‘It’s real sweet and minerally, the water in this bore,’ said Dennis, his mouth full of sandwich. ‘Never grows much weed. If we can only get a few windy days now, the tank’ll be full in no time. All clean and ready for a skinny dip.’ He looked at Lucy for a reaction, his handsome face deadpan but his eyes sparkling.
Lucy half-raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.
‘Nothing better than floating on your back in that big tub, looking up at the clouds, completely starkers,’ he added. ‘Top notch, eh, Mel?’
Mel rolled her eyes. ‘These pikelets are much better than your last lot, Lucy. Ta.’
But Dennis carried on in the same vein. ‘There was a time, eh, honey bunch, when you and I were younger . . .’ he began. He looked a bit wistful for a moment, then addressed Lucy again. ‘Used to come here quite a bit, me and Mel. Cool our skins after a hard day in the sun.’
‘That’s pretty crook, Dad.’ Billie wrinkled her nose. ‘We don’t wanna know.’
‘Bloody beautiful it was,’ he told Lucy, ignoring the kids. ‘You gotta try it sometime. Make sure no one’s about when you’re climbing out, though.’ He sniggered. ‘No pretty way of doing it, no matter who y’are.’
Mel laughed in spite of herself and gave her husband a playful shove. ‘You’re full of rot, Westy.’
Clearly delighted at winning a rare smile from his wife, Dennis elaborated. ‘I reckon even Princess Kate’d look a bit ordinary dragging herself up on the edge and straddling that thing. Poor old Wills’d have to hide his eyes.’
Now Lucy was laughing too. Cooper jumped up and began to perform a mime of what Lucy supposed was the princess hauling herself out of the tank. The other kids and Dennis roared with laughter, and even Mel was wiping her eyes. Lucy looked around joyfully. It was a precious moment of levity and togetherness, and she was glad to have witnessed it.
And although she didn’t admit as much to Dennis, she decided on the spot that she would take up his challenge. She didn’t know when or how, and no one who knew her in Sydney would believe her capable of it, but she would come back here for a dip—prove to herself that she could do it—in the nude.
Chapter 18
Lucy began the following Monday with a smile on her face, swinging the scrap bucket merrily as she strode towards the chicken coop. Her terror over the rooster was now only an amusing memory. Moments after she’d closed the squeaky wire door, White Trash stood in front of her, no longer game to attack but still determined to put on an impressive display. Lucy clanked the bucket at him until he reluctantly gave ground, her position at the top of the pecking order now firmly entrenched. Still eyeing the tyrant, she emptied the scraps, scattered the grain and collected the warm eggs. Only four. Mel would be disappointed again. The chooks weren’t performing well of late.
As Lucy was about to leave, there was a sudden commotion at the far end of the coop. Here, part of the roof had collapsed long ago, and the bent sheet of tin had been left where it had fallen. The chooks often used this rusty cave as a kind of retreat from the main throng. Now, though, two of the hens appeared to be engaged in a loud altercation there. White Trash rushed over to join in, and Lucy decided to investigate too. She confidently bumped the rooster out of the way and lifted the piece of roofing. A hen was nestled there, her head withdrawn into her brown feathery body, which was puffed up to three times its normal size. A black hen was just leaving. The brown hen looked decidedly depressed. Wondering whether she was injured or sick, Lucy decided to leave the poor creature alone.
‘Well, that explains it,’ Mel said, annoyed, when Lucy reported her findings. ‘She’ll be sitting on everyone else’s eggs. It’d be that bloody brown hen, eh?’
‘That’s the one,’ Lucy confirmed.
‘Shame it only took you a fortnight to notice,’ Mel said sarcastically. ‘And here’s me thinking we had rats stealing the eggs again.’
‘Baby chicks!’ Lucy cried in delight.
‘Yeah, beauty,’ Mel muttered. ‘The first two or three’ll hatch, then the hen’ll hop up and leave the rest half-cooked, to rot.’
‘But why?’
‘Eggs take twenty-one days to hatch,’ Mel explained. ‘She’s probably been collecting them for a while, so they’ll all be due to hatch at different times. I usually keep some in the fridge, then put them under a hen so they all hatch on the same day.’
‘In the fridge?’ Lucy was fascinated.
