We were still some distance from the station runway when our engine spluttered and fell silent. Our boy-pilot yelled, 'Oh my God!' and jerked the throttle back and forth. No response. 'Have to bring her in downwind!'
Christ, I thought, is this how I'm going to end up? As a pile of avgas-scented ashes on Marsh's doorstep?
I was sitting in the front seat, and watched in heart-thumping horror as the wind gathered momentum and the earth flew up at us. I closed my eyes and a string of images appeared: my father, for one, then Hazel, and finally, ever so fleetingly, my poor dear mother.
I opened my eyes to see the runway rushing into view. 'Not gonna make it!' Jason screamed. We thumped down in rough pasture a hundred metres short of the runway, hit a rock, jerked skywards, bucked about by some killer wave, levelled out and made another touchdown.
The plane shuddered to a halt. The three of us sat there, motionless, stunned. Jason's fingernails had embedded themselves in the yoke. Charles looked like he'd swallowed his brief case.
'Nice piece of work, Jason,' I said, my voice quavering. 'If it's all the same to you, I think I'll drive next time.'
Jason climbed out, stretched his back and made a dubious inspection of the undercarriage.
'Wheel's gonna need replacing,' he gasped.
'Thought we were, too, for a moment there. Got a spare one, have you Jason?'
'No way I'll be able to fix that out here.' He kicked the battered strut, massaged his forearms. 'What a fucking mess.'
'Quite,' commented Charles, adjusting his Adam's apple. 'And it's about to get a lot messier.'
He nodded at a shed adjoining the homestead, maybe a kilometre away, from which a familiar red Fioo was emerging, slow and ominous.
Carbine Creek
We stood there watching the big utility home in on us.
As it pulled up we were all relieved to see that the driver was not Marsh, but an old timer who chose to remain nameless, and looked like a sun-dried Fidel Castro. He studied us for a time and then asked, 'Youse'd be the lawyers?'
Charles and I glanced at each other. Had there been a breach of security? It was possible. The station owners were little emperors out here, with tentacles stretching in every direction. Somebody - the charter company, air traffic control - must have tipped Marsh off that the Lands Council was on the way.
Charles replied that yes, we were the lawyers, or he was, and introduced me as 'Ms Tempest, my associate'. Fidel said nothing, but took a plug of tobacco out of his mouth and put it behind his ear, scratching his skinny arse as he looked me up and down.
I looked him up and down right back, wondering as I did so whether his curiosity was motivated by my gender or my ethnicity. Or by his lively and enquiring mind.
While we were standing around swapping silences with the Cuban lookalike, Jason got on the radio, raised air traffic control and told them we were stranded. Charles and I glanced ruefully at each other when Bluebush eventually said they'd get a rescue party out there by mid-morning.
'Tomorrow!' muttered Charles. 'We'll be lucky to survive that long, once Marsh finds out why we're here.'
We piled aboard the Fioo and headed for the station. 'So Mr Marsh is expecting us?' Charles asked.
Our driver's response was incomprehensible, but the cigarette on his upper lip wobbled in a way that seemed to suggest the affirmative.
Fidel wasn't offering much in the way of a commentary. He didn't need to. The station spoke for itself: manicured lawns, gravelled walkways, wide verandas, wicker chairs. A classic outback homestead. Marsh was doing all right for himself. The Big House was constructed of mottled sandstone and nestled among a small forest of poinciana and casuarinas. To the east was an orchard of oranges and lemons, figs, paw paws, mangoes. To the west was a collection of outbuildings, including workshops, a meat house and the single men's quarters.
If our driver was a master of taciturnity, the woman waiting for us at the front gate was his polar opposite.
'Good afternoon,' she enunciated, all gushes and smiles. 'Welcome to Carbine Creek. So lovely to meet you. I'm Nancy Marsh. You must be the lawyers?'
Jesus, I was thinking, this is Marsh's wife?
