Fire in Summer

by JH Fletcher

  She had thought she knew none of them but, as she drew nearer, saw one man she recognised. What was his name? For a moment she could not remember, then it came to her.

  ‘Reg Croft,’ she said. ‘How are you going?’

  The men shifted uneasily, shocked that one of them had been addressed by name. She walked up to him, smiling, hand outstretched.

  Reg Croft, awkward as a post, but making no attempt to evade her as she took his hand. ‘How’s your daughter? Martha, isn’t it?’

  ‘She’s good.’ The words were like hot pebbles in his mouth. ‘Really good.’

  ‘Wonderful.’ Once again memory came to her aid. ‘That last bout of flu really knocked people about, didn’t it? I’m glad she’s over it all right.’

  ‘She’s good …’ As though he did not know what else to say.

  ‘Say hi to her for me.’

  He shifted his feet. ‘I’ll do that, Doctor.’

  By speaking directly to him, she had reminded him of his individuality, his human nature. She had brought him back out of the mob. Smiling until her cheeks ached, his hand still held loosely in her own, willing him to do something, anything, to …

  His feet shifted awkwardly. He said, ‘Reckon we should skip it, mates.’

  He took his hand from hers and turned away. Within seconds, the group had disintegrated. None of the men looked at Julia, but she sensed the change in them, their expressions shamefaced instead of angry. Feet shuffling, they drifted back to their cars. Julia stood and watched them, smiling still, praying still.

  ‘Night, doctor …’

  Engines revved; one by one, the cars turned in the entrance and drove away. Silence came flooding back; they were gone.

  Julia walked back across the yard on legs that she feared would fail before she reached the car. Craig came to meet her, catching her as she fell forward into his arms.

  ‘Thank God …’ Trembling, sweat-drenched, barely able to speak or stand, yet triumphant.

  He gentled her. ‘I was so scared for you …’

  A laugh like a crow croaking. ‘How d’you think I felt?’

  And suddenly they were both laughing hysterically.

  There came a sound from the darkened house. As one, they turned towards it. The door had opened; inside was the flicker of what looked like candle flame, against which stood the black silhouette of a man.

  ‘Have they gone?’

  Julia answered him. ‘Yes. There’ll be no more trouble tonight.’

  Hedley, thinking in his hospital bed.

  I have been alone all my life. Too late to change now, even if I wanted to, so it’s just as well I don’t. I could not have been any different; no-one who has not been through it understands what suffering is, or what a real man will do to keep his dreams alive.

  The sister came in. ‘There is a man …’ Her voice indicated displeasure; wise rules confined visitors to certain hours but, in terminal cases, exceptions had sometimes to be made.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘He said his name was Luke Small.’

  ‘Send him in.’

  Obediently, yet with gritted teeth, the sister in due course sent in Luke Small, a solicitor and specialist in the preparation of wills, bearing with him more of the law’s dust and pedantry than its grandeur.

  ‘Thought you’d got lost. Thought you’d maybe died.’ Hedley laughed, and gasped and, for a moment, fell silent, grasping the air with hooked fingers, as throughout his life he had grasped the land. After a while, he recovered enough to say, ‘Sorted everything out, have you? Got it all fixed up?’

  Julia invited Craig to her cottage for coffee. For someone who had returned to the mid-north intending not to get involved, it was a crazy thing to do, but she didn’t care. The evening that had ended so melodramatically at the McCreedy place had done more than frighten her half to death; it had taken her good resolutions and thrown them out of the window. The fury, terror and ultimate relief at coming through safely, what she remembered now as her own bravado, the fact that Craig had supported her even to the point of remaining in the car when she had asked him to, the feeling of his arms cradling her after the vigilantes had gone, had changed the assumptions with which she had armed herself when she had left Melbourne.

