A Changing Land

by Nicole Alexander

  Bullet let out a long howl, which set Ferret off, and together the dogs made such a cacophony of noise that birds, kangaroos, an emu and five head of cattle bounded from the scrub behind them. Sarah experienced a falling sensation, as if she’d entered a deep hole, and then she heard a faint voice, a voice she knew better than her own. She accelerated in a screech of soil and engine revs to drive madly along the edge of the cultivation. The vehicle bumped over logs, careered around trees, the tyres falling down potholes and tree holes, even becoming airborne at times. She gripped the wheel tighter, oblivious to the shower of articles falling from the dash and Ferret’s yelping as she sped over the rough track. She manoeuvred the vehicle through the pushed timber yet to be formed into burnable heaps, and skirted the untouched impenetrable areas. With a desperate yank of the steering wheel Sarah side-swiped the rear-vision mirror off the driver’s door as she angled between a belah tree and the upturned roots of a mighty gum.

  Even before the mangled bike appeared at the base of the ironbark tree, Sarah knew that some form of payback was being extracted from her family. Something unmentionable had occurred out here many years ago and the spirits of those affected were seeking retribution. Why else had the 1909 diary entries ceased? Why else were people against any development out here? God, even Toby Williams had an opinion on Boxer’s Plains. It may only have been a gut feeling on her part, however it was strong.

  Sarah slammed her foot on the brake, screeching to a halt as the trees closed in, obstructing any further passage. Anthony’s bike lay near an immense tree, a run of rusty wire entangled around the rear tyre. She ran to the bike. Bullet passed her in a flying leap, jumped two logs and ducked through a maze of saplings, leaving Sarah to reconcile the mangled mess of the bike and the drag marks which led further into the dense timber. She ran then, as fast as she could across the uneven ground, noticing that the thickness of the trees began to thin until suddenly there was a wreck of a partially burnt house in front of her and a fox. Bullet was snuffling the animal as if greeting an old friend. Sarah knitted her brows together, then she saw Anthony, sprawled, face down in the dirt.

  ‘Anthony.’ She dropped to her knees beside him, noticing that one leg was propped out at an angle. Placing her hand on the middle of his back, she half-expected to see bite marks or worse on Anthony’s neck. There was nothing. She turned him over carefully, expecting a groan. Bullet left the fox to join her, whimpering softly. ‘Anthony.’ His hands were freezing, his face blue. Congealed blood matted his forehead and hair. The worst of it was the thin line of blood and saliva that ran from his mouth on movement. ‘Jesus! Anthony, answer me!’ Gingerly Sarah put her cheek to his mouth, dreading not hearing a breath or feeling the moistness of warm air. The slightest zephyr grazed her cheek. ‘Thank God. Thank God.’ Removing her jacket, she placed it over his chest and then wedged her jumper between his head and the cold earth. ‘Watch him,’ she commanded Bullet, who immediately sat by Anthony’s side.

  Sarah was back at the Landcruiser within minutes. She spun the vehicle around, reversing over the top of stringy saplings until she was away from the thickest of the trees and driving until she had line of sight to the open cultivation. She lifted the two-way radio to her mouth.

  ‘This is Sarah at Wangallon. Can anyone hear me?’

  Silence. She revved the vehicle driving until she hit the expanse of open cultivation and hopefully a better reception. ‘This is Sarah at Wangallon. Does anyone copy?’

  Static drifted over the airway.

  ‘This is Sarah at Wangallon. Please, can anyone hear me?’

  ‘Yeah gotcha, Wangallon. What’s the prob?’

  ‘It’s Anthony. There’s been an accident. Can you help me?’

  ‘Hey kiddo, it’s Toby. Where the hell are you?’

  ‘Boxer’s Plains. It’s bad, Toby, really bad.’ Sarah choked back tears. ‘I don’t think he’ll make it.’

  ‘You hang tight. We’re on our way.’

