‘Then don’t think, my dear,’ Hamish said impatiently, continuing his walk. ‘You will find it less taxing. And if we are honest with ourselves I think you will agree that the upper echelons of society are what you aspire to. In truth I have little need of such things anymore. All of our preening and amiable conversation has been for Angus, after all.’
Claire smelled the pungent aroma of tobacco as Hamish stuffed his pipe, lit it and inhaled deeply. They were standing beneath the branches of a spreading gum tree, the muted pinky-blue of dawn creeping over the countryside. ‘How can you say that?’ Claire’s face was white, her features stiff with exasperation.
‘Because there is something far more important than respectability. However, you are a woman,’ he spoke a little gentler, ‘and as such God divined you to see virtue in matters of little consequence.’
She bit her knuckle, glad of the half-light. What had watered this cold wedge which had so recently grown within her husband?
‘Once Luke has left with the mob, may I suggest a little sojourn,’ Hamish stated between puffs of his pipe. ‘I thought perhaps a trip to the Blue Mountains to escape February’s heat; then some sea air.’
Claire thought back to Luke’s revelation, how his own mother Rose was not yet dead when Hamish became her unknown benefactor. ‘You will be joining me?’ Despite the mortification of the expected answer, Claire needed to know.
Hamish smoothed his moustache. ‘No. You will take Angus with you. He will be attending the Kings School at Parramatta.’
Claire shuddered inwardly at the calmness with which her future was being decided. Did he really have no affection for her anymore, not even as the mother of his son and heir? Or was her current tendency towards melancholy making her presume the very worst. The very worst, she repeated silently; if the heir was no longer at Wangallon, what need was there for her?
‘Many of the landed board their sons at an early age,’ Hamish continued. ‘The advantages are numerous. Apart from the educational and sporting benefits, the boys mix with the sons of other wealthy pastoralists, forming lifelong friendships with those of a similar social standing.’ He paused and looked at her directly. ‘That alone should make you agreeable.’
Now he was ridiculing her values. Dragging her feet up the verandah steps Claire attempted to formulate some last drastic retort, yet she could think of nothing that would wound him. He was beyond the understanding of mortal men. Claire lifted her head proudly as she walked towards the main door. There standing in the doorway was Angus. His face was pale.
‘Mother?’
Angus’s mouth opened, fat tears began streaming down his distorted face to roll across his cheeks and lips. ‘Mother?’ His violet eyes searched Claire’s face. ‘Father? W-what will I do in the city? What about Wallace and Lee and –’
‘This will be the making of you,’ Hamish explained. ‘Now stop blubbering.’
‘I’m not going,’ Angus cried out, stamping his foot. ‘I’m not going and I’m not leaving Wangallon.’
Hamish closed the distance between his son in three large strides. Removing his leather belt he doubled it and flicked it across the palm of his hand. ‘You will quell your predilection to disobedience and accept your good fortune.’
Claire watched the adamant stance of her son and thought of his recent attempts at riding his horse. The boy had shown his determination that day.
Angus squared his young shoulders. ‘Never,’ he retorted as his father approached him, belt in hand. He turned on his heel and quickly ran inside.
‘Please don’t take Angus from me,’ Claire pleaded as Hamish furiously looped his belt back around his waist. ‘If you ever cared for me and I know you did once, don’t take my one consolation, please don’t send him away. Think about how he will pine, please think about –’
‘This is ridiculous. The boy will benefit greatly from such an undertaking.’
Claire tugged at his jacket. ‘I was schooled here, as was Luke. We could employ a tutor as you did then.’
‘The schooling was adequate for a woman as it was for the mental faculties of Luke. Angus deserves and will receive far better.’
‘For what purpose? To converse with blacks and the decrepit likes of Jasperson?’ Claire opened her arms to encompass the land about them, her shawl falling to the ground. ‘To contemplate sunsets and count cattle? For what reason does he need this great education other than to make my presence here redundant?’
Hamish gave her a peculiar look. Claire dropped her arms quickly, bending to retrieve her shawl. Surely Hamish understood her anger was borne of sadness, surely some slight vestige of the man she cared for lay curled within the hardened shell he’d woven about himself. Claire tugged at her shawl, gave a wan smile. In truth he’d only suggested a holiday – a sojourn, was that not the word he had used?
