by JH Fletcher
‘He’s all right.’
Some blokes, you could stick their noses in it, they wouldn’t know the difference. ‘The row with your Old Man … Who put you up to it?’
‘Me own idea …’
But, watching his face with eyes grown used to the darkness, she saw that her question had made him thoughtful.
‘You see?’
‘When we were kids …’ he said.
‘What?’
‘He was always dobbing me in.’ But he would not accept it, shaking his head ferociously. ‘Na …’
Later, hand wandering absently upon her skin, tracing the swells and hollows as though he didn’t know what he was doing or the effect his fingertips were having on her, he said, ‘Let Hedley have the bloody farm, he wants it so much …’
His teasing fingers were centring, centring; her thighs were developing a life of their own. All the same, she tried to concentrate on what he was saying. ‘It’s worth quite a bit, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t care.’ His fingers traced their circles upon her belly, the rounded tautness of her thighs. Oh God.
‘I reckon I’ve had enough of being tied down in one place.’
That made sense to Dulcie, who had been tied down all her life and was sick of it. ‘What’ll you do?’
‘Might give shearing a go, for a year or two. See a bit of the country, why not? There’s plenty of sheds.’
She saw the back blocks, the flat land stretching endlessly. Thought it looked good. ‘Take me with you?’
For a moment his fingers were still. ‘Like that, would you?’
‘I reckon.’
‘Okay, then.’
The fingers renewed their movement. For a minute or two she put up with them, even though they were driving her mad. Finally she caught them in her own. ‘You going to do something? Or are you just fooling about?’
He grinned. ‘Which one do you mean? Take off or —’
‘First things first,’ she said.
It was two days shy of Christmas. The first peacetime Christmas — if you could call it peace, with Wilf gone and half the rellies not talking to each other.
‘Real beaut, your husband,’ Emily said.
Privately Kath agreed, but was not about to say so. ‘He’s okay.’
‘Done a real hatchet job on his brother.’
‘No-one made Wilf shove off.’
‘Suited Hedley, though, didn’t it?’
‘Hedley had nothing to do with it.’
She had been disloyal to him once; would be all the more loyal now. Resolutely she banished the recurrent memory of Jeth Douglas, the yearnings that refused to disappear. That were so hopeless.
The young face, kindling as it spoke of the music it loved. Looking down at her in the half-light. Its expression when she had driven him away. Of all the mistakes, she thought, that was the worst.
I will not think of it. But did, every day. Now Emily’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘And taking that Dulcie with him …’
To Emily, she would always be that Dulcie.
‘At least you can’t blame Hedley for that,’ Kath said.
Emily was in no mood for concessions. ‘I blame him for all of it.’
Much Hedley cared what his mother thought. He had planned to do more work on Wilf, to make sure that the gulf between him and the Old Man was unbridgeable, but Wilf’s shoving off had saved him the trouble.
Now he was exultant. He would work the farm, give his life to it. He would justify pain, suffering, guilt. Which he would not acknowledge. I did what had to be done, he told himself. For the land. No more than that.
Yet that night the dream came again. A confusion of terror, from which emerged brief images. A cattle truck, swaying through the darkness, the air heavy with the stench of waste, of fear. Eyes watching implacably, spider-bright with knowledge of weakness and the power it gave. His own voice, suffocating in his throat as he struggled vainly to escape.
‘No … No …’
Okamura saying, ‘You have been very wise …’
The contorted faces of the dead.
Hedley awoke in a tangle of sheets and terror, found temporary sanctuary, his face buried in Kath’s uncomprehending flesh. She understood that her husband, too, had memories that would not let him go. Her own made her tolerant of Hedley’s demons, their impact on those who knew him.
‘There, then. There, then.’
In truth, she liked him better for his weakness. Perhaps, in time, it would give her a place.
But in the morning, with Hedley gone in a clatter of boots to work his will upon the land, she recognised the truth that under cover of darkness it had been simpler to ignore.
They were together, for always. They were apart, for always.
Months passed: summer, winter. In August, Kath went into her garden and found the year’s first daffodil. She took it into her being, breathing deeply as she put her nose to it. As golden as sunlight, with its scent of spring.
‘You are beautiful,’ she told it. ‘So beautiful.’
From the paddock below the house, the roar of the tractor devoured silence. Back and forth across the springing wheat, its noise battering the harmony wrought by the golden daffodil.
It was a difficult time, measured not in days and months but by the distance between what Kath had, and had not. She would have found it hard to name what was lacking; Hedley’s negatives were mostly positive, after all. He was not a boozer. He was not lazy. He was not a wife-beater — at least, not with his fists. He was not cruel to the boy. He was not a man for empty jokes, for swopping bawdy tales with mates in the marquees of agricultural shows. He continued to rape her, that was true, but she did not quicken, and for that was grateful.
Her mother grieved the absence of other grandchildren, was of a generation that would always blame the wife.
‘Maybe the doctor?’ she suggested. She should have known better. She never forgot Kath’s trip to the south-east, always managed to slip in a mention when they were alone. Although not in so many words.
‘Beth’s Aunt Maudie. Ever hear from her?’
‘Now and then.’
