Eleanor found herself remembering the shared warmth of their bodies as they’d sheltered beneath a tree from the warrigal storm. ‘Where’s your dog?’ she asked, conscious of prolonging the conversation.
‘Tied up,’ Hugh replied. ‘Where he belongs. It’s too hot for him.’
Hugh seemed hesitant about leaving, although Eleanor guessed she only imagined such a thing for he soon swung up into the saddle, adjusting the .303 rifle in its holster.
‘Righto, righto,’ complained Rex. ‘We best get ourselves down to the shed, Eleanor.’
Hugh touched the brim of his hat and turned his mount after the jackeroo.
‘Come on then,’ the gardener said impatiently.
Eleanor didn’t look back as she and Rex drove away from the homestead. She had the strongest urge to do so, which made her even more determined not to. This is ridiculous, she thought. Not only was Hugh Goward fifteen years her senior and an employee at River Run, he was so unlike the young men she’d previously walked out with, so unlike Dante, the man she’d given herself to.
‘Got his way then, eh?’ said Rex, as the truck travelled down the bumpy road. ‘The young whippersnapper.’
Eleanor was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
With his eyes on the road ahead, Rex gave a snort. ‘The golden-haired boy. Got ourselves a new Stud Master, we have. And your stepfather ain’t too pleased.’
Eleanor didn’t respond. It wasn’t really Rex’s place to comment on the managerial ladder although she was quietly pleased that he took her into his confidence.
‘You’re for him, aren’t you?’
She felt her face flush. ‘For him?’
‘Yes,’ said Rex. ‘You think he’d be good in the role, better than your stepfather.’
‘Oh. Yes, yes I do, but obviously it was Mum’s decision.’
‘It’s a done deal then. I reckon if a man has two River Run women on-side, he can pretty much take on the world. Well, good luck to him, I say. Let’s just hope he knows what he’s doing.’
It was nearing the hottest part of the day as they pulled up outside the woolshed. The noise of the shed hit them immediately. Perspiration made every inch of clothing stick to Eleanor’s body and she wiggled her shoulders and tugged at her shirt, trying to ease the damp fabric away from her skin.
Once out of the vehicle, Rex looked skyward. ‘It’s been a long time since I saw a blood month like this.’
Eleanor felt as if she was cooking from the inside out, as if the very heart of her was melting. And it would be worse within the confines of the woolshed. As if reading her mind, Rex drew her to the shade of the adjoining shed where freshly pressed bales had been rolled for storage before transportation to market.
‘We’ll take a breather out here, girl, before entering the furnace.’
Eleanor was happy to oblige. They sat on a bale, staring out at the endless tangle of trees and shrubs that opened and closed across country stretched brown and flat.
‘Do you ever wonder what’s beyond the horizon?’ asked Eleanor, wetting her dry lips.
‘To answer a question like that,’ Rex replied, ‘is to make a man feel too small.’
‘But still,’ she persisted, ‘do you wonder?’
The old gardener scratched at a jowly neck. ‘No, the bush makes a man think too much. If he’s a loner and a dreamer, well, a man can get messed up in his own thoughts. He thinks on the same thing, again and again. Gets fixated. Loses perspective.’ Rex tapped the side of his head. ‘It’s hard out here. So no, I don’t want to be thinking about what’s beyond the beyond. I’ve got enough problems just plain thinking. Your sister’s fiancé was a bit like that. Always thinking. That’s what killed him in the end. He couldn’t forget. Couldn’t forget what they did to him over there.’
‘Maybe you could tell Lesley that. It might help.’ Eleanor observed the muscles in his scraggly face stretching and contracting like a cow chewing on its cud.
‘I’ll tell her, but it won’t help,’ he finally answered.
‘Do you think Lesley is okay, Rex? I mean with that man, with Chad roaming about?’
‘She’s a smart girl, your sister,’ Rex said.
Eleanor allowed herself to be pacified. ‘Lesley didn’t trust him.’
‘Well then, there you go.’
Eleanor wondered at her own naivety.
‘I can hear your brain ticking over,’ commented Rex.
