Fire in Summer

by JH Fletcher

  The problem had been neither of ability nor money, but of culture. No-one in the Warren clan had really broken away from the land before. Her father had come closest, with the hardware store, but even he had never thought in terms of Uni and a profession, and had had difficulty in accepting the idea when it came to his daughter’s turn.

  ‘Medicine?’ He’d spoken wonderingly, as though she’d told him she was entering a nunnery in Tibet. ‘What do you want to do that for?’

  She had laughed, to jolly him along. ‘It’s not that bad …’

  Stumble-footed, he had laboured to justify his concerns. ‘Not a question of bad. Just … different.’ That was the root of it; in these parts folk looked askance at anyone who tried to stand out from the mob. Her father, however, had felt no inhibitions when it had come to breaking free of the strait jacket in which he, like all Wilf and Dulcie’s children, had been imprisoned by his parents’ improvidence.

  30

  GARTH

  1957–1978

  Wilf had turned out the drop-kick Hedley had always said he was. As for Dulcie … People shook their heads, remembering how she’d been in the old days. Dulcie Sweet. The village bike, they said; everyone could ride her. Both men and women said it, although the women had no way of knowing, and most of the men were guessing, too. Because, in her way, Dulcie had been choosy, not at all the easy lay of legend.

  Many are called but few are chosen; a visitor who fancied his chances and missed out, a man who knew his Bible, made the remark, spitefully, in the pub. What Rector Arch Griffiths would have made of that was anyone’s guess, although he was certainly no friend of Dulcie Sweet; as for the blokes who’d heard him say it, most of them wouldn’t have had a clue what he was on about.

  It was only talk, anyway. The days when Dulcie might have done a runner were long gone. Nowadays, the woman who had been the seductively-rounded Dulcie Sweet was a tub of lard. The only thing likely to run away with Dulcie was a forklift truck. Wilf didn’t mind, had always said he liked a woman to be shaped like one. Dulcie was certainly that, or perhaps like two women.

  ‘Plenty to grab hold of,’ Wilf confided to his mates in the pub. And did so regularly, both he and Dulcie boozy and laughing, enjoying the good things of life.

  It was not a lifestyle much concerned with the accumulation of money. Once, three years after Benjamin’s death, when Garth was nine, it had repercussions.

  The kids went to school, when they didn’t manage to squirm their way out of it: Bronnie, ten years old, Garth a year younger, and Susie, eight. Three kids in three years, to say nothing of Woody who, at four, was still too young for school.

  The ladies of the Guild clucked their tongues, but kindly, wondering how they could help. Heaven knows the family needed something. Wilf had done his back; his shearing days were over. One day, maybe, there might be Emily’s land, or Juniper’s land, or both, but there were no guarantees of either. In the meantime, they made do.

  For a while Wilf managed to scrounge work, doing a bit of labouring on this farm or that, but he was into the booze pretty heavily by now, and sometimes never turned up when he’d promised. Farmers were left high and dry and raging and, before long, the offers of work dried up. That left the welfare which, with the kids, meant marginal living for the lot of them.

  They survived. Amazingly, they even had cash for their beer and ciggies, but it wasn’t what you’d call flash living, and half the time the kids’ bums were out of their breeches.

  A cottage bung-full of kids, of bits and pieces of furniture, of bottles and fags and rubbish, kittens and dogs and yells … No wonder the Guild ladies were worried.

  They got together a surprise. A couple of girl’s frocks, neatly darned, a pair of boy’s short pants, hardly worn, a shirt or two, things like that. One of them, kind-hearted but unwise in the ways of the world, suggested money, but that was squished at once.

  ‘I spoke to the archdeacon,’ Mrs Milligan said. ‘He warned specifically against money. It goes on drink, you know.’

  So money was out. Mrs Milligan, on behalf of the rest, paid a visit one Sunday after church. To which the Warrens had not gone.

  ‘I am glad I caught you at home …’

  While the kids hung around the door and Wilf and Dulcie, never at their best on Sunday mornings, stared blearily.

