by Margaret Way
True.
“But then, that special problem has always existed for us, hasn’t it?” Justine said soberly. “Are we loved for ourselves, or has it more to do with being the daughter and the granddaughter of the Man with the Midas Touch? I was fairly paranoid as a girl when it came to trust. I know you are, too. It goes with the territory, my darling.”
“You think I should trust Rolfe?”
“You’re madly in love with him, aren’t you‘? He’s saved you from great harm on two separate occasions. Some might say you owe your life to him. That’s a big plus in my book.”
Cecile looked away. “He’s brave. I know that. I’m not so without self-confidence that don’t know he’s attracted to me.”
“He’s conquered you and Daddy in a remarkably short time. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Cecile couldn’t answer. Her mother had too much insight into her particular problems. She had trusted Tara, her friend from childhood, but that episode at Malagari when Tara had turned on her had really hurt.
“You’re not terrified someone else will get him?” Justine broke into Cecile’s ponderings, uncannily on her daughter’s wavelength. “What about that little opportunist, Tara?”
“What about Tara?” Cecile asked with false calm, unsurprised her mother had read her mind. Justine did it all the time.
“Don’t tell me! You’ve had a falling out? We are soooo sorry,” Justine gloated. “She’s a devious miss, that one! Warned you, didn’t I?”
Cecile shrugged. “She rang me immediately she read about what happened. She sounded genuinely distressed for me.”
Justine harrumphed. “Just so long as she doesn’t come for a visit. But she’ll try. Mark my words. I’ve always said that girl can get in Where the ants can’t.” She rose majestically to her feet. “I’ll say good night, darling. You don’t mind if I don’t come with you to Malagari, do you?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but swept on. “I’ve never been one for the great outdoors. If I weren’t so obviously a Moreland, I’d begin to wonder if I were Daddy’s at all.”
A sad little smile edged Cecile’s mouth. “Are you saying Grandma slept with someone else?” As far as she was concerned, the things that Grandma Frances had gotten up to were mind-blowing.
“Good gracious, Ceci, that’s not nice.” Justine turned to reprimand her. “Even in fun.”
“I apologize. She simply wouldn’t have had the time. She seemed to have spent most of it creating great traumas for other people. Daniel and his poor abandoned mother. Rolfe’s entire family. No one was spared.”
Justine in her gorgeous peach-colored peignoir paused at the door, one elegant hand to her temple. “Please, Ceci, not another word. I can’t bear to hear it. Even as a child I knew there was always something going on with my mother. She would have been quite at home with the Borgias. All the secrets, the scandals and the downright lies have come as no surprise to me.” Justine opened the door, then turned with a bright conspiratorial smile. “Do you really think Bob Connaught and I are suited?”
However had her parents stayed together long enough to have her? “I think it would work,” Cecile said. For all she knew, Bob Connaught, a very nice man, could be abstemious in the sex department, too.
“Perhaps.” Justine shrugged. “You know what they say. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
A COUPLE OF DAYS after Justine’s return to Melbourne, Joel joined Cecile in the garden room where she was endeavoring to reply to a stack of Thinking of You cards, to tell her he had given Rolfe, who was back in town, permission to take one of the station helicopters across the ranges to the old Lockhart cattle holding.
“I think it would be a good idea if you Went with him,” Joel said. “In many ways Rolfe has been alone a long time. He had his mother of course, and his new family, but it’s obvious he never forgot his own world. Rolfe has the same connection to the land that you and I have.”
“He deceived us, Granddad. That’s what I can’t accept.”
Joel sighed. “At the beginning deception was his only cover. I’ll stake my life he isn’t a man who normally dealt in deception. I think he hated having to lie to you, but that desire for revenge on the Morelands was deeply entrenched.”
“You say, was, past tense.”
“I think his quest for revenge is now over, my darling. You’re the trained psychologist. Revenge must have filled up the terrible void in his life. But only love can heal a wounded heart. I believe he loves you. You must see it. You must feel it don’t you? In its way it’s a wonderful redemptive love. It’s within your power to lay the ghosts of Rolfe’s painful past finally to rest.”