‘She never mentions —’
‘No.’
There were still times when Kath wondered how the child was, when the pain of not knowing became almost too much to bear. As for another one … She wanted nothing to do with that. A second child would tangle up her life intolerably. Her sense of being separate and apart, so important to her, would be lost. Walter was the present; another child would belong to the future alone, an imbalance in a life where control made all the difference.
Which was not to say she did not want things to happen. A bit of excitement, as long as it did not slash the skin, would always be welcome. Yet for months at a time there was nothing, or not what you would call anything. The success or — more often — failure of the local footy team the only highlight.
And so the years passed.
19
KATH AND HEDLEY
1954
Eight and a half years after the end of the war, on a sultry day in February, the wireless warned of rain. The following morning, when Kath got out of bed, the dawn was a red scowl beneath black clouds. By breakfast the rain had started. It rained for a week. The earth’s brown slop became black with moisture; the vertical rods of rain shone silver in the wan light.
There was little difference between light and darkness. The sky, the earth cut by the frothing tumble of awakened creeks, the air itself, breathed only water. Men and trees and sheep swam in rain. The sad pastures sagged in silt.
‘Thank God the harvest’s in …’ The one consolation.
Tentatively, then with growing confidence, trickles of water found their way into the house, streaking the walls, forming pools on the floor. Kath mopped and mopped. The night rang with the tinkle and tang of water dripping into pans and buckets, a choral symphony of wet sounds. In the yard outside the house the gluggy water washed away soil in clods, casc
ading downhill in fingers of tawny spray, while the dull light settled ponderously on a soaking world.
Three miles from the house, flood water spilled across the north-south road. By the bridge at the entrance to the town the creek was a torrent, casting waves of brown spray high into the air and bearing upon its crest the stiff-legged bodies of cattle and sheep. Its voice was audible above the deluge that was now so heavy the individual wires of rain had joined into a torrent as potent as the crashing creek. The floodwater drowned the low-lying ground beside the road and isolated a motor car that had been returning to a mansion in the Adelaide Hills from a foray into the stark and mysterious country further north.
At this point the car was on the summit of a slight rise. All around them the passengers could see the saturated ground intermittently through the downpour; here and there spreading patches of water, like pewter shields, reflected the grey light pitilessly. The flooding ground was ten feet below the level of the car, so that for the moment, it was safe enough, although there was no hope of moving.
Within the car a driver, Perks, and two ladies: elderly Lady Falconer, whose father had been lauded in his day as one of the Fathers of Federation, and thirty-year-old Miss Blyth, whom Lady Falconer liked to have near her, in order to exercise upon her the power that assured her of her own existence.
‘What are you going to do now?’
Lady Falconer was prepared, temporarily, to credit her chauffeur with the powers of Moses if he could rescue them from the ignominy of being stranded on the road, but Perks, who had counselled against leaving Clare, sucked his teeth.
Lady Falconer was not in the habit of being challenged by recalcitrant chauffeurs or the weather. ‘Push your way through,’ she instructed Perks’ seamed neck. Perks, who believed he knew what was safe and what was not, ignored her.
Now Lady Falconer’s voice became threatening. ‘Do you hear me, Perks?’
Goaded, the driver pointed contemptuously at the road ahead, where the roiling water was ripping the bitumen with tumultuous teeth. ‘Through that?’
Lady Falconer craned her neck to peer over her servant’s shoulder. Her lips quivered on the brink of ordering a charge; just in time, she saw the quality of her opposition and withdrew in good order. The seat cushions sighed.
‘We shall have to sit it out, then.’ And put her lips together primly, as though she had arranged things so, from the beginning.
The demon forces of the rain hurled themselves against the car, while the windows grew heavy with steam. There came a hammering even more vehement than the rain. ‘Anyone there?’
Perks wound the window down a crack, through which the spiteful rain slashed at once. A face blurred by water looked in at them. ‘Best get out of there, mates, while you still got the chance.’
Lady Falconer had never been a mate to anyone, least of all to a harsh-boned face running with water. ‘We are comfortable here, thank you.’ She enunciated carefully for the benefit of whatever kind of native this might be.
‘You won’t be when the water reaches you,’ the native said. ‘And it’s coming up bloody fast.’
‘We will be soaked.’ Miss Blyth sounded almost cheerful, as though the prospect excited her. Which, to Lady Falconer, was tantamount to treason. She set her lips, and her bulk more firmly into the seat cushions. At least they remained subservient.
‘You could drown,’ the man said. ‘You coming or aren’ cher?’
‘I shall stay here.’ Lady Falconer was very grand, utterly disdainful, wishing this stranger to understand that no storm could drive her from her rightful place in her car or in the world. ‘I am not in the habit of running away.’
‘Don’ be a wally.’ The man yanked the door open, permitting the storm to enter. He was grinning impertinently, or perhaps it was merely impatience. ‘You drown, we’ll have to bury you.’
‘And who will look after my motor car?’
‘She’ll have to look after herself, I reckon. Look,’ the man said, suddenly rough, ‘you comen or do I have to carry you?’