She was tall, dark-haired, somewhere out in the no-man's land between buxom and fat, dressed in a red floral dress and a pink straw hat. I put her in her late thirties, maybe ten years younger than her brute of a husband. And she was a Pom: the accent was north-of-England riff-raff, with an overcoat of aspirational squire's lady. Judging by the colour of her skin, she must have a chronic antipathy to sunshine, particularly given the size of the portions in which it came out here.
If I'd been asked to imagine a Mrs Marsh, I'd have pictured something scrawny and put upon, with skin cancers the size of cockroaches and a mouth full of fencing nails. Maybe dressed in footy shorts and steel-capped boots. What on earth was this displaced English rose doing out here with Cro-Magnon man? She didn't look like she'd been kidnapped.
'Indeed,' responded Charles, automatically ratcheting up into legal mode. 'Charles Harmes, and my associate, Ms Tempest. Emily. And our pilot, Jason… er, Jason.'
'I'm sorry, Earl isn't here just now,' she smiled. 'He's been held up, in the South Paddock. Water problems…'
'Nothing serious, I hope.'
'Or personal,' I couldn't help but put in.
She looked at me, momentarily perplexed, then explained, 'Par for the course round here, I'm afraid. Water table's getting lower every year. I didn't think he was expecting you this early. Come in and make yourselves comfy. I'll get Alyssia to put the kettle on.'
Ten minutes later we were ensconced in the lounge room and Mrs Marsh and a teenage girl introduced as 'Alyssia, the governess' were busily stuffing into us a sumptuous afternoon tea - scones with jam and cream, lamingtons, home-made biscuits, sponge cakes, the works. I'd assumed Earl Marsh's generous gut came from the all-the-beef-you-can-eat deal that was the basis of every station menu. By the time I'd fought off Mrs Marsh - Nance, she insisted - and her third slab of chocolate sponge, I was thinking about it in a new light.
During the course of the conversation I picked up a little of her personal history: she'd come from the English mill town of Preston ten years before, somehow ending up as a governess on a property in Queensland. It was there that she'd met and fallen for the irresistible Earl. They'd been on Carbine for five years now.
Nance looked aghast when we told her about our hazardous landing, cooed sympathetically, confirmed that we didn't have any broken bones and shuffled us off to the guest-house - a comfortable, two-roomed bungalow with a wide veranda and green-striped awnings, spotlessly clean, with polished wooden floors and lancewood railings - for 'a nice lie down'.
While Charles and Jason were revelling in the good life on the deck chairs I took the opportunity to have a look around. I thought I might try to talk to some of the station hands and see what I could pick up about relations between Carbine and Moonlight. I poked my nose into a few sheds, but the only hand I came across was the withered revolutionary who'd driven us in from the plane. He was in the workshop, where he was crankily cannibalising a clapped-out grader.
I tried the perennial opening gambits - cattle prices, roads, rodeos and rain - but his responses were little more than grunts, until I mentioned that my father had been a mechanic on Moonlight Downs. He muttered something like 'more dogs than cattle' - his comment, I presumed, on the fact that it was now in the hands of the blacks.
I gave up and returned to the bungalow, where Charles and Jason were sipping at their drinks and marvelling at our reception. Nance had been and gone, leaving iced water, towels, even toothbrushes and combs.
'Still can't work it out,' said Jason, gazing at his toothbrush in wonder. 'Normally when I bring you Lands Council mob out to the stations, they set the dogs onto us.'
'Don't get too comfortable,' I warned. 'The boss isn't home yet. Probably got the dogs on the ute.'
'Exactly what I was thinking,' said Charles. 'There may be a
case of mistaken identity happening here.'
'We'll find out soon enough,' said the pilot, taking a long draught of beer and settling deeper into his chair. 'Nance said dinner's at six. If it's anything like afternoon tea I can't wait.'
At the appointed hour the three of us came in the back door of the homestead. Nance looked up from the stove, an apron over her dress, flour on her hands. She ushered us in, sat us down in the lounge room, plied us with drinks, passed round the nuts and olives. Alyssia was setting the table in the adjoining dining room.
'Earl's back,' said Nance. 'He's in his office. Maybe you could let him know dinner's ready, Emily? It's just down the corridor there, on your right.'