‘I think,’ Hamish said bitterly, ‘you have made yourself redundant’.
Claire, having partaken of some hot water and cod-liver oil, was still dressed in her chemise. She busied herself by rummaging through the cedar wardrobe, attempting to find something suitable to her disposition. She threw various items over her shoulder, each small thud helping to eradicate the most shocking of conversations she’d ever had the misfortune to endure. The bed was already strewn with finely pintucked blouses, three skirts of varying shades of brown and two of the so-called hobble skirts. Those she would not wear again. Claire tossed the black and grey aside. The constrictions of female fashion were becoming an abomination. She decided on a fashionable morning dress of water-weave taffeta. The pink was undoubtedly a little ostentatious for a dreary bush day and was more suited to a citified soiree, however Claire was in need of cheering up. She chided at her weeping, which threatened to engulf her should she not stay angry. All manner of emotions were raking across her body. Guilt, hate and hurt being the ones she could put immediate description to. ‘I hate you,’ she muttered, tearing gloves, woollen stoles and boned corsets from their drawers. ‘I hate you.’
Leaving the wardrobe and dresser Claire embarked on the contents of the large camphorwood chest from within which she began to yank at a selection of carefully folded evening gowns.
‘Mrs Gordon, can I get you some breakfast?’ Mrs Stackland’s voice echoed strongly in the hallway.
Claire’s fingers sorted nimbly through layers of silky material. ‘No, thank you.’ There were satins and silks, cottons and taffetas in all colours. With practised efficiency she swept a royal blue taffeta into her arms, the material unfolding in a shimmer to reveal a seed pearl embroidered bodice. Next she selected a burgundy satin with gold fringing on the skirt’s front panel and hem. Holding up each of the gowns, she studied her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Her skin looked sallow against the royal blue and bloodless next to the burgundy. She would need to do something about her pallor least she were relegated by the Sydney gossips to such a position of sickliness that it was deemed unsuitable to extend her a single invitation.
Dumping the gowns on the cypress floor a rip of pain surged through her. Claire buckled to her knees, clutching at her abdomen. She began to crawl towards the door, hopeful of leveraging herself up so that she could call for assistance. She slipped on the material beneath her and fell heavily as a rush of blood left her body. With a moan Claire turned onto her back, tentatively touching the wetness between her legs. She struggled upwards expecting to see some sliver of her unborn child resting amid the rich weave of the evening gowns. ‘Don’t look,’ she chided, ‘don’t look, Claire.’ With tired arms she wrenched the chemise from her body and wadded the material between her legs. Placing her palms on the floor she dragged herself backwards, her body sliding easily across the silk-and-taffeta covered floor until her back rested against the foot of the bed. Her head lolled back, her neck arching uncomfortably. Slowly the pain subsided, leaving behind a shallow emptiness.
Claire watched a triangle of sun enter the partially opened bedroom curtains. The elongated strip of heat
travelled silently until sometime later it struck the soft flesh of her bloodied thigh. She would take the Cobb & Co coach from Wangallon Town once her recuperation was complete. Claire flinched at the unwelcome heat pricking her skin and focused on the washstand with its ceramic water jug and matching bowl. It was a long journey to Sydney, over 650 miles. On their last trip south the eight-seat passenger coach took 35 hours to travel 135 miles. Claire began to heave herself up until she was standing. The jolting and boredom of the trip south was almost too ferocious to contemplate, especially when a single 135 mile leg included an overnight stop. She took a tentative step forward as new warmth, agitated by her movement, trickled down her leg. One could expect a minimum of five nights’ stopover en route as long as dry weather prevailed and the coach or horses didn’t suffer a break down. At the washstand Claire poured water into the ceramic bowl and sobbed quietly. She cried for her lost baby whose soul was winding its way heavenward, and for the man who was her husband. This time, however, Claire refused to cry for herself.
