The Cattleman's Daughter

by Rachael Treasure

  There in her mind’s eye was the original hand-split timber Flanaghan homestead – the one they stayed in when they took cattle up to the high country in the summer. The billy buttons would be out in full force now, dotting the meadows like thousands of little yellow fairy lights at dusk. The lupins beside the house would be standing tall in a burst of colour, and the old twisted trees in the orchard would be drooping from the weight of tiny, bite-sized fruit. All around the bush would be alive with summer insects. She could see her family riding through the groves of lush trees on the south-facing slopes, where bellbirds chimed like magic, and hear the low of a mother cow calling up her calf, the clop of the horses’ hooves on the gravel track, the sound of the wind high up on a mountain ridge …

  She kept her eyes closed.

  ‘Well,’ came Clancy’s voice, ‘I thought you wanted to talk. Meg’s almost through her M&M’s so you’d better spit out what you’re going to say.’

  Emily opened her eyes and looked at him so directly Clancy took a step back.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know about the truckstops in Brisbane.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ he said, the muscle in his jaw flinching, his eyes sliding away to the floor.

  ‘The girls. Girls you paid for. Hookers.’

  Clancy shook his head.

  ‘It was a mate. He went there. I just waited in the truck.’

  ‘Liar.’

  He flinched. A blonde nurse with an upturned nose and spectacular breasts came into the ward. Clancy tried to avert his eyes but both Emily and he caught her perfume. Oblivious to the tension, the nurse moved over to the bed. ‘I’m Simone. Once your visitor has gone I’ll be moving you to a new ward.’

  ‘He’ll be going very soon,’ Emily said coldly. Clancy blew out a breath, knowing he was sprung.

  When the nurse was gone, Clancy looked anywhere but Emily’s eyes. She had expected him to yell, to rant at her, but deep down Clancy Moran knew he had broken her trust, and broken their marriage forever.

  ‘It’s over, Clancy,’ Emily said calmly. ‘When I get out of here, I’m going home to Dargo. You can keep the house, you can keep everything. But I’m leaving and I’m taking the girls.’

  ‘No,’ he said, moving over to her. He put his hand on her arm and held her wrist firmly. In an instant Emily felt as if she couldn’t breathe. A wave of nausea hit as she recalled with a blinding flash her trip in the mountains in an ambulance. It must’ve been on the way to the helipad. But, how could she remember, she reasoned? She was unconscious! Still, in her mind’s eye she saw Penny’s gloved hands ripping tubing from medico-packets. She could hear the voices around her. Kev in the front coaching Penny as he drove. A barking, urgent tone coming from the two-way as well. Then, Clancy’s voice. Angry and drunk – too loud in the ambulance. Penny shouting at him to calm down. Then the whispers, the secrets that stabbed hurt through her.

  Emily shot a look at Clancy, her face white.

  ‘You right? You’re not gunna puke?’ he said, loosening his grip.

  Emily swallowed. ‘You slept with her too.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That nurse. In the ambulance.’

  ‘Get a grip,’ Clancy said. ‘They need to change your medication. What are you on about?’

  ‘I remember! I remember you talking. You were standing over me, talking.’ Emily was shaking her head. She didn’t want to recall but the images kept coming and she had this strange sense of knowing. The way Clancy’s body tensed and his eyes narrowed she knew it was true. He’d not only been sleeping with prostitutes, he’d been having an affair. And he had raped her. She had been raped by her own husband. The room spun.

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘Calm down,’ he said.

  She lowered her tone so it was almost a growl.

  ‘Get. Out.’

  He began to back from the room.

  ‘Meg? Tilly?’ she called with a voice that sounded falsely bright.

  The girls came in from the corridor, doe-eyed, still chewing on their lollies.

  ‘Give your daddy a kiss goodbye and come sit up on the bed with Mummy now.’

  ‘No, Emily,’ Clancy said, his voice breaking.

  ‘Can we stay? In the hospital?’ Meg was jumping for joy.

