Moonlight Plains

by Barbara Hannay

  In the year before her divorce, Laura had taken up yoga, hoping that the deep breathing and guided meditations would help her to weather the emotional storms of those tempestuous months. Now, as she walked with Jim Mathieson across a paddock towards her father’s crash site on Moonlight Plains, she tried to regenerate those deep and steadying breaths.

  ‘It’s not too surprising that Ed and his buddy crashed here,’ Jim was telling her. ‘We know now that around three hundred Allied planes crashed in North Queensland during the war.’

  ‘Three hundred? I had no idea. What happened? Were they shot down?’

  ‘No, they were straightforward crashes.’

  ‘But that seems incredible. Why were there so many?’

  ‘Take your pick of reasons. This is a big state, so there were vast distances to cover. Throw in bad weather, inexperienced pilots, planes damaged in combat and inadequate radio systems, and there were bound to be casualties.’

  They’d reached a barbed-wire fence and beyond it stretched another paddock bordered by a stand of gum trees. Jim used a booted foot to hold down the lowest wire while he lifted the higher ones to make a gap for Laura. ‘Can you get through here?’

  ‘Thank you.’ She was glad she wasn’t wearing a dress as she stooped and climbed gingerly through. ‘Can I hold it for you?’

  ‘No need, thanks.’ Jim’s legs were so long he was able to hold down the top wire and swing over the fence easily.

  Laura imagined her father doing that when he was here all those years ago. He and Kitty must have come across this very paddock, carrying Bobby Kowalski.

  Her father and Kitty . . .

  Laura still wasn’t sure she could cope with this.

  ‘This is where your father landed,’ Jim said, pointing to a patch of open grassy ground that was dotted with yellow wildflowers and cowpats. ‘And Kowalski crashed over there,’ he added, indicating the trees.

  Laura thought of her father’s letters and the terrible guilt he’d carried for years after Bobby Kowalski’s death.

  I was pig-headed. I decided to push on. I thought I had just enough fuel to reach Townsville.

  She tried to picture her father, barely twenty-one, flying his tiny plane back from New Guinea and being blown off course. She could see him landing at dusk in this alien corner of the outback, so far from the base, while his buddy crashed and was mortally wounded and a brave young slip of a girl carried a lantern as she hurried towards them through the darkness . . .

  The description from the letters had been like something out of a movie.

  ‘Are you okay, Laura?’

  She looked up into Jim Mathieson’s handsome face. So hauntingly familiar . . .

  ‘I’m worried that I’ve made a mistake coming here.’ She felt as if she was intruding into something very private. Had she the right to pry into seventy-year-old secrets? And yet she felt compelled to speak up. ‘I suspect there’s more to my father’s history than I’d ever dreamed, but I – I don’t know if –’

  She couldn’t finish the sentence. She could very well spoil a happy family occasion with her pesky curiosity.

  ‘I was wondering how much your father told you,’ Jim said quietly.

  ‘That’s the trouble. He told us nothing. It was almost as if he was never in the war.’

  She wouldn’t tell Jim about the letters, certainly not yet. But she was shaking now, shaking with emotion, with fear and tension. She pressed three fingers to her trembling lips and drew a deep breath.

  Jim was watching her carefully and she thought she caught a flash of sympathy in his eyes.

  She felt emboldened to ask, ‘Am I right in guessing that you have a story to tell?’

  He gave a faint nod. ‘I do . . . but I’d only speak up if I thought you wanted to hear it.’

  ‘I – I think I need to hear the truth.’ Even though I might not like it.

  Now Jim smiled, reminding her again of her brother Charlie. Even his choice of dress, a blue shirt with the long sleeves rolled back, combined with pale-cream jeans and well-polished riding boots, reminded her of Charlie’s roving reporter garb – a clever mix of casual and smart, ready for action.

  ‘We may as well take a seat.’ Already Jim was crossing to a fallen log, giving it a kick, and then breaking off a small branch from a sapling and using its leaves to flick away ants and loose pieces of bark.