  ‘Anthony, can you hear me?’ Sarah lay beside him in the dirt; the cotton seat covers from the Landcruiser tucked around him for extra warmth. His breathing was ragged. Now and then there would be the slightest of movements from him: a twitch of a finger or a slight relaxation of his neck. Sarah wondered what internal injuries he’d sustained for he was still blue despite her best intentions at keeping him warm. A good fire was burning thanks to the matches she’d found on the dash of the Landcruiser and the plethora of leaf litter and branches. A branch of green belah leaves gave off a steady stream of white smoke from it. Each time the smoke lessened Sarah replaced it with another branch, hopeful it would help guide the men to their rescue. She didn’t dare risk trying to move Anthony for fear of worsening his condition and neither would she leave him to call on the two-way again. Sarah placed her head on Anthony’s shoulder and her arm across his chest. Bullet and Ferret were lying beside them.

  Sarah tucked her jacket under Anthony’s chin and hugged him closer. Bullet’s head was resting on his uninjured thigh; Ferret huddled close to his mate. Although the sun’s rays ceased to penetrate the clearing, the spot where she lay with Anthony was warm with love. Sarah could feel it flowing into the man beside her, even as she willed her own life force to help him. They were family. They both belonged on Wangallon.

  ‘Don’t take him,’ she sobbed quietly, almost expecting a phantom to stride from the nearby ruins. She pictured the stone cold Aga, hating the thought of him lying out here in the cold, alone as he had through the night. Anthony’s hand was barely warm, his breath tentative, as if he were deciding whether a continuation of his suffering was worthwhile.

  Sarah thought of the years they’d been on the property, of how her life altered from a fretful, unexceptional existence to one of renewed possibility following Anthony’s arrival. They’d been such wonderful friends, she, Anthony and Cameron; however, the fates were unstoppable in their intercession and Cameron was taken from her. She squeezed her eyelids closed. The thought of losing Anthony stunned her into action.

  ‘Anthony, wake up.’ His forehead was clammy. ‘Wake up.’ Sarah shook him forcefully by the shoulders. ‘Remember our endless rides. Remember how much you love Wangallon.’ Her tears splashed onto his cheeks. ‘I love you. Can’t you wake up so I can tell you how much?’ She stroked his hair, touched the slight scar on his cheek. What would she do without him? What would she do if she lost her Anthony?

  There was the slightest of noise similar to wind rustled leaves. Sarah leant down towards Anthony’s moving lips.

  ‘Sarah.’

  She reached for his hand, willing him to life.

  ‘You came back.’ His words carried the barest breath of life.

  She wrapped her arms around him. ‘Of course I came back.’

  Anthony coughed. ‘We were fighting for the same thing you know. We’ve been fighting over Wangallon,’ he stuttered between clenching teeth. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t I understand?’ Sarah rubbed his cold hands.

  ‘That I love Wangallon too.’ His eyes closed.

  ‘Come back to me, Anthony.’ She took his face between her hands. ‘Come back to me.’ A dreadful pain shot through her. A pain so soul rendering that no noise escaped her lips. Sarah rocked on her knees, the tears spilling down her face. After everything they’d been through, after everything she’d been brought up to believe in as a Wangallon Gordon, she realised that she could never be sure again that she loved Wangallon more than the man lying in the dirt at her feet.

  Bullet and Ferret were barking, the sound of vehicles and people carried through the still air. Toby Williams lifted Sarah effortlessly into his arms.

  ‘You’ll be right, girl. We’re here now.’

  As the clearing grew smaller, Sarah clutched at Toby’s arm. Over his shoulder she watched the fox walk the length of the wrecked homestead’s verandah before sitting, quietly contemplative. The clearing emptied of people.

  ‘What do you mean the lad’s not getting the
money?’ Robert threw his jacket across the table, scattering the local newspaper and the uncleared luncheon dishes. ‘Bloody solicitors. No doubt the Gordons have employed some big time lawyer. A barrister perhaps, or a Queen’s Council. That would be right. They start off like us. Oh yes and everyone admires them for what they’ve achieved.’ He stamped his socks on the rug. ‘Left the North they say; made a fortune in the new world. Well I tell you they’re no better than the bloody English.’ He threw his cap on the couch, rubbing his chin vigorously. ‘A bit of money and they think they can tell everyone how high to jump. Well, not me,’ Robert stabbed at his chest with a rampant thumb, ‘no, not me. We’ll get ourselves a flashy estate man. We’ll join the fray and the cost be damned. By the time I’ve finished with the likes of Sarah Gordon they’ll wish they’d played fair.’ Robert glared at his wife, the vein in his neck pulsating like a thick worm.

