by JH Fletcher
‘I suppose we’ll get used to it,’ Danielle said doubtfully. ‘Not owning the land, I mean.’
‘Don’t confuse the form with the substance,’ Luke Small advised her. ‘You control it, that’s what matters. You can do anything you like with it. You can develop it, buy more, sell it —’
‘Nurture it,’ Danielle said.
Luke Small smiled. ‘That, too.’
Julia had been at the funeral but had gone home afterwards, leaving Craig to attend the meeting with the lawyer.
‘Let me know what happens …’
He phoned her at home. She listened attentively as he told her what the terms of the will had been.
‘Rebecca’s furious,’ he said. ‘She was hoping to get a million bucks.’
‘She would.’ So much for Rebecca. ‘And you? What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to try and be a farmer again.’
‘And Yukiko?’ And waited, telling herself it didn’t matter, knowing that it did.
‘I’ve had a letter.’ The words emerged one by one, painfully, as hard as rocks. ‘She’s not coming.’
For a moment Julia shut her eyes.
‘She says she’s Japanese and intends to stay that way. In fact, her letter makes it quite clear, she has no choice. She is as much a prisoner as I am, of the land — her land — of her past, the things that have happened to her family, her underlying culture …’ Now, as though some obstruction had given way in Craig’s throat, the words came gushing. ‘That’s not why I’m coming back. I think I always knew, if I got the chance …’ He tried a laugh. ‘I suppose you could say the land has got its hooks into me, as well.’
Julia remembered her father telling her how much he still missed the land, for all the success he had made of his business. It’s in our blood, girl. You and me both. You want to get back to it, if you can. You’ll never be completely happy if you don’t.
He was right, she thought. It is the land that has brought me back to the mid-north, too. The willing servitude that binds us all. It isn’t something peculiar to Australians. Look at the troubles in Africa. And now this. As Craig said, Yukiko is as much a prisoner of the feeling as we are. It is a universal phenomenon, the whole of humanity captive to the land it thinks it owns. It lies at the very root of our nature.
Craig was saying something; lost in her own thoughts, she had not been paying attention. ‘What?’
‘I was wondering, if you were free …’
Dinner tonight?
To celebrate, he explained. But sounded nervous, as though he expected her to give him a mouthful for even suggesting it.
Serve him right, she thought. If Yukiko had been here, he’d have been taking her to dinner, instead. Was tempted to say so; but some thoughts should remain stillborn. Yukiko was gone, as Hedley and even the hippies, departed like swallows after the fire, were gone. The future, life with its challenges, its triumphs and tragedies, remained.
I can’t wait, she thought.
‘Dinner tonight?’ Julia repeated. ‘Yes, I’d like that very much.’
She thought, Maybe this time I’ll persuade him to get me out of that damn dress. But that, too, was a thought best kept to herself.
Towards sunset Kath got into her car and drove up the hill to where the old house had stood. Some of the outer walls remained, but there was little else. Craig was talking about building another one; she wished him well, but the prospect did not interest her. That was the future, and the future belonged to Craig and Danielle and Julia. They would do with it what they would, as she and Hedley had done what they would in their own time.
That was as it should be. Youth had a vision, a yearning, a determination. A vision of the ideal, a yearning for what it represented, a determination to fulfil it. It was what youth was about. As for herself … She’d had her day.
I hope Rebecca comes round, she thought, but even that did not trouble her much. As well; she had a hunch it would take a while. It is not enough simply to demand and offer nothing in return, she told herself. Until people understand that there has to be giving on both sides, I see no prospect of a true reconciliation in this family or this land. But that, too, was for the future.
She walked across what had been the tennis court. It was ankle deep in ash but, here and there, spears of green were poking through the grey. Amazing how life survived. She, too, was not ready to go yet. She would live on and in her would live all the people she had known, all the love and terror and ecstasy of life. Walter and Jeth; Hedley, too. There were times when she had hated him, as no doubt he had hated her, and with reason, but now … He’d been compelled to be the way he was, do what he did. There was nothing he could have done about it.
When he’d had a choice, he hadn’t done too badly, she told herself. He could have put me out in the street. Hundreds would have done it, but he didn’t. Within the limits of his nature, he always treated Walter right, too. Even that terrible time after he got back from the war I believe happened only because of everything he’d been through.
One thing made it comparatively easy to bear: the fact that, above all things, she had known love.
The hippies were gone. What a dreadful tragedy! That poor little boy … She thought of them with sorrow, yes, but also with gratitude. Because, in a manner she did not fully understand, they had reunited her with Jeth, with all that was valuable in life. Togetherness and unity, she thought. Perhaps there was something to it, after all.
The fence was gone. She walked unhindered into the paddock. Beyond lay the valley that all her life had been home to her. On the far side, the crests of the ranges flourished their stone signature against a brilliant sky.
Everything Kath could see was grey but she remembered it as it had been: green with young wheat, golden with the ripening crops, pale cream after the harvest. In the vineyards, the bleak grey winter wire of the July vines followed by the purple scent of the crush. The cycle of renewed life, endlessly repeated.
Death, marking an end and a beginning. She had known so many deaths. Perhaps they had served a purpose, too — might even have helped her, in a way. Because when you had to deal only with the surface incidents of life, reality was swallowed up by the superficial. It didn’t escape or disappear but lay submerged, waiting for something to make it alive once more. So that there, too, death restored life.
Now the sun’s red disc was resting on the topmost contour of the western range. Its almost horizontal rays illuminated the crests and valleys of the land, the line that over the years the creek had scribbled across the landscape. The light, as the sun dipped behind the hill, was dying and with it was taking all the joys, the heartache and trauma, the hundred thousand incidents that had made up her life.
She stood motionless until the sun was gone. Now the land alone remained.
About JH Fletcher
JH Fletcher is the author of eight romantic historical novels, published to both critical and popular acclaim. The author's plays for radio and television have been produced by the BBC and the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and many of this author's stories have been published in Australia and throughout the world.
JH Fletcher was educated in the UK and travelled and worked in France, Asia and Africa before emigrating to Australia in 1991. Home is now a house within sound of the sea in a small town on the South Australian coast.
Also by JH Fletcher
View from the Beach
Keepers of the House
Wings of the Storm
Sun in Splendour
The Cloud Forest
Voice of Destiny
Eagle on the Hill
First published by HarperCollins Publishers Pty Ltd in 2000
This edition published in 2013 by Momentum
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
Copyright © JH Fletcher 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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A CIP record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia
Fire in Summer
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