  He was quite the gentleman. Laura might have smiled if she wasn’t so nervous. As they sat together, side by side, Jim leaned forward with his hands loosely clasped and his elbows resting on his knees.

  Around them, the grass and the bush buzzed with insects, and Laura reminded herself that she must remember to breathe. It helped that Jim’s rather penetrating gaze was now focused on a clump of grass a few feet away.

  ‘My dad – that’s Kitty’s husband, Andy Mathieson – told me the truth in 1964, on my twenty-first birthday.’

  The truth. Laura’s stomach churned uncomfortably.

  ‘As you know, in the sixties we weren’t considered adults until we hit twenty-one, so in my dad’s eyes, that was the day I became a man. He was like the rest of his generation – very conservative, not someone to be challenged by his kids – but around that time, we were having our first real disagreement. I’d done well at school and I’d spent a few years working on the property, but I was keen to go off to Brisbane to university, to study law. He wasn’t happy.’

  ‘I guess it would have been expensive to send you off to law school.’ It was the only explanation Laura could think of. Why else would his father object? Where she came from, fathers boasted about their law graduate sons.

  ‘Well, Dad had made a big shift when Mum inherited Moonlight Plains. He left his work as a carpenter in Townsville to become a cattleman, but he really took to the life, and he raised all of us to be handy bush kids. Riding, cattle work, mending fences, mustering. You name it, we could do it. Then, at my twenty-first, he pulled me aside and asked if I was really sure about giving up the bush for law. I reminded him I’d always loved books. At boarding school I’d loved debates and even a bit of theatre. I wanted something different from cattle and mustering camps.’

  Jim kicked at a stone with his boot and Laura studied his profile. His face was a little longer than her father’s, his nose sharper, but he had the strong Langley cheekbones.

  ‘I expected Dad to blue about it,’ he said. ‘But he just nodded and gave me this strange look. And he told me to take a walk with him.’

  Laura found herself leaning forward, tense as a tripwire.

  ‘I thought it was a bit weird,’ Jim said. ‘I wanted to ask him what was going on, but I more or less sensed I should just shut up. Dad said he needed to show me something and he brought me here.’

  ‘To this crash site?’ she whispered, fearing what must come next.

  Jim nodded, but he kept his gaze fixed dead ahead. ‘He put his arm around my shoulders and he pointed to the pieces of charred metal.’ Jim’s throat worked as he swallowed. ‘He said, that’s where your mum helped to pull your father’s mate out of the wreckage.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘And he told me that over there a bit was where my father landed.’

  So there it was, the brutal truth, spoken so calmly, and now out in the open.

  ‘You – you must have been so shocked,’ she said.

  ‘I was. It was a terrible shock, but in some ways it was a relief, too. I’d always felt a bit different. And there was something about the way Dad told me the story, with his arm around me – I don’t know – I could feel his love and that helped so much.’

  Tears burned in Laura’s eyes, but instead of weeping, she felt strangely numb. She supposed her true reaction would come later, but for now, she was pleasantly surprised by her composure.

  ‘I knew it, as soon as I saw you,’ she said. ‘You’re even more like my father than my brothers are.’

  A corner of Jim’s mouth flickered as he attempted to smile and failed. In the di
stance, a crow called its universal cry. Ark, ark, ark.

  Laura shifted her foot away from a line of ants that trailed dangerously close. ‘My father was wounded in New Guinea,’ she said. ‘He was blinded and shipped home to the States. He was lucky and later recovered his sight, but I guess –’ She shrugged and then said, softly, ‘Jim, I don’t think he ever knew about you.’

  ‘I’d say you’re probably right.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  He gave his jaw a thoughtful scratch and then offered her a sad, sideways grin. ‘On and off, I’ve been curious, but I can’t say I’ve really minded – not till now, at any rate.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve stirred things up.’

  He turned now, letting his dark gaze rest on her, as if he was taking in details. Searching for a deeper connection? ‘I’m glad you came. It means a lot to have met you.’

  ‘And I’m glad to meet you.’ The tears came now and she swiped at them roughly.