She gave a half-hearted smile. Eleanor had been considering Chad’s easy charm and Hugh’s solid presence. Comparing the two men, who in less than a week had become central fixtures in her life. Attractive men certainly knew how to influence her, understood how to deceive. Chad, Dante and now Hugh? He was Stud Master now after all and she’d helped him attain the position. Was he the right man for the job?
‘Rex, about Hugh –’
The gardener stood, stretching out his lower back. ‘I’m stiffer than a board,’ he commented. ‘He’s got it all ahead of him, girl,’ Rex patted her gruffly on the shoulder, ‘and if he doesn’t work out,’ his old eyes glimmered, ‘well, then, we’ll give Hugh Goward the boot.’ He grinned mischievously.
Immediately Eleanor felt better about Hugh’s promotion and her part in it. Nothing was written in stone after all. But she hoped Hugh was good at his new job. River Run needed the best. That’s what was most important, she told herself. The fact that she liked him, quite a lot, was irrelevant.
In a nearby tree, a bird fell from a branch, landing dead on the ground.
‘Heatstroke,’ Rex proclaimed. ‘Had a day like this last February. Came out of nowhere the heat did and the birds dropped like flies. Still, it’s a damn fine day to be alive even if we’ve got troubles akin to a tangled roll of barbed wire. But you, girl, I’d imagine you’d be itching to hit the big smoke after everything’s sorted. It’s just been one calamity after another since you arrived home.’
‘It’s not so bad,’ replied Eleanor.
Rex gave his signature grin. ‘You’ve been making yourself useful. And a person who’s useful can eventually become indispensable.’ He winked. ‘It’s worth remembering that, I reckon.’
Indispensable. That was something Eleanor had never considered of herself. Especially with her role at the hardware store. Anyone could do it.
‘Come on then,’ said Rex. ‘Let’s front the mob inside and make sure they’re shearing these sheep of ours proper-like.’
But Eleanor didn’t immediately follow Rex inside the woolshed. Something else caught her attention. Out in the west, hugging the horizon, brownish clouds swirled.
Chapter Forty
It was after five o’clock by the time they made it back to the homestead. Kicking off their boots, Rex followed Eleanor indoors to where Mrs Howell waited. A swarm of flies took advantage of the briefly open door.
‘Lesley’s here.’ The housekeeper swished at the insects with a swatter. ‘Your mother found her at the cemetery. She’s upstairs with her now.’
‘Holy trousers.’ Rex sunk into a chair, removing his hat. ‘I’m glad to hear that.’
Eleanor joined him at the table, pushing sweat-plastered hair from her face and stretching out her legs to relieve the ache in her thighs and backside. Having spent the last few hours helping in the shed, she was exhausted.
‘You look like you’ve both seen enough of the day.’ Mrs Howell poured tepid water into two tall glasses. ‘No ice, I’m afraid. I used what we had in the bath to cool your sister down. The generator overheated and cut out. I haven’t dared touch it or open a fridge since then.’
‘And she’s alright, Mrs Howell?’ asked Eleanor. ‘I mean, apart from being hot and tired?’ The water was warm in her mouth.
The housekeeper wrung out a clean cloth and gestured for Eleanor to wipe her face and neck. She obeyed as though still a child, noting the grime left on the pale cloth.
‘How right can a person be, who’s silly enough to be out in this heat without a hat or a waterbag?’ Mrs Howell retrieved the dirty
washer, dropping it in the sink. ‘Gave me the willies when your mother staggered in with her. Half-carried her, she did, up the stairs.’ The housekeeper blew her nose. ‘I’ll never understand how one person can have the strength of an ox, and another be weak and dainty when they’re blood kin.’
‘So she’s not maudlin?’ Rex held out his glass for more water, consuming the offering noisily.
‘Well, I can’t answer that.’ Mrs Howell directed the oscillating fan so that the hot air blew directly at the table. Instantly the perspiration dried on Eleanor’s skin. ‘As far as I know Lesley hasn’t said one word. She’s been affected right badly by the heat.’
‘I should go to her.’ Eleanor rose.
Mrs Howell was beside her instantly, placing a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘You’ll do no such thing, my girl.’ She pushed her back down into the kitchen chair. ‘You’ve been out working in the blazing heat and I don’t mind telling you that you look a fright. So you can just keep to that chair for a bit and,’ she placed the water jug in front of her, ‘you’ll be finishing that water before you move.’