Catherine Jamieson was not a woman Maggie Macken conversed with. Indeed, on prior occasions when she could feign not having seen her approach, Maggie would fiddle with the contents of her handbag and cross the main street in the village of Tongue in order to avoid the older spinster. Today, however, no such escape seemed possible for as Maggie stepped from the curb, Mrs Jamieson followed. Maggie caught the woman’s reflection in the window of the grocery store and saw the determined swing of her arms when she doubled back to the telephone booth. Attempting to give an air of an errand just remembered, Maggie scrambled in her purse for coins as she ducked in the pillar-box red door of the booth and dialled her sister in St Andrews. Maggie could usually rely on a string of complaints to issue forth from Faith with the subject, her sister’s bank-teller husband, centring on ungratefulness. She listened as the telephone rang out and then stopped altogether. Damn. Unused coins fell into the change box. A sharp tap of knuckles sounded on the glass behind her. Maggie wondered how obvious it would be if she chose to ignore her stalker and try another of her ever unhelpful sisters. Instead she took a deep breath and opened the door.
‘Why, Maggie Macken. I do believe you went out of your way to avoid me,’ accused Mrs Jamieson with a wave of her finger. The woman had gone grey prematurely and Maggie patted her own brown hair as a lock of grey fell onto Mrs Jamieson’s brow. ‘Well?’
Maggie pursed her lips and surveyed her antagonist with one unblinking stare – from the beige of the woman’s sturdy walking shoes and paisley dress, to a face ruined by loneliness.
‘So you sent young Jim over for Sarah’s money, I hear?’
Maggie began walking along the pavement in the direction of her car. She’d parked it next to the tourist walk with a mind to visit the ruin on the hill once her errands were completed. The fortress remained Jim’s favourite spot and was the place where he’d first met Sarah Gordon. Wouldn’t she obliterate that day if given the chance, Maggie thought. She’d not been to the ruin herself for many a year. But now there was a need for her to return there, to revisit the very spot where two lives were altered; hers and Jim’s. History had repeated itself, for Jim’s life had been thrown into chaos through chance, and hers through poverty.
Behind her Mrs Jamieson puffed to keep pace. ‘The village is agog with the millions he could inherit,’ she called out. ‘I bet you’re very pleased with yourself. Having been jilted by Ronald Gordon you now manage to get your haggis and eat it as well.’
Maggie crossed over the narrow road, passed the white facade of the pub, and walked towards her car. Why the fates interceded to have Sarah Gordon bedded down for the duration of her stay at this woman’s B&B over two years ago was beyond her. ‘Whatever are you talking about, Catherine Jamieson?’ Maggie could feel her cheeks burning.
‘Revenge. You didn’t get the Australian you stole from me.’
Maggie opened the rear door of her car to place her bag of groceries on the cracked upholstery. ‘You lost him yourself,’ Maggie said with controlled slowness. ‘You with your airs, why I’m sure you chased him away.’
Mrs Jamieson grabbed Maggie by the arm. ‘Ronald Gordon never would have stayed. If you’d truly listened when he spoke of his homeland, you would know that. Besides, he was already married.’
Maggie winced under the older woman’s grip. She shook herself free. ‘He didn’t ask you to go back to his famous property either though, did he?’
Catherine Jamieson gave her such a withering look Maggie felt as if she suffered from the plague. ‘He asked, Maggie Macken. But I could no sooner leave here than he could leave his blue haze.’
This was news quite unexpected. Maggie attempted to breathe evenly, but concentrating her thoughts in that department only made her more breathless.
‘You should have stopped Jim from going. It’s not right to steal from others.’
Maggie collected herself. She was an upstanding citizen in Tongue, well married with a son and, very soon most likely, the Mackens would be richer than all their neighbours. ‘Steal? It is certainly not stealing. Besides it’s you who decided to tell what lay hidden for years.’
‘Because your boy hankered after young Sarah when she visited and you did nothing to dissuade him. If he’d been my boy I would have told him to stay away. It wasn’t seemly the way you let them keep company. Especially when you made no bones about the company you’d kept.’