  ‘Just a little while, sweetie. You can help me move wards. Then I’m going to ring Grandad and he’ll come get you. You can stay with him again for a while. Give Daddy the holiday he’s always wanted.’

  The girls let out a cheer, oblivious to the goings-on in the adult world. They nonchalantly kissed their father goodbye and clambered onto Emily’s bed.

  ‘Em,’ he said again pleadingly.

  ‘Clancy,’ she said calmly, ‘just go.’

  Nine

  Luke watched Cassandra drag off the head of her bilby suit and dump it on the grass.

  ‘You what?’ she screeched.

  Luke sighed. Cassy, awkward in the suit, tipped herself sideways so she could sit on the park lawn. Her bottom lip began to quiver. Oh, God, Luke thought, panicked. She was bloody well going to cry! In the two years he’d known her, he had never seen her cry. He dropped to his knees beside her and held her paw that was worn and threadbare. He leant his head into her shoulder and for a moment wished the Wildlife Society would dryclean the bilby suit. It stank of marijuana and a rank cocktail of hippy, student and backpacker sweat.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to be an environmental protector,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cassandra furiously, ‘but not move to the country!’

  ‘I thought you’d be happy I got the job.’

  Cassy was fumbling with her paws for her mobile in her bag.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m calling Mum.’

  ‘But you haven’t spoken to her in two years. You said you hate your mum.’

  She shot him a look. ‘Well, at the moment I hate you more.’

  Luke shook his head, suddenly angry. This job in the mountains was going to change his life more than he had thought. She was all bloody talk, this girl. Environmental crusader, his arse.

  ‘Cassy, this is something I really want to do.’

  ‘How could you do this without telling me? Taking off to bloody woop woop.’

  ‘How was I to know they’d offer me the job straight away? C’mon, Cassy, give me a break. It sounds like a really great job. Besides, Dargo’s only five or so hours away. Eight hours tops in a train and a bus.’

  By now Cassandra was crying.

  ‘C’mon,’ Luke soothed. ‘You can come up and camp out under the stars with me. Get back to nature. Use your new Trangia.’ For a moment Cassy sank into his arms, the bongo drums of the other protesters echoing around them. Sniffing loudly and using the back of her furry paws to wipe her nose clean, Cassy nodded. He could feel her coming round, but in truth he now realised he was longing for a clean break.

  ‘Cassy, please be happy for me. It sounds like a perfect job for someone like me.’

  ‘But what about me? What about us?’

  ‘Maybe you’ll find a job somewhere in the region too? You can fight for all your causes at the grassroots level.’

  ‘What?’ The frown was back. ‘Move out there? But my home is here. In Melbourne. What could I do out there to make a difference when all the lobby groups are based here? Honestly, Luke, you’re so bloody stupid. And selfish!’ The tears were back.

  Where had she gone, Luke wondered? That angry, strong, young woman who fought for everything known to man. She was anti-battery-hen, anti-live-export, anti-dairy, anti-meat-eating. He’d loved the way she ploughed over ground she knew little about with such self-assurance. The people he’d known had always been so balanced. So polite. Compared to her, so boring. She was rock-solid in her opinions. Unashamed. It had helped him ignore his own uncertainty. His dad told him, ‘There’s no future in farming,’ and his peers joked that leaving your farm to your son was a form of child abuse.
So he’d set out to the city, with farming in his blood but nothing in his heart to replace it. He was lost and adrift in his life. Cassandra had given him something to cling to.

  Now, as Cassy buried her face in the bilby head and sobbed, he realised she was lost, too.

  He made his voice gentle. ‘I’m going, Cassy. Whether you like it or not.’ She looked small and pathetic slumped there in her ridiculous costume. ‘If you love me, and you love the earth, you’ll come,’ he said, not at all certain he wanted her to come with him, but guilt driving the words. He reached out a hand to clutch her paw. Angrily she shook off his touch.

  ‘If you loved me, you’d stay!’ Then she was up and waddling over to her pushbike. She jammed on her bilby head and awkwardly swung her leg over the bike.