‘But it’s not worth the hassle,’ Mel said dismissively as she put the four eggs away. ‘Always end up with a heap more roosters than hens. Bloody pain in the arse, crowing and fighting all day and jumping the chooks. Gotta boil them to buggery to make them edible, and that’s after you’ve spent half a day plucking and gutting them.’
‘There must be some way we can save all those unhatched chicks,’ Lucy declared, undaunted.
‘Forget about them,’ Mel advised. ‘Bonus for the dogs, eh. I’ll go down later and mark them so you can collect all the new ones from tomorrow on.’
Lucy found herself a little distracted that day in the schoolroom. She gazed towards the chicken coop so often and with such a longing expression on her face that Billie giggled to herself halfway through the morning. ‘Lucy’s in lurrrrve! Who you got the hots for, Lucy? I reckon it’s Ted.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Lucy tried to keep the alarm out of her voice, terrified that they might say as much to Ted. She pictured his morose reaction, his lip curling in contempt.
‘We’ve had plenty of experience with guvvies.’ Billie giggled again. ‘We can read the signs.’
‘Ted hates girls, eh,’ Cooper informed Lucy. ‘Only fair we should let you know.’
‘If you must know, I’m worrying about some chickens,’ Lucy said firmly.
‘Not bloody old White Trash again?’ Cooper asked. ‘I thought you’d sorted him out.’
‘No, we understand each other now,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when we’ve finished school. You kids might help me find a solution to the problem.’
The four children all began to talk at once, excited and intrigued. But Lucy refused to elaborate, so Cooper suggested they meet in the treehouse at smoko. In a short time they had their heads down, keen to finish their work.
‘You could tape them into Rambo’s wool,’ Wade suggested, his mouth full of banana, when the kids and Lucy were congregated on the leafy platform later that morning. ‘Somewhere up near his clacka, where it’s warm.’
‘You’re a prize idiot, Wade,’ Cooper sneered.
‘That’s a very creative suggestion,’ Lucy said sternly. ‘You did say the eggs must be kept warm all the time.’
‘In the stock feeds shop they use a light bulb for the hatched-out chicks,’ Billie said.
‘Gran used an electric frypan to hatch out some duck eggs once!’ Molly exclaimed with sudden inspiration. ‘She told me!’
‘Now that’s a cracker of an idea, Molly!’ Cooper said, looking at his youngest sister in surprise. With her fanciful notions and thoughtful ways, Molly was usually beneath his notice. Now she looked up adoringly at him. ‘Have to be careful not to cook them, but.’
In the end, Lucy went with Billie’s suggestion to ask Cynthia Tyrrell. Plucking up her courage, she telephoned the bantam enthusiast that very afternoon.
‘It’s quite simple, darling,’ Cynthia said. ‘You need an incubator. I’ll send my son Cliff over to Charlotte’s Creek with mine for you to use.’
‘Oh no!’ Lucy objected. ‘The least I can do is pick it up.’
‘Don’t be silly, Cliff’d love to,’ Cynthia replied. ‘I’d send it out with the mail lady, but a change of scene is just what he needs.’
So in spite of Lucy’s protests, Cliff Tyrrell arrived with the incubator two days later. Without wasting any time on small talk, he went directly to the chicken coop and gently removed most of the eggs from under the brown hen. They took the eggs back to Lucy’s cottage where they plugged in the incubator. Cliff then showed Lucy how to pl
ace the eggs into the depressions inside. Next, with a cryptic smile, he produced six small pearly eggs from a carton he’d brought in from his ute. They appeared even smaller nestled in his large brown hands.
‘These are for you to hatch out too,’ Cliff said, his tone reverent. ‘Mum never usually gives anyone her hens’ genetics, especially not the Admirals’.’
Lucy thanked him profusely, smiling to herself at his reference to genetics. Cliff was as shy, blond and broad-shouldered as Cynthia was bubbly, dark-eyed and petite. Once they’d finished placing all the eggs in the incubator, Cliff accepted her invitation to stay for afternoon smoko, and afterwards showed Cooper how to construct a slingshot out of a forked stick and a piece of old tyre tube. The kids refused to let him leave until they had all been for a ramble down in the swamps to test out their new weapon on unsuspecting dragonflies and cane toads. At every turn, Cliff identified plants and birds for Lucy, using their botanical names.
They waved Cliff off just before dinner. Mel, Lucy and Dennis watched from the gate while the children raced his ute to the grid.