ROLFE PUT THE CHOPPER down on the perfectly flat ground that ran away to the ranges at the front of the old homestead. Red desert forever. A world of color. The marvelous contrast of blazing blue skies, fiery earth, ghost gums with their stark white boles, dusty khaki misshapen trees and bushes, great cylindrical clumps of spinifex scorched to a dull gold and looking for all the world like the biggest wheatfield on earth.
Painters would revel in it, he thought. This was his first visit here in over twenty years, and it was as he had fully expected it to be: emotional. But he had to hold his emotions in check, remembering what his grandmother had said to him as a six-year-old when he’d broken his arm: “Brave boys don’t cry, Rolfie!”
He’d cried plenty. But always when he was absolutely alone. Tragedy had haunted his life. It was only since he had met Cecile all the pent-up anger and bitterness inside him had all but crumbled to dust. He had thought to get on with his life. Only it wasn’t so easy.
A deception of such magnitude!
That’s what she had said with such hurt in her eyes. What could he do to win her trust? She felt herself tricked and betrayed. It had been impressed on him enough that heiresses feared not being liked or loved for themselves. It wasn’t difficult to understand. Not when people wore masks. At least today she had consented to come with him, although he knew he probably had to thank Joel for that. Joel was turning into the grandfather he had once known.
As they walked toward the single-story homestead, he felt his profound link with it rise up through his very boots. Gradually he became aware of a general tidiness about the place.
“There’s no doubt about him, is there,” he murmured.
“Granddad?” she asked.
He nodded, staring about him. “Someone has been here to clean up. Everything is much too neat and tidy for a deserted old homestead.”
“That’s Granddad for you!” said Cecile slightly discordantly, pausing to take in the old building. “He probably sent a couple of the men over.”
“A couple of dozen is more like it.” Rolfe lifted his eyes to the purple-hazed ranges that lay in the exact center of the continent. Known collectively as the Macdonnell Ranges, they stood in stark relief against the cloudless sky, among the oldest geological formations on the planet. Extending east to west some hundred miles across the floor of the sandy desert, they were famous for their extraordinary shapes and colors. There was a spectacular gap in the ranges, he remembered. A great chasm of multicolored scalloped layers, rusts, yellows, pinks and creams that impressed itself upon the eye. That was what was so extraordinary about the Red Centre, its stark primal beauty, the inviolability that told you plainly no one could own it.
Close by a flock of white corellas took flight, and he stared after them appreciatively. His head began to fill with childhood memories: riding through canyons and gorges with his grandfather, the sheer cliffs towering to either side; sparkling water holes and great stretches of Ginda Ginda flowers. He remembered the magnificent wedge-tailed eagles that soared on high, the huge flocks of budgerigar that seemed to follow them around. He remembered his father letting him ride pillion on his motorbike as they raced across the ironred plains. He remembered being allowed to join in the chase for brumbies. Was there ever a time he hadn’t loved horses? Most of all he remembered when he was very small, racing ou
t into the open paddocks to be the first one in the family—they let him believe he was, anyway—to sight the miraculous appearance of the zillions of paper daisies that appeared after rains.
Sadly he remembered, too, the man from the bank who traveled all the way to tell his grandfather the bank was repossessing the property. He remembered how he had run away and hid for days after his father and Benjie had carried his grandfather’s body home. His grandfather’s fatal heart attack had happened when he was driving stray cattle into the holding yards.
He couldn’t bear to remember the sound of his grandmother’s screaming or his mother’s brokenhearted sobbing.
“Everything okay?” Cecile asked, seeing somberness come into his expression.
“Sure. Fine.” He recovered immediately.
“Good.” Perversely she couldn’t bear to see him unhappy. She turned slowly to take it all in, the golden sea of spinifex washing right up against the larkspur ranges. “I like this place.” It was tiny by Malagari standards, a mere cottage, but it had definite appeal.