‘Sipping it though,’ Rex decreed, ‘no gulping.’
The housekeeper folded her arms. ‘That’s right. No gulping it down either.’
Eleanor took another sip of the blood-warm water. This was a turn-up for the books, those two actually agreeing on something.
Rex slammed his hand down on a tiny black sugar ant that was making its way in a zigzag path across the surface of the table. The housekeeper immediately began a reconnaissance of the kitchen, finally locating a trail of ants travelling across the windowsill, down the wall and onto the sink.
‘Rain?’ Mrs Howell asked the gardener.
Rex screwed up his nose. ‘Seen ants I have, same as this lot, out west at Mount Hope. Gets a man all tingly with expectation. Three black cockatoos in a Belah tree, invading ants, flowering cacti, red sky in the morning, crowing roosters that keep the rain away. My father’s patch of hard-scratched heaven had more dead roosters than I’ve had cooked breakfasts. The clouds come in, the rain comes down and rain it does. Rains for forty days and forty nights and you only get forty points. I’m just saying that’s Mount Hope and they’ve got the same ants as us.’
‘So you’re not hopeful,’ the housekeeper answered with more than a hint of sarcasm.
Rex shook his head solemnly.
‘And no more problems at the shed, Rex?’ Mrs Howell refilled Eleanor’s glass and watched her drink it.
‘Nope, anyone would think we’d employed a bunch of choirboys this afternoon.’ The gardener drained his glass. ‘There’s been no sign of the others then? Mr Webber or Goward?’
‘No sign,’ Mrs Howell answered.
‘Righto.’ Rex placed both hands on the kitchen table and levered himself tiredly out of the chair. ‘I’ll check the generator in the power house. No other news?’
The housekeeper brought the swatter down on a large blowfly, squashing the insect on the table with a thud. ‘Haven’t seen a soul. And the police haven’t shown themselves either.’ Scooping up the mangled insect, Mrs Howell flicked the remains from the swatter into the sink and then topped up Eleanor’s glass.
‘Well, keep the doors locked, Mrs Howell,’ advised Rex.
‘Right you are, Rex. And no more wandering around for you, young lady,’ the housekeeper directed at Eleanor. ‘Your mother says you’re to stay put in this house as well.’
After Rex had departed, Mrs Howell sat a dish on the kitchen table. The bowl was filled with a brown liquid. ‘I made tea.’ She dipped a finger into the container. ‘It’s cooled off enough now, as have you. You’ve gone from poppy-red to pansy-pink,’ she observed. ‘Finish that water and then you can take this up to your sister’s room with these clean cloths. The tannin will help take the sting out of the sunburn.’
Eleanor stood, surprised at how stiff and spent she felt. ‘Will she be alright, do you think?’
The housekeeper handed Eleanor the bowl and towels. ‘My dear girl, the sunburn, fatigue and dehydration can be managed, but as for what else ails your sister …’ She tutted. ‘Honestly, I don’t know anything anymore.’
The dark bedroom was a touch cooler compared to the rest of the homestead. Wet sheets were strewn across open windows, balcony doors and on large clothes racks that usually sat in the laundry during winter. Two electric fans started up as the generator came back on line; they blew air through the damp linen hanging on wooden frames, the gentle circulation directed towards the large four-poster bed. Beneath a canopy of beige silk and gathered mosquito netting, Lesley lay in her underclothes. Her elder sister, dwarfed by her grandmother’s bed, within which Georgia herself had been born, appeared to be sleeping although their mother was at her side, alternatively mopping her daughter’s brow and talking softly. She turned at Eleanor’s arrival.
‘Good, you’re here.’ Georgia appeared hot and dusty. Her hat and scarf lay on the floor where they’d been discarded, her riding boots flung in a corner.
‘Mrs Howell said to bring this up.’ Eleanor moved closer to the bed, sitting the bowl on a side table.
‘None of the others back yet?’ She took in her younger daughter’s appearance. ‘It’s a bad day to be outside.’
‘No-one, and no sign of the police either,’ Eleanor told her mother. ‘Shearing finished up for the day with no other problems. Rex said they were like a bunch of choirboys. And he’s right. The shed was very subdued.’