This'll be interesting, I thought as I followed her directions and came to a spacious, wood-panelled room looking out onto the poincianas.
The room contained all the accoutrements and paraphernalia of your modern station office: paper-strewn desk, computer workstation, filing cabinets, bookshelves, gold-framed photos of sour-faced, hefty beasts and one sour-faced, hefty owner.
Marsh looked like he was just out of the shower: barefooted and freshly scrubbed, skin glowing, dressed in a singlet and shorts, relaxing in an armchair, grinning and gazing in rapt attention at a television. I was almost embarrassed to see that I'd sprung the poor bastard watching a Wiggles video. It took me a second or two to notice the small girl, about two or three years of age, perched upon his knee.
The girl turned around and gazed at me with the most angelic expression I'd ever seen, an intriguing amalgam of surprise, curiosity and delight. Indeed, everything about the child was angelic: the aureole of dark ringlets around her alabaster face, the full lips, the perfect teeth and the wide blue eyes.
Amazing, I thought. How could Earl and Nance have produced something like this? God must have taken every skerrick of potential beauty their genes possessed and refined it into this single exquisite creation.
The spell couldn't last, and it didn't. Earl noticed the girl looking away from the box, followed her gaze, and the grin faded. If the girl did have anything of the angel in her she needed it now, as Marsh leapt to his feet, a look of disbelief sweeping across his face. This was the first time I'd seen him without shades: his eyes were the same bright, puzzled blue as his daughter's.
The girl hit the floor, but the angel stood her in good stead: she rolled with the fall, rolled again, then looked up at me, still smiling. 'More?'
'Sure,' I answered.
She did another roll, then grinned.
'Deadly!' I said. 'Good afternoon, Mr Marsh.'
It was taking the station owner a second or two to get his thoroughly smacked gob working. Finally he pointed a fat finger at me and spluttered, 'You!'
'Me…'
'What are you doing here?'
'Nance sent me to tell you dinner was ready.'
He continued to gape, his mouth full of silent questions and his eyes swivelling around the room as if he expected the answers to come in through the window. He started to march past me, paused, went back and scooped the child off the floor, then headed for the kitchen. She gave a little wave as she jogged past.
'Nance!'
As he passed through the lounge room he presumably came across Charles and Jason. 'Jesus!' I heard him exclaim, 'they've overrun the place!'
When he reached the kitchen I heard snatches of heated conversation.
'But Earl, you told me to expect the lawyers…'
'Fuck, Nance…'
'Earl…' a low, dangerous note resonated in her voice, a note which told me there was an unsuspected steel blade inside that flowery red sheath and that one of the causes in which it was brandished was decent language.
After a moment's silence he tried another tack. 'These aren't my lawyers, hon, they're the blackfellers' lawyers…'
'Earl, you know my opinion on this matter. I couldn't care less if they're the devil's dentists. Right now, they are our guests; they've had a nasty experience and I've invited…'
The door was closed, the conversation reduced to muffled undertones.
I cast a quick eye round the office. What was I looking for? I had no idea: anything that would give me any insight into Marsh and his dealings with Moonlight. I knew he was pissed off about the land claim; had something tipped him over the edge?
I had a quick rummage through the papers on his desk: statements and accounts, reports from stock agents, pamphlets about forthcoming shows and field days. Marsh even had an out-tray.
I riffled through it. He was as terse with the word processor as he was with the mouth, but there was a surprising order to the paperwork. Nothing there was more than a few days old, which suggested that the filing cabinet against the wall could be a useful source of information.
Once again, things there were in surprisingly good order. 'Moonlight Downs' had its own folder, and it was chock-a-block, with everything arranged in neat, chronological order. From the cursory glance that was all I had at my disposal, most of the stuff in it looked old, written in the heat of the land claim process. As I knew, Marsh had been heavily involved, playing the aggrieved neighbour card for all it was worth: he'd written numerous letters, reports and statements objecting to the claim, both to the court and to the press, as well as to other locals who believed they were in the same boat. Each of his contributions was carefully dated and filed. He even had a copy of the judge's final report, heavily underscored and highlighted, the margins riddled with angry comments.