‘He’s not such a bad bloke,’ Dennis commented. ‘Shame about him being a poof and all.’ He grinned at Lucy’s outraged expression. ‘But you might be enough to turn him straight, eh, Luce? Hot little bird like you, I bet that’s what old Cynthia’s hoping.’
Lucy flared up immediately. ‘Whether that’s true or not, he’s just lovely the way he is!’ she declared. ‘I wouldn’t change a thing about him, not for any redneck.’
‘Oh, he’s lovely, all right,’ Dennis sniggered.
‘Maybe he’s nice enough to turn you gay!’ Lucy shot back impulsively.
Dennis’s smirk disappeared. ‘Oi, watch it, Luce.’
To Lucy’s surprise, Mel took her part. ‘I reckon it’s no different from what you said about Lucy turning Cliff straight.’ She shrugged. ‘Haven’t had much to do with gay fellas, but if there’s others like him then we could use a few more about the place, I reckon.’ She turned and walked back into the house.
It was a strange presence, the foam-insulated incubator nestled in the corner of the hut. Not really alive but containing life, it issued a constant inoffensive hum. It cradled the eggs, keeping them at a precise temperature, even turning them, just as a mother hen would have. However, Cynthia had explained on the phone that the whole process would not be as straightforward as it sounded. Apparently the mother hen would reject any chicks that she hadn’t hatched herself, unless Lucy could manage to place them under her by stealth, preferably at night and before they’d finished hatching.
So over the next few days Lucy lived in suspense. Ted offered to help her build a mesh enclosure around the sitting hen to give it some respite from the other birds. Lucy set her alarm twice each night and checked faithfully during the day as well, but the first eggs didn’t start hatching until more than a week after Cliff’s visit. Lucy opened the incubator one afternoon to the sound of loud peeping, and breathlessly noticed a triangular fragment of shell breaking away from the side of a brown egg. Two of the eggs under the sitting hen had also hatched that day, and Lucy was able to plant the hatching egg under her after dark.
In the morning, Lucy was delighted to see that the adoption had been successful, and she was able to add two more to the brood during the following night. The day after that, however, a chick hatched completely and quickly before morning tea, and Lucy came in to discover the tiny hatchling, still weak and sticky, teetering inside a small cup of shell. It dried quickly, transforming from gawky pink to a cheeping golden cloud of softness, but the hen would not have a bar of it in the daylight. Lucy was forced to rescue it from the mother’s pecking beak, and she carried it around inside her shirt for the rest of the day. Just before midnight she planted the chick again; this time the hen, fluffed up cosily over her brood, only glared at Lucy in the torchlight.
During the next two weeks, Lucy lost a great deal of sleep over the eggs, but the thrill she derived from each hatching, and her swelling brood of downy tots, made the fatigue a small price to pay. Over this period, she also noticed that the days with the children were becoming less arduous. The opposition in the schoolroom was decreasing and the children were responding to the routine and consistency she’d been working so hard to provide for them. At last they seemed willing to learn.
Lucy was learning too. The afternoons were full of variety. There was always something going on, and when she wasn’t helping Mel, she began to tag along with anyone who was willing to tolerate her inexperienced assistance, whether Ted, Dennis or Noel. She learned all about fixing leaky troughs and replacing poly-pipe fittings, mending fences and setting pig traps. She observed an array of bovine afflictions and came to know the medications and supplements for their treatment.
Lucy also watched a bullock being butchered, and helped with the bagging of different cuts of meat. It took the best part of two days, and once the poor beast had been shot, severed in half and hung, Lucy overcame her squeamishness to examine all of its anatomy. Quentin was killed at the same time, and for Lucy this was much more traumatic. To her amazement, the kids weren’t in the least emotional about their porky friend, and were quite happy to watch his plump corpse being submerged in a bathtub of boiling water so that Ted could scrape off his bristly skin with a shovel.
‘Don’t worry, Lucy,’ Molly soothed. ‘He would’ve been shot long ago with the other suckers if we weren’t gonna eat him.’
Lucy nodded, trying not to think of Quentin’s twinkly little eyes, and regretting how ugly she’d always thought him.
