Charlotte's Creek

by Therese Creed

  By now all her courage had deserted her. She pulled herself up and peered warily over the edge of the tank, scanning in all directions. There was no one to be seen but Shep, wagging his tail as he smiled up at her. Hooking her leg over the rim, Lucy pulled herself out, scratching her thigh on the concrete lip in her haste. A short time later she was back in the ute, fully clothed and heading for the homestead, hoping that no one would ever hear of the incident. But she was also laughing and thanking God she’d been too much of a coward to dispense with her underwear.

  Chapter 19

  ‘Morning, everyone!’ called Lucy, breezing into the kitchen.

  She’d just finished talking to her parents on the phone, a quick morning chat, and she was feeling buoyed up by their words of encouragement. The weather had cooled down at last, the mornings were crisp and the days fresh and golden. The previous afternoon, Cliff had visited and sexed the chickens for her. Of her three remaining bantams, two were pullets and one a rooster, and there were three hens among the ‘ordinary’ chicks as well.

  The week before, she’d also discovered the identity of the stealthy chook thief. After waking to the sound of urgent midnight cackling, she’d hurried out with her torch to discover the twins’ black-headed python from the top hayshed. The bulge of the young chicken he was digesting was preventing his escape through the narrow gap beside the door of the cage through which he’d entered. Lucy had opened the door and waited at a respectful distance for him to leave, and the following day she’d covered the young chickens’ enclosure with shade cloth. Since then, the python hadn’t reoffended, and Lucy now believed that her babies could grow and flourish unmolested. Life was certainly interesting and eventful.

  So now she beamed cheerfully around at all the inhabitants of the old Queenslander, but apparently no one shared her good mood. Mel’s nose was red and her eyes were puffy, and she was slumped in her seat at the kitchen table with her legs apart. Ignoring the clamour around her, she was staring into her cup of coffee and didn’t even look up in response to Lucy’s greeting. Wade was surreptitiously spooning white sugar over his porridge, on top of the brown sugar Mel had already sprinkled. Molly was chewing, but it looked like she was still on the first mouthful. She had the special knack of making one spoonful last the same amount of time that it took Wade to eat an entire meal. Cooper had finished his porridge and was getting into a half-frozen loaf of bread, eating it just as it was, taking the rigid slices from the open packet in the middle of the table. Billie was refusing to eat, staring sulkily at her porridge and waiting for someone to notice her. Milk was dribbling through the crack in the table where the extension was, and pooling on the floor. Lapping obligingly at the edge of the puddle was Bear.

  Lucy assessed the scene at a glance. She put the lid on the sugar and moved it away from Wade, then headed for the sink to get a sponge. As she crawled under the table to wipe up the milk, she wondered what to say to Mel, who looked as though she’d been crying. But as she resurfaced, Mel saved her the trouble.

  ‘Can you chuck me a tissue since you’re up, Lucy?’ She spoke thickly.

  ‘Oh, it’s only a cold.’ In her relief, Lucy accidentally said the words aloud.

  ‘Only?’ Mel challenged.

  ‘Sorry—I mean, colds are horrible,’ Lucy quickly amended. ‘I just thought for a minute you were . . . upset.’

  ‘Dunno why you’d think that.’ Mel’s voice was full of weary sarcasm.

  ‘You should go back to bed, Mel,’ Lucy suggested cautiously. ‘We’ll be fine here.’

  ‘Bloody cow’s waiting to be milked,’ Mel sighed. ‘Plus I’ve gotta take lunch out to the dozer driver and the fencing contractors in Ludwig’s Camp.’

  ‘I can do the milking, surely?’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘After the chooks. You know I’ve been itching to have a go!’

  ‘Itching, eh?’ Mel looked mildly amused. ‘You won’t be able to do it. Trust me.’

  ‘You just squeeze the teats, don’t you?’ Lucy picked up the chooks’ scrap bucket. ‘How hard can that be? You stay here and enjoy your coffee for once, Mel.’

  ‘Righto then, Miss Can-Do. Fire away.’ The sick woman waved lethargically towards the steel milk bucket in its nook beside the sink. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  Lucy grabbed the handle of the milk bucket in her free hand and made for the double doors, which were thrown open for the morning sun. She couldn’t hide her excitement at the prospect of this new challenge. But hearing the kids giggling behind her, she turned back, suddenly suspicious. ‘The cow’s not savage, is she? Is she going to kick me or something?’