  Out came the parcel, the array of clothes. Wilf gave her a red glare. ‘What the hell —’

  Dulcie stuck him with her elbow, and smiled. ‘Thank you.’ After Mrs Milligan had gone, they had a barney.

  ‘Why d’you let the old bag pull a trick like that?’

  ‘You got any idea what clothes cost? They want to give us stuff, the more the merrier, far as I’m concerned.’

  In the glare of sunlight outside the door, Garth thought, I never knew I was poor.

  Next day he tried, as usual, to sucker his Mum into letting him off school; as usual, he failed. He trailed down the road in his new short pants and straight into trouble. Kids who laughed at his secondhand clothes.

  Three fights later, all of which he won, he told himself his first job in life would be to make sure he never felt poor again.

  When Garth was fifteen, he got a job helping Horace McInerney at the hardware store. From the first day, he fell in love with it. It was a cave of mystery and delight to him: the endless items and brands and the uses to which they could be put, the tools and gadgets for this or that repair or improvement job. He learned what they’d got and where in the shop to find it. Within two years, he knew more about running the business than Horace himself, who had owned the place for twenty years.

  Shortly after his seventeenth birthday, without telling anyone, he applied for a job at the hardware store over at Dokes Mill, in the Mount Lofty Ranges outside Adelaide. Got it, too. He was pleased, but not surprised. He knew, none better, how good he was at the job.

  Horace McInerney did all he could to talk Garth out of it. He pointed out the disadvantages of working so far from home. He bad-mouthed the owners of the Dokes Mill store. ‘Mean folks, those Callaghans …’

  But Horace had a son in the business. Garth wasn’t interested in being an employee all his life and moved to Dokes Mill, anyway. During the week he boarded with a retired couple who were glad to exchange their spare bedroom for a few extra bob.

  Garth put his heart and soul into the job: partly because he had plans, but also because he enjoyed it. Even the smell of the store enchanted him, that mixture of metal and oil peculiar to hardware stores. In the cool recesses of the multi-shelved shop, he counted stock, learning as he had with Horace McInerney what they had and where to lay his hands on it. It wasn’t long before Sid Callaghan’s customers began to compliment him on the new bloke he’d got working for him. It didn’t put one extra penny in Garth’s pay packet — Horace had been right about that; it would have taken an earthquake to prise open the jaws of Callaghan’s till — but he took note, all the same.

  Each weekend Garth went back to the chaos and squalor that was home; then, after he’d been working for Callaghan for just over a year, he changed his routine. Went instead to a shindig at the Dokes Mill RSL, a dance with a live band, where there was a chance to pull some of the local talent. That evening, as he had planned, he made his first move on Bernie Callaghan, Sid’s seventeen-year-old daughter. Took care to use the kid-glove approach; the last thing he needed was his boss chucking him out for paying attentions to his daughter. But Garth had always had a way with him and the following weekend they met again, not entirely by chance, at another dance in the neighbouring town.

  So it went, week by week, Garth very courteous in everything he did, treating Bernie like glass, which drove her mad. Within a matter of weeks, she was as warm as toast and eager for all Garth was willing to give her. Which was still a long way short of the full treatment, rationing her carefully, until she was fit to burst with frustration. A month of this and she was asking when he was going to speak to her father.

  ‘I tell him I
want us to get married, I’ll be out on my ear.’

  ‘Not if I speak to my mother first.’ In domestic matters Mrs Callaghan was the power in the land, so by the time the following weekend came around, Bernie’s father was primed and ready. Sid Callaghan had hoped to marry his daughter to the son of a hardware tycoon in the city but, however shrewd he might be in business, he was a man who valued peace in his domestic life. With both wife and daughter ranged against him, he had no chance, and Garth was, undeniably, a treasure to the shop.

  News of their son’s engagement got back to Wilf and Dulcie, who up to now had thought themselves poorly served by their kids. Susie had been the first to go. Wild as a wolf, that one; no controlling her at all. Got tangled up with Ellen Clark, another lunatic. Through her got in with a bikie mob, some bloke who called himself Bugs Hancock. Next thing she’d done a runner, sent them a picture postcard from Queensland. After that they had heard nothing; she might have dropped off the planet.