  She had told herself that she would not meet Craig at all; that, even if she did, it would not matter because he meant nothing to her any more. That one had been wrong on both counts. She had told herself that she’d had enough of men in her life, that after her earlier experiences with Craig and her catastrophic marriage she would be happy never to have a man in her life again. That had been wrong, as well.

  She knew now that her feelings for Craig had never gone away, that she felt as much for him as she ever had. Now, by her invitation, she was getting in deeper by the minute and didn’t care.

  She went to the shops, splurged on the best coffee she could find. She bought luscious cakes from the deli and, to be on the safe side, crispy biscuits and King Island Double Brie.

  Within the limits of what was possible she tarted the place up before his arrival, had a shower with plenty of a gel that the advertisements claimed was so sexy that it deserved an X rating. To round things off, slid her perfumed body seductively into the Italian dress that she had bought at monumental expense in the days when she had needed to prove to herself that there would be a life after Aidan Anderson.

  Preparations tuned to perfection, she sat down to wait. If I do this for coffee, she thought, what happens if he asks me out to a swank dinner?

  The bell rang. She pulled her dress down to show as much cleavage as she dared, plus another inch, did her vamp walk to the door, opened it.

  Craig in shorts and soiled tee shirt, smelling of sheep. ‘I thought I was never going to make it.’

  She dredged up a smile, painfully, and stood back to let him walk past her. ‘Quite all right.’

  He strolled in. ‘Hey, you’ve got a nice place here.’ Never a glance at her, at what he could not see but might, if he played his cards right. Which for the moment he showed no sign of doing.

  ‘It suits me,’ she said.

  They sat. She did the Lady-of-the-Manor bit with coffee pot and cups. ‘I hope you like Colombian,’ she said.

  ‘Great,’ he said and chucked it in. All the notice he took, it might have been granulated. ‘Sorry about the stink. I’ve been moving sheep.’

  ‘I thought you might have been. Cheese?’

  ‘Great.’ He cut himself a wedge, munched appreciatively. ‘Really great.’

  And so they sat, Julia thinking what a mug she had been. Until, just as she had decided to write it all off as an experience never to be repeated, he said:

  ‘Julia …’

  In a tone of voice that restored ardour, hope, her faith both in him and themselves.

  He crossed the room, took her hands and drew her to her feet. Once again she doubted if her legs would support her, but trusted he would catch her, if they did not.

  ‘Hi …’ And kissed her. ‘I’m filthy.’

  Half-laughing, half-crying, she said, ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘I’m afraid of messing up your smart dress.’

  So he had noticed, after all. I’ll take it off, if you’d rather. But there were limits, after all; not that she cared about them but cared, very much, that she might frighten him off.

  His expression remained sombre and his hands, which she had visualised caressing her, remained still. ‘I have something to tell you,’ he said.

  With a sudden, sick presentiment, Julia knew that the reunion that she had anticipated so eagerly was not, after all, to take place. Blood gone from cheeks suddenly stiff and cold, she said, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I have met someone.’

  Confirmation was so much worse than presentiment. Slowly and carefully, as though they might break, she withdrew her hands from his.

  ‘Do I know her?’

  ‘No. She lives in Singapore. Her name is Yukiko.’

  After
Craig had gone, Julia changed out of the Italian dress into shirt and shorts, went out to walk through the nature reserve. Edifices, she thought. How we build them. Up and up, pinning all our hopes and pride upon them until the lightest breath of air brings them crashing down again. Not that you could call today’s episode a breath of air — more like a cyclone.

  Yukiko. Yukiko Fukuda. She would have hated her, if she could, but was denied even that satisfaction. She felt nothing, an emptiness unassuaged by Craig’s opinion that nothing would come of it.

  ‘I wrote to her a while ago. Suggested that she should come to Australia, see the country for herself. I don’t know if she will come. To be honest, I don’t even know if I want her to come. But I have invited her and I must stick to it. Don’t you agree?’

  Julia was angry that he should inflict all this upon her; it was even worse that he should presume to invite her judgment on his actions. Very well; she would give it to him in full measure, if that was what he wanted.