  ‘Nah, she’s quiet enough,’ Mel said with another sigh. ‘Name’s Gala. Just put a tinful of grain in the drum and she’ll walk into the head bale for you.’

  Pausing outside to put on her shoes, Lucy heard Billie suggest, ‘Let’s go and spy on her.’

  ‘You won’t be taking your bum off that seat until you’ve eaten your porridge,’ snapped Mel.

  After she’d successfully confined the cow in the head bale, using Mel’s trick with the grain, Lucy sat on the squat stool, carefully placed down the bucket, and grasped a warm pink teat with each hand. First she tried squeezing, but the cow fidgeted, transferred her weight from one rear hoof to the other, and swished the back of Lucy’s head with the coarse brush on the end of her tail. No milk issued forth. So then Lucy tried pulling gently downwards on each teat. They stretched surprisingly easily, but still not a drop emerged. Next she tried pulling and squeezing simultaneously.

  She was concentrating so hard she didn’t hear Dennis walk into the shed. After watching her for a moment or two he roared with laughter.

  Lucy turned in surprise. ‘I’m glad I’ve provided you with some amusement.’

  ‘You’ll have a crack at anything, eh?’ he said admiringly. ‘Still beats me why a pretty, smart town girl like you would wanna come out here.’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘I’d had enough of the city. I was looking for a challenge. I’ve always loved wide open spaces.’

  ‘Yeah, well, plenty of those about here.’ Dennis chuckled. ‘You’re not feeling lonely yet, then? What about the fellas? You’d have to have a bloke waiting back there for you in Sydney, wouldn’t you?’

  Lucy shook her head and tried not to look self-conscious. After all, Cameron wasn’t exactly what she’d call ‘her bloke’.

  ‘Fair dinkum? No fella?’ He raised his eyebrows in amazement. ‘Well, I reckon you’ll be wanting a bit of man after a while, if you’re anything like the other sheilas that have come out here.’

  Lucy ignored Dennis’s remark and turned back to Gala. ‘The milk doesn’t seem to be coming,’ she said at last. ‘Am I hurting her? She’s stepping around a lot. And she’s looking sideways at me instead of eating her grain.’ Lucy gave the wiry black and white hide near her face a tentative pat.

  ‘Hurting her?’ Dennis guffawed. ‘You’re squeezing so soft she probably thinks she’s got a fly buzzing round her tits. Milkers are fussy bloody things. Temperamental. Just like women . . . But you still haven’t answered my question yet.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Surely you’d like to find a good bloke and settle down. You could live happily ever after, like me and Mel.’ He gave a cynical laugh.

  Lucy examined Dennis’s face. He seemed genuinely downcast.

  ‘Used to think the sun shined outta me, she did,’ he went on. ‘And I thought the same about her.’ He paused and looked out the little shed window towards the house. ‘Still do, really.’

  It was a muttered afterthought, but Lucy caught the words and they pacified her considerably. Dennis looked back at her and seemed to recover his spirits. ‘We’re a perfect match, me and Mel, wouldn’t you say?’ His tone was jovial again.

  Lucy frowned.

  ‘C’mon, mate, you’ve seen how she treats me, what a cranky old snake she is most of the time. Hell, she’s worse to you than anyone.’

  Lucy abandoned Gala’s teats and spun her bo
dy on the stool to face Dennis. ‘You’d be in deep trouble without Mel,’ she said reproachfully. ‘Even I can see that she keeps this whole place running.’

  Dennis tweaked a strand of hay with his boot, not returning her gaze.

  Lucy continued, ‘The amount she does for you—for everyone! Most women would have packed up and left long ago.’ She swivelled around again, turning her back on Dennis and taking up two teats once more. ‘Mel’s amazing. No wonder she’s unhappy,’ she added, channelling her fury into the squeezing. A fast stream of milk pinged into the bucket. ‘Hey! I’m doing it!’

  Dennis strode over and bent down close. ‘Here, let me help.’