  Next there was the business of Bronwyn, the eldest. Wilf had always said she was as mean as rats’ piss; true to form, she married some turd in the Tax Office, which could have been a judgment on the pair of them.

  Perhaps Garth, with fortune shining on him, would provide an opening. They turned up, uninvited, to share the young couple’s joy. Garth gave them short shrift; any openings around the place were his alone and not for export. There was some plain speaking and Wilf and Dulcie went off in a sulk, swearing to wash their hands of their eldest son. It was a prospect that suited Garth fine.

  A year later Garth married the owner’s daughter. Ten years after that, Sid Callaghan retired and Garth became the owner of the store.

  Garth had fallen out with his parents; ironically, it was in the same year that he took over the shop that his seven-year-old daughter Julia met Craig Warren at a school concert and became the first to cross the line that had separated Wilf’s kids for so long from the other side of the family.

  31

  KATH AND HEDLEY

  1999

  Kath was not thinking of Julia and Craig’s friendship, or indeed of any of Wilf’s clan, on the day after Julia’s visit. For Hedley was on his feet again. Just as I guessed, Kath thought. And with all the family coming, too. Although I suppose I should be pleased.

  She tried to get him to take it easy. Wasting her breath. He was out of the house at first light, as though he’d never had a moment’s illness in his life.

  Rebecca arrived shortly before midday. It was a cool day of bright sunshine, with a breeze to keep the flies away and, if she was aggravated at driving all this way for nothing, she showed no sign of it. Kath at her side, she walked onto the veranda, like Lady Muck hobnobbing with the peasants. She stared across the valley with as much pleasure as if she owned it herself.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful? You don’t know how lucky you are to live in a place like this. I think of it so often …’

  Spare us, Kath thought.

  ‘Dean sends his regards. He so much wanted to come, too, but he’s flat out, poor lamb. He’s been retained for the Gulliver case, you know.’

  Kath had never heard of the Gulliver case. She never ceased to be amazed at the different lives people lived. For Rebecca, whatever she might say, life on the farm, away from her smart friends and social activities, would be a death sentence. By contrast, Kath would cut her throat rather than live in a unit in Glenelg.

  Now Rebecca turned to her, lips smiling, smiling, eyes intent. ‘Now. Tell me honestly, Grandma. How is the old boy? Really?’

  No, Kath thought, I’m not getting dragged into any of your plots. ‘You’ll see him yourself, directly. Then you’ll know as much as I do.’

  Michael and Danielle were the next to arrive. They were in work clothes, in sharp contrast with Rebecca’s thousand-dollar outfit. At least they look the part, Kath thought. If anything, Mike had gone too far the other way, smelling as though he hadn’t had a shower for a fortnight. Craig arrived last, in open-necked shirt and slacks. Not quite the part, in his case — more like a townie playing at farmers, but that was what he was, after all. At least he was clean.

  I don’t know what Hedley’s going to say to all this, Kath thought. It was my idea to invite them, but now they’re here, they seem so big and assured, so overpowering, that I feel as though I haven’t got enough room to breathe.

  A pity I phoned them at all. Did I really think Hedley wouldn’t realise why they’re here? Because, if I know my husband, they’re in for a shock.

  Whatever their motives, you did not skimp when it was a family get-together. Kath put a decent cloth on the table, brought out the best plates, even fetched some flowers from the garden and stuck them in a vase on the sideboard. By the time she had finished, she thought the room looked nice. None of them would notice, but she had done it for herself, not them, so that didn’t matter.

  They were all sitting down by the time Hedley came in. He, too, was dressed in his work clothes; looked a bit pale, perhaps, but otherwise seemed the same as ever.

  Rebecca made a stage performance of leaping up to embrace him. Hedley brushed her off like dirt. ‘For heaven’s sake, woman, let me sit down …’ He stared at the faces about the table, the flowers and tablecloth. ‘Looks like a wake,’ he said. ‘If you’ve come to bury me, you’re a tad early.’ And sat at the head of the table, staring at them all with beady, malicious eyes. ‘Someone going to preach a sermon?’ he asked. ‘Or can we eat?’