  ‘You’re capable of making up your own mind, I suppose. But it is not right to get her to come all this way if you’re not serious.’

  Or to mess with me, if you are. How she wanted to say it, but was reluctant even now to destroy what her emotion, if not her mind, persisted in hoping might still be saved.

  50

  YUKIKO

  2000

  Yukiko Fukuda had been raised, at least nominally, in the Buddhist faith but, on the Saturday afternoon after she had received Craig’s latest letter, feeling the need for silence, she walked into St Andrew’s Cathedral off Bras Basah Road and sat in a pew at the back of the nave.

  To her it was a strange place, with none of the whispered nuances that she supposed it would hold for a Christian. Even the crucifix on the altar, familiar though it was, was the emblem of an alien belief. There was nothing of God or sanctity or worship attaching to it. Yet it had seemed the right place to be in order to come to terms with what the future might hold.

  Craig’s letter was folded in her bag, but she did not need to take it out to remember what it said.

  Come to Australia. See what you think of the place.

  I could take some leave, she thought, go there on holiday. But knew that Craig’s invitation had nothing to do with holidays, that, if she went, her visit would have nothing to do with holidays, either.

  Go, she told herself. You say you love him. Isn’t that enough?

  The stained-glass windows, the crucifix and plaques upon the walls, the pillared columns of the nave, all the cold and alien symbolism of the Christian faith, proclaimed the answer. No, it was not enough, it would never be enough. She could not change what she was nor wished to; that would be to diminish herself. Yet without change how could she hope to be one with Craig, her foreign lover, in the foreign land that through its foreignness would forever shut her out? It would be impossible — a union without value either to Craig or herself.

  She looked beseechingly at the images. They watched her with the eyes and aura of death, but offered no salvation. After a while, she stood up and walked out into the hot afternoon.

  All that day and the next, she walked and thought and felt. She had hoped to persuade herself that in Australia everything would work out fine; instead, she became more and more convinced that they had no future. What she had longed for — happiness, a true and permanent union with this man — was beyond hope of attainment.

  As Craig’s land had claimed him, so had her own imposed its will on her.

  I live in Singapore, she thought. I have believed — I still believe — that I am a citizen of the world. Yet this is something else. The land, my land, the stones and rocks and soil that are Japan, are in me and will possess me forever. I cannot abandon them, any more than I can abandon myself.

  That night, her mind made up, she wrote to him.

  You want me to come to you in Australia, to see this land that means so much to you, but it is your land, not mine. I could not fight it for your love, nor would I wish to. I am sorry. I shall be your friend, always. But anything more … Impossible.

  She read it several times, folded it, put it in an envelope. Which she held in her open hand, feeling in its infinitesimal weight all the hope and glory and despair of a relationship that had promised so much and that now was at an end, overwhelmed by the greater loyalty that finally had claimed them both.

  She went to seal the envelope; at the last moment, paused. She wrote something on another piece of paper, slipped it into the envelope, sealed it. It was already stamped. Quickly, giving herself no time for second thoughts, she went down in the lift to the street and walked to the nearest post office. Her heartbeat was fast; every part of her body cried out to her to wait, to think again, to believe that hope still lived. She would not listen. She put the letter into the box and went home through a grey world.

  That night, staring sleeplessly at the darkness that immersed both her body and her mind, she recited aloud, again and again, what she had written on the second sheet of paper:

  The cicadas are hushed, the cold

  night wind blows;

  Geese fly beneath the clear autumn

  moon.

  51

  KATH AND JULIA

  2000

  The hospital phoned. Before Kath answered, she knew. ‘He’s sinking. Come now, or it may be too late.’

  They arrived, but there was no-one. Hedley’s body lay in the bed, surrounded by equipment that blinked and beeped. Nominally, it was still alive but the man himself was gone.

  An hour later and it was official.