At Lucy’s request, Ted also began to teach her the names of different types of trees and grasses; her interest had been awoken on her swamp walk with Cliff. The melodious names began to roll off her tongue on sight: whitewood, lancewood, bloodwood, beefwood. Dead finish, Leichhardt bean, quinine, bottle tree. Tea-tree, ruby saltbush, pink natal, speedwell. Green panic, black spear, bluegrass, button grass. Surrounded as she was by cycles of birth, death, decay and growth, Lucy was discovering what it was to feel truly alive herself. She was also enjoying her time with Ted; all the awkward tension between them seemed to have evaporated for the present and been replaced by a comfortable mateship. Of this, Lucy told herself she was glad.
But one muggy Thursday afternoon, Lucy felt she needed some time alone. That morning she’d discovered that a fourth one of her young chickens had mysteriously disappeared. Counting the two who’d escaped from the coop and been killed by one of Dennis’s pups, she’d now lost six, two of them bantams. And looking at the survivors, Lucy felt sure that the majority were shaping up to be roosters, just as Mel had predicted.
The day hadn’t improved from there. The cooler weather Lucy had hoped for with the onset of autumn hadn’t arrived yet, and the recent light rain had only served to fuel an unseasonal humidity. Keeping the children motivated in the energy-sapping heat had been no mean feat. During lunch, with all the noise and mess of the children around her, Lucy came to a sudden decision and asked Mel whether she could borrow a ute.
Mel looked surprised. ‘Righto, then. Take the dual cab. Which direction are you heading in? Just in case you get a flatty.’
‘Oh . . .’ Lucy said vaguely. ‘I was thinking of heading towards Wilhelm, since I’m familiar with that track . . .’
‘You’re gonna have a dunk in the tank, aren’t you?’ Mel said knowingly. Lucy felt her face redden.
‘We’re coming too!’ Cooper yelled, shoving the last of his sandwich into his mouth and jumping up.
‘Look here,’ Mel barked, ‘getting away from you lot is probably Lucy’s reason for going.’
‘How do you know?’ Cooper objected. ‘She still likes us, Mum. We gotta make the most of it while it lasts.’
‘Pleeeease, Lucy?’ the twins wailed.
‘Better get going,’ Mel advised Lucy. ‘Don’t forget your togs, eh.’ She snorted in amusement, grabbing Cooper by the back of the shirt to prevent him following.
At first Lucy drov
e with conviction. She was wearing her lucky jeans, but on this occasion, she would be stripping them off. She had been to Wilhelm a few times now, but never alone; she soon realised that she had been overconfident about her knowledge of the direction. Several times she lost the track in the grass, and if it hadn’t been for Shep, who’d tagged along, she would have ended up hopelessly lost. Each time she deviated from the ‘road’, Shep would jump out of the tray and head off in the right direction.
At last they reached the windmill. Not giving herself time to think better of it, Lucy stripped down to her underwear. After placing her neatly folded clothes on the car seat, she looked down at herself with a sense of disbelief. Miss Lucy Francis, standing in broad daylight in only her lacy, baby-blue bra and knickers. The sun on her bare skin made her feel suddenly vulnerable and exposed. As she fumbled with the clasp of her bra, Lucy found that her hands were shaking.
‘Oh Shep, I don’t think I can go all the way this time,’ she told the dog mournfully. His tail thumped the dirt cheerfully. ‘Maybe next time.’ Still wearing her underwear, she clambered up on the tall stump beside the tank.
A few minutes later, she was floating blissfully on her back, limbs spread like a starfish, gazing up at the feathery clouds. After a while her eyes began to sting from the brightness; shutting them, she concentrated on the delicious coolness of the water on her back and the warmth of the afternoon sun on her front. It was heaven. She began humming, and the sound of her own voice filled her ears, which were under water.
All at once she was woken from her trance. A distant droning at the edge of her consciousness had become a vibration, then a shadow through her eyelids and a wind from above. Her eyes popped open. To her horror, hovering low above the tank was a helicopter. The next millisecond, Lucy was cowering against the slippery wall of the tank where the water was shadowy, with only her eyes above water. The helicopter continued to hover, whipping up little waves on the surface, but Lucy refused to look up again. At last it left. Lucy clung there numbly, her heart pounding. She hadn’t noted a single detail about the aircraft, except that it had been dark. But she’d clearly seen an evil, shiny, helmeted head looking down at her through the open door. Perhaps the helicopter was from the Dotswood army base nearby? Lucy hoped desperately that the pilot was a visiting international soldier who would soon be leaving the continent.
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