think, Oh, there’s poor old so-and-so who lost her baby.’ Audrey sat next to Deirdre and took her arm in hers, and the two ladies sat quietly for a long time, observing the dig, listening in to the gentle conversations happening around them.
Teddy pulled up a chair by Deirdre, too, and took her other hand. At first she could feel Deirdre pulling away from her, awkward. She wasn’t used to being so exposed to the world, to her granddaughter, and Teddy could understand it. Neither was she. But she held onto her old hand just the same, feeling its strength and the lumpy knuckles in her own. Finally she felt Deirdre give her a squeeze, and to Teddy it felt like she could be okay. Deirdre’s daughter had died, and she could go on. Will had left, and Teddy could do the same. She sat and observed a fat black crow drifting above the cow paddock, its dark feathers gleaming in the late winter light, and then she watched as some willie wagtails shrieked and dived on it until they had chased it away. She gave Deirdre’s hand a squeeze for luck and stood.
Okay, she thought, enough tea. Teddy left the girls chatting, tossed the cold remainder aside and circled the hole. It was huge now, a massive scar on the farm, and far broader than the house it had once contained. It had always been there, of course, except that now people could actually see it, and it was like a very rural, slightly boring Pompeii. Except that it was her boring Pompeii, and it may have concealed a treasure that her grandmother needed to see again before she died.
Teddy glanced back over at Deirdre, sitting contentedly beside her house, listening to Lara talk with ferocious intensity.
Deirdre was almost entirely grey: from her steel grey hair, to her stony gaze and the thin white skin on her arms through which her blue blood flowed. Grey. Her dresses were all faded, and she paid them little mind. Vanity was a curse, she said, and she was only half-joking. Her shoes were always sensible walking shoes, unless she was doing sheep or cattle work, then it was black boots made grey with dried mud.
And all the while Deirdre carried a burden that cemented her to the earth around her, weighing her down, stooping her shoulders forward and setting her mouth in a pale line of disapproval.
Sometimes in the dark of night, when the blue sky was far away from her, Teddy had imagined herself turning into her grandmother. That one morning, when the blue wind swept across the farm, she’d still be there, like Deirdre, frozen to the spot, unchanging. Grey.
She jumped down into the hole and thought about Will because she could afford to think about him while no one was watching her. She hated to imagine that they could guess she loved him and that he had left her behind. She needed to toughen up. Deirdre was testament to that. She had held the judgement
of her small town at bay for years until they had forgotten she was of any interest at all.
‘Hey Teddy, you want a piece of apple pie?’ Teddy looked up from the piece of dirt she was staring at to see Trish holding it out towards her. It had risen high from its base and was filled with fragrant apples and cinnamon.
‘No thanks, I’m making a commitment to myself to stop eating afternoon tea until I find something interesting.’
‘Better just have some cake,’ Audrey urged. She hated to see carbohydrates go begging. Teddy smiled and shook her head. She dug into the ground with her trowel and made a small pile of earth in her bucket, then she moved to the next grid and did the same thing.
Chink, chink, chink. Nothing.
She got up and wandered a couple of steps across, to where they’d found the coffee table. She crouched and dug.
Chink, chink, clonk. There was something.
She glanced up to where the girls were chatting in the low winter light. Dog was snoozing by the fire and Audrey was demonstrating her latest laser treatment to Margaret.
‘Very small cancer it was,’ she was saying. ‘Nothing to it, but of course I wish I’d looked after my skin when I was your age . . .’
Deirdre was turned in her chair to face Teddy. She looked down again, wishing that Will was there with her, with his gentle hands, guiding her to find the secrets from the earth. She closed her eyes and ran her hands along the dirt, then on impulse took the
trowel in her hand and dug some more. Clunk. There was something. She reached down almost absent-mindedly and felt along its length.
It was hard, and quite long, maybe as long as a loaf of bread, but thin. It was curved. It came loose and she pulled it out, disappointed to see it was just an animal bone. Deirdre was sitting forward now, intent upon her. She looked just as intently at the West Coast Eagles whenever they were on the news. Teddy ignored her and went back to digging with her trowel.
The Cowgirl Page 27