“It’s a wonder it hasn’t fallen down,” Rolfe murmured, thinking at some stage the, building and the old sheds would have to be demolished. How had they all fitted in there? he wondered. A comfortable home to him as a boy, now it seemed much too small to have sheltered them all. He couldn’t recall a single argument. They were a family. They pulled together. They never fell out. Not a one of them wanted to hurt the other. His grandparents had adored.him. His grandfather had always called him “my little mate.” There had been a unique warmth and companionship between them that had. even exceeded the close bond with his father.”
“The ranges look quite different from this side,” Cecile was observing, shading her eyes. “Namatjira was such a great artist, so much a part of this desert country. He painted with complete accuracy. I’ve heard city collectors say the colors are too vivid to be true, but we know differently.” She looked about her with obvious pleasure. “It’s all the Northern Territory, yet there’s a great division between our tropical region north and this so-called arid center. No one who has ever seen our desert gardens could possibly. call it arid, could they? Lovely, lovely flowers of every kind and color.” She was conscious of his eyes on her. “So very strange and so romantic.”
They continued to walk toward the old homestead. It was much too hot standing in the sun. “Didn’t the early explorer Ernest Giles want to name Palm Valley after all the beautiful flowers he found there?” Rolfe asked. He’d all but.forgotten about that.
Cecile nodded. “In the end the palms were so magnificent he called it Glen of Palms, which later became Palm Valley.”
“Nothing has changed at all,” he said in deep, reflective tones. “Hard to believe now, but we all lived here. My grandparents. Mum and Dad and me until Dad could get a run of his own. Uncle Benjie. Granddad was the patriarch. I was remembering we never fell out as a family. We were very closely knit. We had to depend on one another. Benjie might have been my uncle, but he was more like a big brother. He was tall, over six feet, with a lopsided grin and eyes as blue as my mother’s. She’s a very beautiful woman. Blond. I inherited my eyes, the shape and color from my dad, but I look a lot like her. I think that’s why Ramon took it so easy on me—because I resembled my mother. It couldn’t have been my sunny nature. I turned into a savage after my dad was killed.”
Something in his expression brought her close to tears. “How very sad, Rolfe.” So much trauma for a young boy to contend with. It was no wonder he lived in such pain. “You never did tell me how you felt when your mother remarried.”
He grimaced faintly, drawing her up the short flight of stone steps that led to the wide veranda. The homestead itself was set some four feet off the ground by brick pillars. The veranda wrapped around three sides of the house, protecting the core of the building from the fierce inland heat. “I acted like I couldn’t care less, but for a long time I hated the situation,” Rolfe said. “I couldn’t bear to think of my mother being disloyal to my dad, but I didn’t accept Ramon at all. Not as my mother’s husband. Not as my stepfather, although he adopted me almost immediately.”
“And how do you feel about your stepbrother and sister?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible one day my stepbrother and I will be friends. No one could help but love Ramona, though.” There was much affection in his voice.
The entrance portico, Cecile saw, was simple but attractive, flanked by double timber columns and a fretted timber gable and spire. The roof was corrugated galvanized iron decorated with rather picturesque roof ventilators to aid the cooling of the homestead. Two pairs of French doors to either side of the front door gave onto the veranda. It was a good example of an early pioneering building, but maintenance had not been a priority of subsequent owners who had all gone broke, her grandfather had told her. Cecile didn’t think it would warrant restoration work. Possibly the whole structure would have to be demolished. She wondered how Rolfe would feel about that but didn’t like to ask.
“Shall we go in?” She turned to him, her eyes sparkling like cool crystal pools in the heat of the day.
He acted completely on instinct. Effortlessly he swept her high in his arms, staring down into her startled face.
“I didn’t realize we’d just been married.” She tried to make a joke of it that didn’t come off.
“I feel like we belong to each other,” he said, his handsome face unsmiling. He pushed the door—it wasn’t locked—and carried her into the entrance hall. There he lowered her to the polished timber floor, keeping his arms around her. “Thank you for coming today. I know Joel was behind it.”
She laid her hand against the flat of his chest, then turned away.