  Maggie busied herself by picking up the machinery catalogues Robert spent half the morning reviewing, and placed them on the table. She hung up his jacket and cap, folded the newspaper and set about tidying the luncheon dishes.

  ‘How can you be so damn disinterested, Maggie?’

  She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘He’s not entitled to the money. He’s had a second opinion from a good man in Sydney and he just won’t be getting it.’

  Robert scratched his head. ‘But how? I don’t understand how that could happen? Do you?’

  Maggie looked her husband squarely in the eyes. ‘No, Robert, I don’t.’

  ‘What the blazes happened? It was a done deal, Maggie. I’ve signed the papers for the John Deere tractor, ordered the laying hens and the material for the new henhouse. What happened?’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you more than I know, Robert dear.’

  Robert ran his stubby fingers through his hair. ‘I told Lord Andrews we didn’t need his contract. I’ve signed the papers for the tractor. I told the lads down the pub.’

  Maggie touched her husband’s shoulder. ‘You must ring them, Robert. Tell them there was a mistake, that you can’t be buying these new things.’

  ‘I’ll be breaking the contract. The finance company will make me pay.’ Robert sat heavily on the couch. ‘And I’ve nothing to pay with.’ He looked at her. ‘We’ll be ruined.’

  ‘You must blame the Australian law, Robert. That good Mr Levi will help us.’

  ‘It was him that told us it was a done deal.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘I’ll never be able to show myself again. I’ll be the laughing stock of the North.’

  ‘No you won’t be, Robert. People will understand.’

  Robert squeezed her hand. ‘I’ll do you right, Maggie. I’ll find out the cause of it and set our family square again.’

  Maggie kissed her husband lightly on the cheek. That was exactly what she was afraid of.

  Maggie took the box from the seat of her car and tucked it under her arm. There was a sleety mist coming in from the east and the halo around the waxing moon was a transparent white. She slipped around the corner of the pub and turned on the torch. The tourist signpost was instantly illuminated some feet away and she quickly found the trail and began the walk to the ruin. Her lace-ups slipped in the dewy vegetation as she slid towards the stream and then she was crossing the rocks, climbing the stile and trudging uphill to where everything had begun. The moon shadowed her progress as she mounted the incline, her torch beaming a path through the springy turf until the scent of the ocean was in her nostrils and the outline of the ruin rose starkly against a void of blue black sky.

  At the entrance to the ruin Maggie sat on a crumbling block of stone, cradling the box in her lap. Propping the torch up, she untied her laces and removed her shoes. She lifted the lid and tipped out the running shoes. They were beige and yellow. At the time she’d had her eye on a pair of white and black ones, however these ones were the very best and although she was almost a whole pound short, the shopkeeper in Thurso let her buy them. Even he’d heard that Maggie was going to be a great runner.

  Maggie put her feet into the running shoes, squeezing her heels in so that the skin bulged uncomfortably around the top. She ran her finger around the inside, pulling at lining frayed by time, and then tested her weight. The shoes pinched her and shortened her, so that her toes curled under like a hermit crab backing into a shell. Lifting one foot and then another she ran on the spot, briefly lifting her knees as high as possible. She laughed, breathless, at the folly of her exertions.

  The running shoes were worn every day by her for two months. She had left off practising in the hills and took to the dusty roads. Every step she pounded went some way to ameliorating her guilt. Every mile run convinced her of her actions. As her strength grew and her pace quickened, she argued less with her sickly mother and ignored her more. How could she be expected to cook and clean for the young ones and work two jobs when she was training to eventually stand on the winner’s dais in Edinburgh? There was just enough time in her self-imposed training schedule to cook up the oatcakes for breakfast, see to her mother’s morning cuppa and send her younger siblings off to school. Maggie spent her lunchtime practising her starting technique outside the general store where she worked, tucking her skirt in her knickers and heading straight as a die down the centre of the bitumen road. She left her job carding wool in order to chop vegetables for tea, leaving the cooking to her poorly mother. The rest of the time she ran. Maggie ran so fast that she overtook the post boy on his bicycle and the milkman in his chugging truck. She even passed Robert Macken in his clapped-out utility, carting sheep back to Lord Andrew’s estate. When the day came that the storekeeper reluctantly agreed to time her with his fancy watch, Maggie exceeded the winner of the previous year’s 400 yard dash in Edinburgh. She was ready. The next day the vomiting began.