‘Were it not for you, my boy would not be over there,’ Maggie countered. ‘None of this would be happening. After all it was you with your “holier than thou” attitude who told what never should have been spoken.’ Maggie wondered once again at the logic of hiding a nasty mistake with a lie, especially when women such as Catherine Jamieson were probably shrewd enough to guess the difference. Still Maggie persisted with her argument. ‘Besides, it’s the grand father who has left the will.’ She fiddled with the car keys in her hand. Catherine Jamieson was still staring her down. ‘It’s family business now and naught to do with you.’
‘You shouldn’t have done it. You didn’t love Ronald.’
Maggie blinked. It was strange to think that this woman talking to her may once have been young, both in looks and spirit. Maggie cleared her throat, pressed her shoulders back a little. She reminded herself that she had nothing to prove to anyone, only her family to be considered. ‘Of course I loved him.’
The older woman looked at her, unconvinced, shuffled in her handbag for a tissue and pressed it against her nose. ‘More than your running? More than the running shoes your own poor mother heard you lament about daily? If I didn’t know better, Maggie Macken, I’d say you were lying.’ Mrs Jamieson turned smartly on her heels as if dismissing an unruly child.
Maggie watched Catherine Jamieson walk away. The town gossips said the woman had been jilted, or that her man had died; whether through accident or illness no one knew. What would those same gossips say if they ever discovered that the man in Catherine’s heart was Ronald Gordon? That Catherine Jamieson never married because she loved a man she could not have? That type of love was something Maggie could not even begin to comprehend. No wonder the woman hated her.
Locking her car, Maggie walked towards the sign-posted trail. The locals had always been kind to her, believing her to be a young woman who’d been taken advantage of some twenty-eight years ago. This coupled with the fact that Maggie’s pregnancy coincided with enough money to finally purchase a pair of running shoes only added to the glances of pity afforded to her by neighbours and townsfolk alike. Overnight she was transformed. Maggie Macken was the promising local runner whose career was cut short by an unfortunate turn of events.
The track sloped downhill. Maggie slipped through wet grass and mud. In the distance, across the sea entrance, mountains rose enticingly. There was usually mist swirling about the peaks, while at the base the icy grip of the North Sea clutched at the rocky shoreline with each incoming wave. Maggie reached the bottom of the small valley and a pebble-strewn stre
am. She gasped as the cold water soaked immediately through her lace-ups and clucked her tongue at the stupidity of trying to negotiate an overgrown path in shoes meant for a morning’s shopping. Scrambling over a wooden stile, she brushed rising flies from her face, hung her handbag over her shoulder and looked at the overgrown track leading uphill. Her feet were cold, her body hot and the sun was beginning to prickle her skin. She couldn’t recall the distance to the ruin, nor whether the climb was a steep one. Maggie looked over her shoulder. Surely after all the years since she’d last climbed this track, hoping a young man followed, her memory wouldn’t fail her. There were at least two further stiles to be crossed. And the track was a slippery one, but quite doable even when wearing questionable shoes. Maggie tucked her hair behind her ears, stamped her feet in the soft vegetation to increase her circulation, and walked on.
Hamish rode out towards a pinkish glare of heat and dust, refusing to look over his shoulder at the woman who had so wantonly provoked him. There was the tang of smoke in the dawn air, signalling bushfires to the south-east. Aborigines, he surmised, adjusting his arse in the saddle. He would need some of Lee’s salve if he was to carry out his plan against Crawford. Age had made his backside sensitive to riding long distances. He turned his horse to the ridge and headed towards the creek, his gaze drawn every so often to the smoke hanging on the horizon. The Aborigines were adept at lighting fires to smoke out kangaroos, lizards and other campfire edibles. Hamish had observed the regeneration of trees and plants once these untended fires had burnt through the county, yet such fires on Wangallon were banned. In the heat of summer a conflagration could quickly ensue, destroying the valuable grasses so vital to his livestock’s survival and Wangallon’s prosperity. Of more concern was the danger to his beloved cattle and sheep. Hamish had been witness to the terrible sight of burnt sheep; the sweet stench of lanolin and the horrific burns. He wished no such pain on any creature – friend or foe. Yet out east, as evidenced by the sting to his eyes this morning, there were no such constraints.
A Changing Land Page 28