  In the trees nearby, birds began to squabble. A family of kangaroos hopped quietly out of the shadows and began to nibble at dry stubbled grass. Laura saw them in numbed amazement.

  ‘Are you married?’ she found herself asking Jim.

  He shook his head. ‘Divorced.’

  ‘Oh, really? Me too.’

  They shared another shaky smile.

  ‘And yet my parents were very happily married.’ She felt it was important to tell him this.

  ‘So were mine,’ he said softly.

  ‘So Ed and Kitty were both lucky then.’

  ‘They were either lucky or they worked damn hard at their marriages.’

  In a tree nearby, a bird cried a warning note. The kangaroos stopped grazing and went very still, ears pricked. Then they took off, bounding away on their astonishing long, hinged back legs.

  ‘They’re so cool,’ Laura said.

  ‘Have you seen roos before?’

  ‘No. This is a bonus. But sorry, I distracted you. I don’t think you finished your story. I’m curious about Kitty. It must have been so hard for her to be pregnant and alone in the middle of a war.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it was. But the way Dad told it, he’d always been sweet on her even when they were young. Then he went off to fight and he was missing in action, and everyone at home thought he was dead. He and two mates spent a couple of months in the jungle behind enemy lines, and he reckoned the only thing that kept him going was the thought of Mum. Apparently, he was mad with himself for not standing up to her grandfather and marrying her before he enlisted.’

  ‘Really?’ So Kitty had already been on the brink of an engagement? This was a new twist. And then her father had met young Kitty and swept her off her feet, and vice versa.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jim went on, ‘Dad was in bad shape by the time he got back to his lines. He was in hospital up there for a while and then shipped back to Townsville for a spot of leave. He said it was fate to be sent straight back home for a second chance with his girl.’

  ‘I’m guessing Kitty was already pregnant by then?’

  ‘She was, yes. Apparently, Dad knew or was told that he wasn’t the father, but he told me he hadn’t cared. I challenged him on that. Most blokes wouldn’t be interested in marrying a woman who was carrying someone else’s child. But he reckoned he’d made a pact with God while he was up in the islands. If he survived, he would come back and make sure Kitty understood how much he loved her.’

  ‘Wow.’ In a weird kind of way, it was beginning to make sense, the pieces fitting together like patches in a crazy quilt. ‘And you learned all this at twenty-one?’

  Jim nodded.

  ‘Weren’t you upset? Angry?’

  ‘Sure, but then again, not as much as you’d expect. As I said, Dad told his story so calmly and patiently, I felt strangely okay about it. Of course, I wanted to know all about my American father, but he could only tell me that the Yank pilot was injured and sent back to the States. Dad said he was a decent man, but he never knew about me.’ Jim shrugged. ‘The rest was Mum’s business.’

  ‘You must have been curious.’

  ‘Yes, I was, but Dad asked me to promise two things. Not to pester Mum about it and, more importantly, not to go chasing after my American father while Mum was still alive.’

  The ants were back, threatening to climb Laura’s leg. She moved again, crossing her legs. ‘Your father – Andy – must have been incredibly tolerant.’

  ‘I’m not sure tolerant is the right word. That suggests he endured something he wasn’t totally happy with, but I never saw any evidence of that. Dad was a good man. We might question his decision, but for him it was the right thing to do. He said you’d have to experience a war to know how it can change your life in ways you’d never imagine.’

  Laura thought about her father’s letters and the turmoil of thoughts and emotions revealed there that he’d never shared with his family. ‘Perhaps that’s why my father and your mother both made successes of their marriages,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘After living through the war, they knew the true value of peace and – and family.’

  ‘I’m sure it didn’t happen overnight, but from my earliest memories my parents seemed to be happy. They were not only good parents, but they also seemed to love each other deeply. It was so obvious to all of us kids.’

  ‘The real thing?’ Laura asked softly.

  ‘Well, I reckon it can’t be faked. Maybe for a while, but not in the long term. I’ve worked in family law for long enough to know that, and I’ve suffered my own failed marriage.’ Jim noticed the ants and scowled. ‘This isn’t such a good seat after all,’ he said, jumping to his feet.