  ‘Cassy!’ Luke said. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  He couldn’t tell what she said back, her words muffled by the bilby head, but with a mighty heave she pushed the pedal down with the oversized foot and steered her way out onto the footpath and away down the street into the traffic.

  Ten

  ‘Hooly dooly!’ said Emily as she watched a girl wearing what looked like a rat suit sitting up in the back of an ambulance that had just arrived at the hospital. Through the opened doors Emily could see she had a near shaven head, numerous piercings and one of her legs had an inflatable splint on it like a giant floatie. She was yelling into a mobile, ‘Trust you to have your phone off. When you get this, get your arse to the hospital. Now!’

  This place was a madhouse, Emily thought. She had to get out of here! For the past few days, she had made herself walk laps outside the hospital no matter how much her body complained, trying to come to terms with a new idea of herself. Single mum. Separated. Divorcee-to-be. None of the words reflected the depth of fear she felt about her future and her sense of loss.

  She craved fresh air and sunshine, but it was debatable how fresh the air was in this big city and sometimes walking outside made her feel more depressed. She had to hold her breath each time she walked past the cluster of smokers hanging about the front door. Patients in pyjamas trailing dripstands as they hoovered on their fags. Even nurses and other hospital staff loomed around ashtrays sucking the life out of cigarettes.

  Today she’d bypassed the smokers’ area and walked a little further, to the hospital’s emergency entrance. Her bones ached, her muscles were tender, and her skin was blooming with bruises in an ever-changing palette of colours from black to purple, brown to yellow. Each time she lost her breath, the earth beneath her feet swayed and her vision was obscured momentarily by tiny lights.

  But Emily was determined to get out of hospital as quickly as she could, so she kept on with her walks. She leant on a wall near the ambulance and watched the medico trying to pacify the girl, who was surely on drugs or just plain nuts.

  ‘Now, you just sit back there,’ said the officer, ‘while we get you into the hospital and nice and comfy. They’ll take you for X-rays first.’

  Through gritted teeth the girl said, ‘The Wildlife Society will be billing you for the suit.’

  ‘I had to cut it. You can’t be too careful with suspected breaks,’ the officer said wearily. ‘Besides, that rat suit has definitely seen better days. You could do with a new one.’

  ‘Rat?’ said the girl horrified. ‘It’s a bilby. A sacred animal.’

  The medico clunked the trolley down from the ambulance with a thud.

  ‘Ouch! Careful,’ said the girl.

  ‘Sorry, darls.’ He spun the trolley bed about and pinned his dark eyes on her. ‘It looks like a rat to me.’

  ‘The bilby is a threatened sacred species of the Anangu people and it needs protecting,’ she said, crossing her furry arms over her bilby belly and jutting out her chin.

  ‘Really,’ said the ambo flatly.

  ‘That’s the problem with the world!’ the girl yelled. ‘People like you, who don’t care! What sort of patient treatment is this anyway?’

  Emily could see the ambo was really annoyed now. He folded his arms across his chest, matching the girl’s body language, and tilted his head as he spoke. ‘You want me to go out to the Tanami Desert, do you, darlin’, for the little bilby? Plant some habitat for him? Or maybe you think dressing up like a rat and riding a bike through peak hour is making all the difference? Makes sense to me!’ He struck his forehead with the heel of his hand, then reached in the back of the ambulance and tucked the head of the costume under his arm. ‘You can hardly count that as a helmet, Missy,’ he said. ‘And it sure does look like a rat.’

  ‘Don’t you Missy me. It’s Mzzz, and for the last time it’s a bilby!’ the girl said emphatically, before turning her angry gaze on Emily. ‘And what are you smirking at? I’m in pain here.’

  ‘Oh, I can see that,’ said Emily. ‘Lucky you’re not a horse. They would have put you down. At least you can be thankful that the staff here are great. You’ll be right.’ The ambulance officer gave Emily a wink and she smiled and began walking back through the hospital gardens, wanting to be away from this place more than ever.