  ‘Do you want some minutes alone with him?’ the nurse asked Kath.

  ‘Might as well, I suppose. Last chance I’ll get.’

  But found there was nothing to say to him, nothing to feel. Now it was impossible to believe that they had ever been married, had shared all the lust and anguish of life.

  There were times when I hated you, but I reckon it’s better to feel hatred than nothing. On the whole we managed all right. After Jeth, I did everything you wanted. Mind you, I controlled more of my life — and yours — than I ever let on. Got by, somehow.

  Now she would get by without him.

  She had seen a book in a shop window, once. Its title had caught her attention: The Pastures of Heaven. That’d be right, she thought now. There’d better be pastures, if that’s where he’s headed. He’ll raise the roof if there aren’t.

  All in all, despite Hedley’s bloody-minded ways, it had been a life. My turn next, she thought.

  She put her hand on his, a gesture not so much of tenderness as of interrogation, as though now, when all was gone, she might discover the motivation that had hounded her husband all his life. It was no use; the hand, no longer his, was like a stone.

  She went out of the hospital and into the sunshine. Danielle and Craig were waiting in the car. Kath had thought about this moment any number of times over the past months. Once she had thought that without the battles there would be nothing left. Later she had expected a feeling of release, of freedom, but there was nothing like that, either. She experienced neither sorrow nor gladness, neither regret nor any eager anticipation of the life that remained to her. She felt nothing at all.

  There was the funeral: attended, so Brian Welke said, by all the blokes who wanted to make sure that Hedley Warren was dead.

  Afterwards, the business of the will. Everyone was expecting drama; there was none, or almost none. Acting on Luke Small’s advice, Hedley had put the entire property into a family trust. They would all inherit, and none of them would.

  ‘It doesn’t feel right if the land isn’t yours …’

  In truth Danielle had got almost everything she’d wanted. She would farm the land, with Craig if he came back, with outside help, if he didn’t. Because she didn’t own the land, she wouldn’t be able to sell it. She had never intended to do so, but the prospect might have strengthened her hand with Hugo. No, she thought, Hugo wouldn’t be pleased. She would never get him to divorce
his wife now. Perhaps it was as well. The last two times they’d been together, she’d had the feeling that Hugo was getting close to his use-by date.

  This way, she thought, I’ll be able to decide when, if I decide to drop him.

  Rebecca was outspoken, even vociferous, but that was Rebecca. ‘I demand my share …’

  ‘You already have it,’ Luke Small said. ‘You’re a trustee, the same as the others.’

  ‘And if I want to sell the land, turn my share into cash …?’

  ‘All you have to do is get Danielle or Craig to agree.’

  ‘Which they never will.’

  ‘What a shame,’ Danielle said. ‘You’ll still get a cut of the income. More than you deserve, some would say.’

  Because that, too, had been stipulated in the will: a wage to Danielle for running the farm, to Craig, too, if he got involved; an allowance to Kath during her lifetime; a specified share of profits to Rebecca; the balance to be retained for the development of the property.

  ‘Nothing for Giles or Spencer…’ Rebecca looked quite ugly when she raged.

  ‘Nothing for my kids either,’ said Danielle.

  ‘What are you talking about? You don’t have any kids.’

  ‘So why should you get a bigger share, just because you have?’

  Rebecca stood with a flourish; it was clear that, disappointed in what she had got from the will, she was determined to make a dramatic exit. Her eyes threatened all of them: the family seated around the table, the solicitor who had been through it all before and could afford to be philosophical about the ways of beneficiaries, the very air of the close and shuttered room. ‘I shall speak to Dean about this.’

  My husband; my lawyer.

  ‘Enjoy,’ Danielle said.

  After she had swept out of the room, Craig turned to the solicitor. ‘Does she have any grounds to challenge the will?’

  ‘None. She’s got exactly the same as the rest of you. It is a very intelligent will,’ he said complacently, having drawn it himself.