“Even so I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to. Let’s take a look around.” She felt she could snap at any moment, yet she spoke calmly enough.
His mouth twisted a little. “The place is called Currawa.”
She nodded. “I saw the brass plaque beside the front door.” She paused to look up at the original cypress pine ceilngs, easily twelve feet high. “Doesn’t currawa mean the tree—”
“From which gum was obtained to fasten the heads to native spears,” he finished for her. “There are other meanings, such as rocky river. There aren’t too many rivers around here, barring the oldest, driest river on earth, the Finke, and the Todd, of course, running through the Alice.”
“Did you ever get to see the Henley-on-Todd Regatta?” Cecile asked without thinking. She was referring to the annual bottomless boat race, leg propelled down the dry bed of the river. A day of great fun!
“No,” he said, standing quite still watching her, “nor the Alice Springs Rodeo where your uncle Jared was killed and Benjie was held responsible.”
She bowed her head. “I’m sorry. I spoke without thinking. Why don’t we say a prayer for them?” she said quietly. “The two of us together. Members of two families who suffered.”
He came away from the wall, straightened his wide shoulders. “l stopped saying prayers when my dad was killed, Cecile,” he said, his voice echoing through the empty house.
TOWARD MIDDAY they sat on the front steps in the shade of the gable and ate their picnic lunch straight from the esky. Nothing fancy. Sandwiches and coffee from the stainless-steel flask, a crisp apple for dessert.
“King’s Canyon and Palm Valley aren’t far away,” Cecile said. “We could do a flyover on the way back. It amazes tourists to find wonderful green oases slap bang in the middle of the desert. Beautiful crystal creeks and gullies.”
“Remnants of long, long ago when the Centre was once as lush and green as your tropical North.”
“Do you remember the wild bush after rain?” she asked, taking a last bite of her red shiny apple.
“Of course! It’s a sight no one could forget. My grandmother used to say to my grandfather—it was for my benefit of course—“The paper daisies will be out by morning, Dad!” That was all I needed. I used to get up so early
the sun hadn’t even crested the ranges. By the time I reached the first horse paddock the landscape was flooded with golden light. I think I was around six or seven at the time.”
“You must have been a very sensitive little boy,” Cecile said, unable to keep the tenderness out of her voice. “Sensitive to beauty.” She vividly recalled her extraordinary vision of that beautiful little boy who looked just like Rolfe amid a glowing landscape of wildflowers.
“I defy anyone to be insensitive to the sight of the arid red desert transformed overnight into a vast garden,” he replied. “Miles and miles of everlastings, the one color to one area, yellow, then pink, then white. I never did figure out why that was so. You’d think the seeds would intermingle. After the showers of winter rain the sand used to be wreathed with trailing stems of Stuart’s crimson desert pea, the bellflowers, the foxgloves, the pink parakeelyas. When the scorched spinifex sent up its tall seed-bearing stems, it looked more like we were growing giant fields of wheat than raising cattle. All those years ago and I remember it as vividly as though it were yesterday.”
“You want to spend the rest of your life here?” She spoke normally, when she was desperate to know his plans for the future.
“What—here on Currawa?” He reached into the esky and found to his satisfaction a bar of orange-flavored dark chocolate.
She spread her hands. “Well, if not Currawa, this region?”
“I thought I made that clear. It’s a magical place, Cecile.” He broke off at square of chocolate and handed it to her.
“Thank you. This has been a feast.” She slipped the rich dark chocolate into her mouth, letting it melt. Chocolate had been considered an aphrodisiac since the time of the Pharaohs.
“I don’t intend to Work Currawa, if that’s what you’re trying to find out. I don’t intend to sell it, either. Joel’s handing me the deed was a symbolic gesture. We both knew that. What I was thinking was at some time in the future turning the site into a tourist destination. A small working station taking in selected guests. It’s a hop, step, and a jump to the Alice and from there Uluru, Kata Tjuta and the rest of the desert monuments. Just an idea, a fairly long-term project. What do you think?”