  But Lucy straightened up, and Gala sidestepped nervously. ‘I’d rather work it out for myself, thanks,’ she said firmly.

  At that point, Mel walked in. Dennis grinned broadly at his wife. ‘Just giving little Luce here a milking lesson. Bit bloody harsh to send her out here knowing she wouldn’t be able to do it.’

  Mel regarded her husband coldly. ‘Thought you were in a great big hurry to tail out the weaners. Saw Ted getting the horses a good twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’d better pull me finger out then, eh,’ Dennis agreed. ‘See you, honey bunch!’ He swaggered away.

  As he stepped out of the shed and into the open air, Lucy caught a glimpse of his profile. All the mirth had gone from his features, replaced by a look of bitter sorrow.

  Mel came over and gave Gala a brief, absent-minded rub. ‘Here, Lucy, I’ll do that now.’

  Lucy moved obediently aside, but the cow was still eyeing her warily instead of eating her grain. Mel squatted awkwardly on the stool, her growing belly, partly concealed by her baggy shirt, clearly not conducive to the milking posture.

  ‘I’d better go back in to the kids,’ Lucy said.

  But to her surprise, Mel stopped her. ‘No hurry, eh,’ she said, unusually warmly. ‘The kids’ll be right for a bit. Stay and watch if you want to learn how. I’ll give you another shot at it in a minute, once she’s eating her grain.’

  So Lucy waited, wondering if perhaps Mel had overheard some of her words to Dennis. Once Gala had relaxed and was munching contentedly, Lucy moved in again and watched Mel’s rapid squeezing. Her body rocked slightly on the stool and her well-practised hands made the milking look easy. The milk was flowing fast now and the bucket was filling, the long white sprays of milk making two dimples in the creamy foam on top. Mel broke her rhythm for a moment and, holding a teat out to the side, opened her hand to show Lucy the finger action. With her thumb and forefinger pinched like a clamp on the top of the teat she rolled the other fingers closed along its length, in a wavelike motion. A stream of milk shot out.

  ‘Now you have a go.’ Mel vacated the stool.

  Lucy sat down and nervously took up the two teats that Mel had been working on. It took all of her concentration to coordinate her fingers, but at last she managed to extract some milk. After several minutes, everything began to fall into place, and although it was still very slow, each teat was producing milk when Lucy squeezed.

  ‘Righto,’ Mel said finally, ‘I’ll finish it off or we’ll be here all day.’ She gave Lucy a little shove and Lucy stood up, wriggling her fingers, surprised at how tired they were.

  ‘I’ll go and see what the kids are getting up to now. Thanks, Mel.’

  ‘You didn’t do too bad for a first try,’ Mel conceded. ‘And for a townie.’

  Lucy laughed and turned to go.

  ‘And Lucy,’ Mel added, ‘you know I’m pregnant, eh, the kids would’ve let on?’

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘There’s more than just fat in this gut. And I’m not trying to make excuses or nothing, for how I act, but I feel bloody rotten most of the time.’ Mel gave Lucy a wry smile before turning back to Gala.

  ‘I understand, Mel,’ Lucy replied gently. She again turned to leave, but Mel continued to speak as she worked.

  ‘I only ever wanted two kids,’ she said, ‘and I wouldn’t have even wanted them two if I’d known what little buggers they’d turn out.’ She fell silent and for a time the swishing of the milk was the only sound. Lucy waited.

  ‘The twins were an accident,’ Mel went on. ‘One lousy day off taking the pill and look what I got, a double whammy. And this one,’ Mel paused to pat her belly, ‘don’t ask me how this happened. I was on the pill, plus blood pressure medication that you can’t have if you’re pregnant. Bloody kid will probably be simple, or worse.’

  Lucy tried to think of something reassuring to say, but Mel kept talking. ‘I should have got rid of it early on, but as much as I wanted to, something always stopped me. I reckon we play God enough in this beef-breeding game, and the little blighter has as much right to live as any other damn critter. Not its fault that we don’t want or need it.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Lucy said quietly.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Mel grumbled, ‘it’ll probably grow up and hate me like Den does his parents. Do the dirty on me and I’ll wish I got rid of it when I had the chance.’