  It was lamb. Kath carved it in the kitchen. She got Danielle to give her a hand with the plates and they got stuck in. Even Rebecca, she noticed, who was thin as a pole and probably out of the habit of farmhouse food.

  Nobody spoke until the plates were empty. Kath went back to the kitchen to cut up a cheesecake. Through the open door she heard Hedley say, ‘One of you want to tell me what you’re all doing here?’

  Kath grabbed the plate and zipped back into the dining room, hoping to defuse any row that might be brewing. ‘Never mind why they’re here,’ she said. ‘Let’s just think how lovely it is to have all the family together like this …’ Whatever she might think, privately.

  Hedley grinned malevolently. ‘Makes you wonder why it doesn’t happen more regularly.’ He stared around his grandchildren, homed in on the eldest. ‘What about you, Rebecca? What’s dragged you away from those social activities you’re always on about?’

  ‘You’ve been sick.’ Rebecca, making the best of a bad job. ‘We were concerned. All of us.’

  Hedley turned to Kath at the other end of the table. ‘Thought they’d be seeing me in my coffin, that’s what it was.’

  ‘That’s unkind.’ Out of her element, Rebecca still had enough spirit to protest. ‘I was worried —’

  His voice slashed. ‘I’ll tell you why you’re worried. You want to know what’s going to happen to the land when I die. The same goes for the lot of you.’ He shovelled in the cheesecake, which was his favourite, in part because Don Carlyle had warned him off it. ‘Wait until I’m dead: that’s my advice to you. I might decide to give it to the Cats’ Home.’

  ‘You won’t do that,’ Danielle said.

  His eyes bruised her. ‘It’s my right!’

  ‘Maybe it is, but you won’t do it.’

  Hedley enjoyed the punch-up of argument, using thoughts and words like bludgeons to flatten other people’s opinions. ‘What makes you so sure, missie?’

  Unlike Rebecca, Danielle knew how to handle him. ‘Because I wouldn’t. I would seed the paddocks to thistles before I did anything like that.’

  He stared at her for a full minute, combative even now, but she held his gaze, eyes unblinking and, in the end, it was Hedley himself who grinned and slapped his leg. ‘I’ll bet you would, at that.’

  ‘Thistles?’ Michael said. ‘That’s crap. The important thing is that the farm should be kept in shape.’

  Hedley stared at him contemptuously. ‘You’ve never understood, have you? What’s important about land is not what you do with it, bu
t the fact that it’s yours. To pick up a clod of dirt and say that’s mine … That’s what matters.’

  His eyes moved again, focusing on Craig. ‘You don’t seem to have much to say. I suppose you think it’s crazy to want land for its own sake?’

  He has to fight, Kath thought, even when there’s no reason. It’s what keeps him alive.

  Craig said, ‘What I think is that none of this talk serves any purpose. It’s your land, not ours. You’ll do what you want. But I don’t see any harm in letting people know what you plan to do.’

  ‘So they can brief their lawyers?’

  ‘So they can plan their lives! Is that so unreasonable?’

  ‘Perhaps I don’t have any plans,’ Hedley said. ‘Have you thought about that?’

  There was no point pursuing the matter. From somewhere Craig dredged up a grin. ‘Then I’d say it was about time you did.’

  Alone in the room that he called his office, Hedley thought over the lunch that had just ended.

  It makes you wonder why we bother. All your life working your arse off and, at the end of it, all they care about is what they’re going to get out of it. That Rebecca. Flash as a rat with a gold tooth. Got a mean streak in her, too. Can’t afford to leave her out altogether, she’ll sue the pants off everyone. It won’t make any odds to me, by then, but it would just about bankrupt the family to fight her, and I’m not having that.

  Michael’s another one. All he cares about is how much he can make out of it. Always on about yields and returns … Bad as Rebecca, in his way.

  At least Danielle knows what owning land means. She’d fight to the death to keep it. I like that. Pity she’s a girl. Married to the right bloke, things might have been different, but as it is …

  Craig’s another one who had always been keen on the land. But look at him; feel his hands. He’s a townie now. I doubt he’s capable of making a go of it.