  Maggie walked slowly about the ruin, thinking of another night long ago.

  She was walking down the road from work one spring evening. There were three miles to go before she reached the crossroads that would lead her home and she was tired and annoyed. Having been up since three am with the youngest suffering from croup, she’d then endured the pitiful ranting of her mother as she complained of the leg ulcer which would not heal and the husband who left them all for a job interview and didn’t return. For once Maggie wanted to sit by the fire and have someone bring her a bowl of broth. For once she wanted to hear the wind whistle around the thick walls of their crofter’s cottage instead of the ceaseless arguments and crying and tantrums that filled her siblings’ lives.

  When the car slowed Maggie barely hesitated. There was no other traffic, either in front or behind, and as she wriggled into the black leather of the passenger seat, her work roughened hands stroked the soft leather. The car’s headlights filtered the roadside inhabitants, scaring a black-faced sheep whose eyes shone a yellow green for an instant, and then they were accelerating down the narrow road. In Tongue they parked beyond the pub and its wooden shingle and in an instant she was following him.

  Maggie began to jog around the ruin. Mr Levi had contacted her today about the required paternity test. The landscape merged into an unending circle of stone walls, uneven ground, and a void of empty air that joined land, sea and sky in an unblinking swirl of night. What she’d done could not be undone. For what could be her excuse? Could she blame the gossips for convincing their village-bound inhabitants of the identity of Jim’s father? Could she seek forgiveness under the guise of wanting more of her life? And what of the family on the far side of the world? Maggie experienced a tightness in her calf muscle. There was a dull jab in her side. Pushing her fingers deep into the pain she continued jogging. She thought of Robert waking from where she left him by the fire. Upstairs he would undress quickly, dropping his clothes on the ground in a crumpled heap and then crawl into bed, kicking at the tucked-in sheets until they came askew with impatience. He would expect her to be there as always: meek and agreeable, grateful for having been taken in by him those many years ago. M
aggie was pitied then and she worked the misery of her condition, becoming somewhat defiant of anyone who suggested compliancy on her part. What else could she do now she was faced with the undignified truth? With youthful determination, Maggie pumped her arms and increased her pace.

  It was a straight agreement. An understanding based on mutual need and he wasn’t so ugly or so old to make her shudder or reconsider her actions. At the ruin Maggie removed her knickers, resolved not to appear immature or, worse, a virgin.

  ‘You’ve done this before?’ he asked, pulling at her buttons roughly until her arms were pinned down by the stretch of material and her breasts shone nakedly in the Vikings’ domain.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered as his mouth touched her nipple and his hands gripped her buttocks briefly before exploring further.

  She held him by the shoulders, biting her lip until it bled. Maggie experienced a shudder of pleasure, not once but twice.

  ‘Well you are a greedy little thing,’ he whispered, kissing her briefly as she leant back against the stone wall. If that was all it was, it hadn’t been so bad. Not so very bad at all.

  He undid his belt and dropped his pants. Maggie was staggered. ‘Surely we’ve finished?’

  ‘You may have sated yourself, my virile little mite,’ he pushed her against the wall, ‘but I’ve just begun. And running shoes are worth more than a few pound.’

  Maggie moved from a jog to a run. Having broken through the pain barrier her breath grew easier. She lifted her arms high so that the air whizzed about her, her hair lifting into the shape of a butterfly’s wings, and she threw her head back and embraced the pleasure of freedom. She gave a last fleeting thought to Jim’s father, Lord Eliot Andrews, and the brief explanatory note left on her son’s pillow. And then she was running again, running faster than she’d ever been able to in her youth. Maggie ran so fast her feet barely touched the ground and when she leapt from the cliff face she finally knew she’d been born to fly.