‘Good. I wondered if they’d pull up stumps early with the heat.’ With the departure of the Winslows, the society gloss that came so easily to Georgia Webber was also diminished.
‘How is she, Mum?’ asked Eleanor. Her sister looked terribly vulnerable.
‘She’s suffering, but Lesley is young. She will survive the exposure, hopefully with minimal scarring.’
Eleanor felt tears well. How had it come to this? If this was what love did, then she would go through life emotionally detached. She would cut her palm and watch her blood drip into the red soil of River Run and swear to the old gods and the new that she would never love again. Eleanor didn’t want such passion in her life. Who would, if the loss of it could lead to this?
‘Fast asleep,’ Georgia soaked the clean rags in the cold tea, ‘that’s how I found her. Resting against his headstone. Lovely man, Marcus. A lovely, lovely man.’
‘Don’t, Mum.’
Georgia lay the wet material in strips across Lesley’s arms and legs, the brown water trickling down bare skin to stain the white sheets beneath. Her older sister was burnt badly by the sun. Her face was beetroot-red and her lips were already blistering. Eleanor drew a chair to her sister’s bedside as Georgia lay another rag across the burning forehead. The blue day-dress Lesley had been wearing barely protected her from the weather. There was only the slightest difference in colour between Lesley’s exposed skin and that which had been covered.
‘After Marcus died I tried to reason with her,’ Georgia began. ‘I knew only she could deal with her grief, and the terrible shock of being the one to find him. I was aware that all we could do was offer support, our love, but maybe we could have done more,’ she said pensively. ‘I never understood the depth of her despair until I found her in the bath.’ Her voice quivered. ‘It’s not something I could easily understand, Eleanor.’
‘What? The extent of her love for Marcus?’
‘No. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s a weakness, isn’t it, to consider taking your own life instead of picking up the pieces and looking to the future.’
Lesley gave a whimper in her sleep. Reaching across the expanse of white linen, Eleanor gently touched her sister’s hand.
‘I tell myself, she’ll pull through, that she’ll recover, but it’s been years now, Elly, and nothing and no-one seems to be capable of drawing Lesley out of the melancholia that’s engulfed her. The doctors suggested an asylum initially; electric shock therapy, ice-baths, rigorous exercise.’ She looked briefly heavenw
ard. ‘If only your father were alive at the time.’ Georgia gave a little cough as if the action might clear not only her throat, but memory as well. ‘Colin thought such treatments should have been pursued. Apparently there have been good results with returned soldiers of known mental fragility. I didn’t agree. Another may have. How could a mother send a child to such a place? To endure such indignities, alone. And there was something else …’ It was as if Georgia spoke to herself, weighing the merits of a decision made long ago. ‘To be rendered so low by such treatments, when there is already such despair. I was foolish, I suppose, to consider a more gracious alternative, to look at the world through rose-tinted glasses.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘That’s what my mother would have said. I can hear her voice so plainly. You’re a River, Georgia, and the Rivers are made of sterner stuff. Let me tell you, Elly, it’s a hard road indeed to be an only child.’
‘You made the only decision you believed right at the time,’ Eleanor placated.
‘Love caused Lesley’s grief and so I hoped that love would save her.’
‘But you sent her to a convent,’ Eleanor interrupted, not comprehending.
Georgia swirled the pieces of rag in the brown water. ‘Our love, the love of her family, wasn’t enough, Elly. You know that. If there was any chance, any chance at all that Lesley was to be saved from the terrible anguish that’s eating her, I thought perhaps the convent would help.’ Lifting the bowl of cold tea, she placed it closer to Lesley. ‘The convent offered love, prayer and reflection within a cosseted environment. My own mother depended on the Virgin for guidance, swore to me in my youth that with faith, with deep belief, came understanding and understanding allowed one to withstand anything in life.’ Georgia met Eleanor’s gaze. ‘But I was wrong. Religion has not saved your sister.’
‘Maybe it did for a time, Mum.’
‘Until I made the mistake of bringing her back here, you mean? I expected your sister to be of stronger stock,’ she answered defensively.
‘You didn’t expect it, Mum, you hoped that was the case,’ replied Eleanor carefully.
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