  A few hours later, Emily sat sunning herself on a bench in the hospital grounds beneath a beautiful white-trunked gum. That was when she first saw him – a dark-haired boy, about her age, in an old Datsun. She watched him driving past in his noisy bomby car several times as he tried, without success, to find a park. There was something about him that drew her attention to him and held it there. She didn’t know what it was.

  Eventually he skilfully reverse-parked across the road from the hospital and came jogging over the busy road, weaving through traffic. He wore faded denim jeans low on his hips and an olive green T-shirt that read Save the Tarkine rolled up at the sleeves to reveal perfectly formed biceps. His Blundstone boots were city clean, and the thin leather bracelet on his wrist gave him an aura of cool. His longish hair was a rich mass of black curls and framed a manly, clean-shaven face, and his big eyes were the colour of dark chocolate. He caught her watching him and flashed her a smile. It wasn’t vain or flirty. Just friendly. She looked away, embarrassed, but he kept jogging towards her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘which way to emergency?’ Emily pointed. ‘Thanks,’ he said and she watched his broad shoulders and narrow backside as he jogged away from her.

  Emily tilted her head back and looked up to the gumleaves above her. She was amazed by how this grand gum had survived, squashed as it was into this concrete landscape. Beneath the city’s crust, the tree must’ve found generous soil to sustain it. Emily thought she needed to be strong, like the tree, though she was in a place that lacked the essence of what the bush brought to her soul. She shut her eyes, wondering why she was even thinking of such things. She wasn’t one to sit and ponder. The accident had changed her somehow, and she wasn’t sure how she fitted inside her old skin. Eyes still shut, she reached into her dressing-gown pocket and pulled out Meg’s drawing of the woman at the hut.

  ‘Excuse me,’ came a voice, gentle enough not to startle her.

  She turned and saw that the good-looking man was back.

  ‘Mind if I sit here for a bit? Hate hospitals.’ He shivered.

  ‘Sure,’ Emily said, smiling self-consciously, dragging her dressing gown over her cow-print shortie pyjamas. She pulled her feet in under the bench, shy that she was wearing R.M. Williams dress boots with no socks, the only footwear her family had thought to pack her, along with the worst of her collection of stupid undies. She wished she could put on a bra. She felt exposed and raw next to this man.

  She looked away, up at the blue sky beyond the tree, noticing a puff of white cloud shaped like a horse. She wasn’t sure what to say.

  The man inclined his head towards the hospital. ‘My girlfriend …’ he began. Phew, thought Emily. That eased the tension. He wasn’t back to pick her up or anything.

  ‘… she got hit by a bus, on her bike.’

  ‘Oh, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. Luckily
it wasn’t anything serious. It would’ve been much worse if she didn’t have all that padding. They’ve done X-rays. Just a fracture in her foot. They’re plastering her up now. She’ll be out soon. She told me to wait outside.’

  Emily nodded and smiled, all the while thinking how mean he was to talk about his girlfriend’s extra padding. Clancy often picked on Emily for getting fat. It seemed so many men were the same.

  ‘How about you? It looks like you’ve had a rough ride.’ He pointed to her arm that was heavily strapped across her chest in a sling.

  ‘Me? Yeah. Horse accident.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  Emily nodded. ‘Luckily I have a bit of padding too. So I lived.’

  The man looked at her puzzled, then asked, ‘How long have you been in hospital?’

  ‘I was kept unconscious for the first five days and I’ve been here five days awake, although it’s felt like fifty, and now they’re saying I have to stay longer, worst luck.’

  ‘So it was pretty serious, then?’

  ‘They tell me I’m lucky to be alive. And so is my horse.’

  A glimmer of something passed over the man’s face.

  ‘Hey,’ he said gently, ‘you’re not the girl I read about in the paper, are you? The one from the cattlemen’s race?’

  Emily smiled in surprise, half-turning to face him.

  ‘Yeah. That’s me.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Luke. ‘How amazing is that? I’ve been thinking about you.’

  ‘You have?’ she said, thinking how lovely he looked, but at the same time perplexed by him.

  ‘I dunno why. It was just one of those snippets you hear that sticks with you. I suppose I just wondered how you’d got on.’