At the other end of the corridor I heard the kitchen door open. A momentary silence ensued, then I picked up the sound of Marsh introducing himself to my companions in a manner that could almost be called civil. To Charles I heard him say: 'We got business to discuss, but maybe it'd be better if we left it till the mornin…'
I heard Charles politely concurring, then Marsh went quiet. Looking around for me? How long did I have left? Not long.
I flipped through the folder until I came to the more recent stuff. There was surprisingly little of it; evidently he'd quietened down when the land was handed over. Had he accepted it and moved on, or had the anger sunk into his inner being and begun to rot, like the metal splinter that disappears into the body, festers and throbs, and then one day bursts forth in a shower of pus?
I detected the sound of heavy bare feet padding down the hallway. One last letter came to hand. The letterhead was 'Department of Regional Development', the 'Re:' was Moonlight Downs, the date a couple of weeks before Lincoln's death. It was signed 'Lance Massie, Regional Manager'.
Lance Massie. I remembered the name. How had Kenny Trigger described this bloke? As the right-wing Territory government's bagman. I quickly scanned the contents: it seemed to be offering to help Marsh in his negotiations with Moonlight, but so deep was the bureaucratic bullshit in which the writing was mired that it wasn't immediately obvious what the negotiations were about. The hand-written PS at the bottom of the page caught my attention: 'We'll work with you on this one Earl, but your main obstacle is going to be, as ever, Lincoln bloody Flinders. Stay strong and true! Lance.'
The footsteps were almost upon me. I closed the cabinet, slipped back into the armchair, sensed him in the doorway. I stared at the screen, nervously cracking my fingers and wondering how much he'd seen.
The Secret Ingredient
Marsh snorted, and I looked around.
'Just catching up on my Wiggles, Mr Marsh.'
He shifted from one bare foot to another, his blue eyes sweeping the room, his face frozen in its customary scarlet scowl. Had he seen me at the filing cabinet? Was he trying to decide which limb to tear off first?
'Dinner's ready,' was all he said, then he added, 'but I'm not. Just gonna put some clothes on.'
He turned on his heels and walked away.
I closed my eyes, sighed with relief, then joined the others in the dining room.
As we were sitting down at the table there came a heavy footfall from the direction of the veranda and a knock on the front door. Alyssi
a went out to investigate, and came back with yet another pilot and legal team. The real ones, this time, Greg and Neville. A couple of disgruntled, balding company types in dusty white shirts and Akubra hats who looked pissed off that they'd had to walk in from the airstrip.
Marsh was almost apologetic. 'I told the mechanic to bring yez in, but' - with an accusatory glance in my direction - 'he prob'ly thought he already had. Anyhow…' the smile on his face was like a flower struggling to survive on a rocky desert outcrop, 'yer just in time for a feed.'
There followed one of the stranger evenings of my life. A more heterogeneous dinner party one would be hard pressed to find: black and white, left and right, women and men, young and old, educated and un, New and First Australian, but we struggled to find a common ground, as you do.
The leaven in the mix was the Marsh's daughter - Amelia, as she turned out to be - who sat in her high chair regaling us with tales of her imaginary friends. The isolation of the outback was obviously proving a rich breeding ground for her imagination. Her closest acquaintance was a little creature called Treebark, who had green hair and parents named Slugger and Duania, Slugger being the mother. An oblique comment, perhaps, upon relationships within her own family and the cause of an arched brow and the shadow of a smile from Marsh.
Amelia seemed to take a particular shine to me, and between courses dragged me out into the yard to meet her chooks, Eyesore - because it had a sore eye - and Bottlesharp, because its feathers were the colour of broken glass. Treebark, she assured me, was watching us from the ghost gums down by the creek. She also introduced me to a talking calf named Bruce. When I asked what Bruce could say, she had words with the calf, which did indeed respond, making a noise which Amelia translated as: 'I want to go to the ocean on a train.'
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