The tumbrils of the French Revolution could not have contained an aristocrat more put upon. ‘I shall walk,’ Lady Falconer decreed. And did so, disdainful of the pouring rain and the rough man who guided Miss Blyth’s apologetic elbow with a hard hand.
‘Blimey,’ Bill Stacey said afterwards to his acid-drop wife, ‘if her nose had bin a tad higher, I reckon the rain would’ve run right up it. Could have bin worse places, I s’pose.’
There were times when Bill Stacey could be coarse.
There remained the question of what to do with the three travellers, who would be forced to remain until the creek went down, which would not be before morning, at best.
Bill brought them to someone’s tiny sitting room, where towels were offered, and a warming fire. Clumping men stood about, steaming in the close air, while water from their coats formed puddles on the floor.
Bedraggled as a turkey in a duck pond, Lady Falconer was determined to remain in charge. She looked about her and made allowances. ‘Is there, perhaps, a hotel?’
‘There’s a pub.’
What her ladyship thought of pubs could be discerned in her down-turned smile, but she decided to make the best of it.
‘Only got two rooms,’ Bill said.
Miss Blyth had betrayed her; now was the moment for retribution. ‘Perks will have one. And I the other.’
‘We could stick two beds into one room, maybe?’ suggested Bill.
Sharing her own room was not on Lady Falconer’s agenda. ‘That wouldn’t do at all. Mr Perks is a married man.’
‘If you can stand the journey, you can board with us,’ one of the men said to Miss Blyth, who had been left with no place to go, as so often in her life. ‘Know how to ride, do you? No car’s going to make it, in this.’
‘I used to own a horse,’ Miss Blyth confessed.
Lady Falconer was angry at the man’s intrusion into her plans to punish her companion. ‘So long as you’re here first thing in the morning.’
‘She’ll come when I bring her, I suppose.’ His grinning teeth showed what the man thought of ladyships.
‘I shall wish to leave very early.’ Lady Falconer’s voice was as lofty as Mount Kosciusko itself.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ the man said. ‘This keeps up, your car’s going to be a mile downstream by then.’
Listening to the impertinent rain, there was no possibility of denial. Not that she was about to excuse him.
‘What is your name?’ smiled Lady Falconer, who could threaten with the utmost courtesy, when she chose.
If the man were intimidated, he gave no sign. ‘Warren. Hedley Warren.’ He turned to Bill Stacey. ‘Best get this one home before she dies of pneumonia.’
There was only one horse, its chestnut head hanging dejectedly under the blows of the rain that continued its assault upon the liquid earth.
‘You want to ride in front?’ the man asked Miss Blyth. ‘Or behind? All one to me.’ He spoke coldly, as though to deny any suggestion that he might be handing out favours.
Miss Blyth thought of the stranger’s hands on either side of her, his body pressing close against her on the back of the chestnut horse. ‘Perhaps behind,’ she decided.
They mounted, faces averted from the teeth of the rain. ‘Hold tight,’ the man shouted, ‘or you’ll be on your backside before you know it.’
Miss Blyth wound her arms tightly about the body of the man as, slipping, splashing and lurching, the horse made its dogged way up the hill down which the water was flowing like the tide. By the time they reached their destination, it was dark. The farmhouse was also dark, save for the frugal gutter of what might have been one candle.
‘That’d be right,’ the man said. ‘Power’s out.’ But seemed less angry than contemptuous, having learned not to put his faith in such things as power supply.
The man turned his wet face towards her. ‘Get inside the house while I see to the horse.’ He spoke brusqu
ely as he had of the power, a man impatient of wounded things. He raised his voice to shout with lungs of brass above the beating of the rain. ‘Kath! Got a visitor for you!’ He gestured towards the closed door around which the faintest glimmer of light shone. ‘Get in before you drown.’
And was gone with the weary horse, amid a slow clop of hooves.
Tentatively, Miss Blyth approached the door. It was impossible to know whether the woman in the house had heard her husband’s cry. She would have knocked, but the rain had made her impatient at last. She opened the door and stepped into what she guessed was a lobby, while the water created oceans about her feet.
Kath had heard the cry, but not the words. She held a candle high as she went to investigate. Discovered, hovering inside the door, the saturated presence of an unknown woman.
They both spoke at once.
‘What the —’
‘I am so sorry —’
In the shifting candlelight Kath saw that the newcomer would have apologised for the rain itself, given half a chance. Like Hedley, Kath had no patience with cringers and whiners. ‘Never mind that. Come in, now you’re here.’ Then saw the flood at the woman’s feet. ‘Best get you out of those clothes, before you run away altogether.’
She led the way into the kitchen. ‘What do I call you?’
‘Miss Blyth.’ Then corrected herself. ‘Mary Blyth, I mean.’ And wrung her wet hands, as though revealing her first name had stripped her publicly of the garments she would soon be removing in private. Her teeth chattered fearfully; she could have been no wetter had she sat fully-clad in the bath.
‘I’ll get you some dry things and a towel. They’ll be a bit big, but they’ll have to do.’ Now that Kath had recovered from the shock of the stranger’s presence, she was prepared to take pity on one who, temperamentally as well as physically, was so clearly in need of it. ‘And a candle, so you can see what you’re doing.’