  Lucy felt suddenly cheerful, and touched that Mel had confided in her again. She couldn’t help laughing at the other woman’s perennial pessimism. For an instant, Mel looked affronted, but then they both heard the happy shouts of the children making their way over from the house. Suddenly, Mel started to laugh too; by the time the children arrived, both women were in a fit of giggles.

  Cooper rushed in first. He stared at his mother, clearly delighted and surprised to hear her laugh. Then he turned and grinned gratefully at Lucy. As she smiled back at him, Lucy thought her heart would break for this family.

  Lucy was a little vague in the schoolroom for the rest of the day, and the children made the most of it, rushing through their work more carelessly than she would have usually allowed. But Lucy was too caught up in her own thoughts to notice.

  Dennis was as worn down as Mel, she realised now. Perhaps Gwen had been correct in her prediction that their marriage was doomed. It seemed that, for whatever reason, life at Charlotte’s Creek had just about destroyed Mel and Dennis’s relationship. Remembering Lotte, Lucy wondered how many other marriages had suffered the same fate out on this remote station.

  Chapter 20

  Dinner that night was a rowdy affair, which helped to take Lucy’s mind off Mel and her tribulations. The three fencing contractors, Jacko, Grasshopper and Blue, had been camped out at the cattleman’s hut at Prussia for more than a fortnight, finishing the new boundary fence that they’d started work on earlier in the year. It had been a big job, with some of the terrain rough and inaccessible. For the following four days, they’d been working with Dennis and Ted on the broken-down fence in Ludwig’s Camp paddock, closer to the homestead. They were pleased now to be finished, and they’d joined the family for dinner. Adding to Grasshopper and Jacko’s jubilation, Dennis had just presented the men with an unexpected bonus of a bottle of rum.

  ‘Very good of you, Westy,’ Grasshopper said, grasping the bottle in his massive hand and beaming all over his stubbly pink face. ‘Looking out for the welfare of your workers!’

  ‘Just a shame not all of us drink,’ Blue said, looking disgruntled. ‘And your beer gut’s big enough already, innit?’ Under lowered ginger eyebrows, he looked at Grasshopper’s paunch.

  ‘I’ll still never be as ugly as you, Bluey!’ Grasshopper retorted. ‘All the more for us, eh, Jacko!’

  Jacko’s mouth was too full to answer, but he raised his beer across the table in agreement.

  They bantered all through dinner, Dennis egging them on, and Lucy, who was sitting next to Grasshopper, found that her ears were soon ringing from his booming laugh. Much of their talk was what she considered unsuitable for children’s ears, but Mel, who seemed even more distant than usual, didn’t appear to notice. Grasshopper was quite friendly towards Lucy, and she appreciated his efforts at making conversation, but she was relieved when the rugged trio departed to the dongas for the night, and she and Mel were left in th
e aftermath to clean up.

  Later that night, after Lucy had been asleep in her bed for several hours, she woke with a start at the sound of someone opening the front door of her cottage. It was a cloudy night with no moon, and nearly pitch black inside. Whoever it was made no effort to be quiet. He was breathing heavily and managed to collide with each of the few items of furniture in the room.

  ‘Where are you, sweetie?’

  Lucy immediately recognised Grasshopper’s drawl, slower and more slurred than usual. She got a whiff of rum, and froze in fear as she listened to him fumbling his way around the room, searching with his hands.

  ‘C’mon, li’l Lucy, where’re you hiding?’

  Lucy knew she should stay calm, turn on the light and order him out, but when she tried to move she found she was paralysed, and no noise came out when she opened her mouth.

  Finally, Grasshopper’s clumsy searching fingers found the end of Lucy’s bed, and then discovered her feet under the covers. She suddenly unfroze, drew her legs up out of his reach and cowered against the wall.

  ‘Very good of you, darling, moving over to make a bit of room for a bloke.’ He sniggered and then hiccoughed.

  The next second, Lucy was standing up on the bed and climbing over the windowsill, out into the cool night air. She leaped from the veranda and sprinted out the open gate where she stood for a moment, a little chilly in her thin nightie. Panting, she peered towards the family house but all was dark and still. It would be a shame to wake everyone up, and she could hear already, Dennis’s snide remarks about her fix. She turned and ran instead towards the dark shape of Ted’s donga.