  Laura stood too, and dusted off her capri pants.

  ‘I guess we should get back.’ Jim squinted at the sun, which seemed to be sliding rather quickly now to the west. ‘We’ll arouse suspicion if we’re away too long.’

  Once again, he held the wires while Laura climbed through the fence, and together they crossed the paddock.

  ‘So, does anyone here know the truth about my father, other than Kitty and you?’ she asked.

  Jim shook his head. ‘I’ve kept my word. And I think that keeping it private made us closer – Dad, Mum and me.’

  ‘And I’m guessing that you certainly wouldn’t want it out in the open now.’

  ‘Not at this party, hell no.’ Jim stopped walking and stood with his hands propped loosely on his hips. ‘Look, it’s been a secret, Laura, but not a dark secret. I’ve lived with it for fifty years now and it hasn’t been a huge burden. I was happy enough to tell you, because – I don’t know – perhaps there’s a touch of fate in all this. But I plan to keep my promise and I hope you’ll respect that.’

  ‘Of course.’ She was still surprised by how calm she felt about this news. Perhaps it was the way Jim had shared it. For some reason she felt lighter. ‘What about Kitty? She knows we’ve met, so she’ll be wondering, won’t she?’

  ‘Yes, and I don’t want to stress her. I suggest we go straight back to the homestead now and put her mind at rest.’

  34

  The afternoon was sliding towards dusk and Moonlight Plains was coming into its own. The long trestle tables on the lawn were now covered with white cloths and laden with plates, cutlery and rows of shiny wine glasses waiting to be filled.

  The coloured paper lanterns that Bella had strung in the trees near the dance floor glowed softly in the purpling light as everyone dispersed to the homestead or to their tents to change into their party clothes.

  Sally and Megan were sharing a tent, as predicted, and Sally had barely opened the flap when Megan began firing her questions.

  ‘I thought everything was fine and dandy between you and Luke.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Really?’ The scepticism in Megan’s tone was hard to miss.

  ‘I thought I told you. We’re keeping a low profile today, so Luke’s family don’t get the wrong idea about us.’

  Megan’s eyebrows took a hike. ‘What wrong
idea would that be again?’

  ‘Don’t be dense, Megs. Luke doesn’t want his mother or his sisters to think we’re too serious.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because we’re not bloody serious.’ Sally snapped this a little more brusquely than she’d intended. Keeping up the pretence with Luke had been a source of nonstop tension for her today, but she wasn’t prepared to admit it. ‘I agreed with Luke. I think it’s a perfectly sensible plan. We don’t want everyone jumping to conclusions. It’s bad enough having you and my parents watching me like a hawk.’

  At this, Megan pouted, then poked her jaw stubbornly forward. ‘Pity,’ she said. ‘I really like Zoe and Bella. I think the whole family’s nice. And Luke seems like a really great guy.’

  He is, Sally wanted to moan. He is, believe me.

  ‘Really nice and extremely hot,’ Megan added for good measure.

  And that was when Sally almost caved in and admitted that she was not having a good time. Sure, she understood that Luke had come up with their subterfuge to protect her from his family’s embarrassing assumptions and questions, and that was considerate of him. But still. Honestly. How could she have guessed it would be so hard to pretend that the two of them weren’t an item?

  Which begged the question: what was their status? Truly? Friends with benefits? Two casual lovers who hadn’t discussed a future beyond the end of this project?

  She had tried not to think too deeply about this. But she was certainly stewing over it now, as she collected her towel and toiletries and headed for the makeshift shower in a canvas cubicle that Luke had ingeniously rigged up under a tree for the guests who were camping. As Megan had never been camping before and she was a bit anxious about the shower, she’d suggested that Sally try it out first.

  No sooner was Sally inside, however, stripped, clutching a bottle of shower gel in one hand and fiddling with the nozzle above her head with the other, than her thoughts whizzed straight back to Luke.

  So far, today had been totally dismal on the Luke front. Each time his gaze had met hers, he’d swiftly and purposefully switched his attention elsewhere, leaving her with a miserable weight pressing under her ribs.