Lunch with a Soldier

by Derek Hansen

  ‘Yes?’

  By turning her response into a question, Linda had clearly hoped for some elaboration, but Billy’s eyes remained fixed on some distant point and his tongue only moved to lick a rollie. He was trying to imagine her living in that remote house and struggled with the idea. But why? It wasn’t the deprivation, because the house had power and water and, now that he came to think about it, even a phone line. It needed a good cleanup, curtains, furniture and a lick of paint on the outside. It needed a garden, which would take some digging, and a vegie patch. But even he had to accept these were the sorts of challenges women thrived on, if there was a will and if they put their mind to it. The problem wasn’t the house, but why she could want to live in such a remote place. What would she do there? What could it possibly offer her?

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see her long legs paralleling his on the rail. Her jeans seemed tailor-made and accentuated rather than hid the elegance of her legs. They were truly amazing, a sight he’d never expected to see resting on his rail over his midmorning cuppa. The longer he looked the more certain he became. They were too elegant, too shapely and, despite the sneakers, surely made to slip under restaurant tables and office desks. Whatever his parents’ house had claims to be, it was no place for a city woman. He thought it would be a kindness, the right thing to do, if he knocked the whole idea on the head straightaway and made up his mind to do so. He decided to suggest she look elsewhere.

  ‘How far away is it?’ she asked.

  Her question caught him unprepared and he answered automatically.

  ‘About eight k’s by road. Bit less through the bush.’

  ‘How long will it take us to get there?’

  Billy stubbed the butt of his rollie on the heel of his boot and dropped it into an apricot jam tin half-filled with soil which he kept by the right rear leg of his chair for that purpose. How long will it take us to get there, not how long does it take? He wondered if this surprising woman could also read his mind.

  ‘Depends how much of a hurry you’re in,’ he answered dryly.

  Billy drove her up in his ute, knowing that Rodney would recognise it. Rodney Webb owned the adjoining land on the western side and was as mad as a cut snake where strangers were concerned. The day was complicated enough without having to explain Rodney to Linda and vice versa. He drove through the bush, where left and right were no different to in front and behind, just to give her an idea of the kind of country she’d be dealing with. A city woman could get lost just going for a five-minute stroll. He also let her do the gates, well aware of what the bulldust would do to her hair, skin and clothes. Dust was a fact of life and something you had to deal with, except when it rained and became mud; then mud was a fact of life. After about ten minutes, Billy turned onto a track and followed it up a sand ridge to a narrow gravelly gully. A car shelter, which consisted of four poles and a vee-shaped corrugated iron roof without guttering, sat in a clearing at the foot of the gully.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ murmured Linda.

  Billy finally allowed a smile.

  ‘The house is about seventy metres further up behind these mulga trees. I bulldozed a track up to it to get building materials in. Then the rains came and the water decided the track offered the quickest way down the hill. Should’ve thought of that, should’ve cambered it and run a drain down the side.’ He parked the ute in the shade and got out.

  ‘I didn’t expect a house on a hill.’

  Billy just grunted and let Linda fall in alongside. The track was pretty much the way he’d left it, cut with channels where the rains had run off and littered with sharp stones and gravel. For all that he resented the very existence of the house, he had to admit he liked visiting it on the rare occasions he made the effort. The stand of silvery mulga made a fine sight and trees that were rare elsewhere on his property had found a home to their liking in the narrow cleft between the ridges of the outcrop. Some shaded the track and kept it cool. There was a leopardwood and a couple of wilgas. He glanced towards Linda and she smiled back. Well, if she was looking for her Garden of Eden, this was as close as she was ever likely to get in the northwest.

  ‘There it is.’ Billy paused where the house came into view. It sat proud in an area that had been cleared and grassed but which was now infested with weed and scrub. Already he regretted bringing Linda to see it because its condition embarrassed him. It looked exactly as it was: unlived in, unloved, unwanted. The empty windows stared back like dead men’s eyes. Only the leopardwood, which dominated the backyard and framed the house with the spread of its crown, made the scene in any way welcoming.

  ‘I built it pretty much on my own.’

  ‘When?’ Linda was taking shots with a small camera.

  ‘Ten, twelve years ago, thereabouts.’

  ‘Looks like it could’ve been here since the first settlers arrived.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Linda laughed.

  ‘All I’m trying to say is that it looks like it belongs here.’ Wide, shady verandas surrounded the house on the front and both sides, making it appear bigger than it actually was. Despite the presence of a chimney stack on the eastern side, Linda got the clear impression that most of the living was intended to take place out on the verandas, just as it did back at Billy’s, although these weren’t boxed in by screens. ‘Shall we go up?’

  The house had been built for the view and once they’d stepped up onto the veranda it was obvious why. The house overlooked a sea of treetops. To the sides, the gravel ridges and bush afforded shelter from the wind and sun, but ahead nothing impinged on the view.

  ‘My God,’ said Linda.

  ‘I’ll show you inside,’ said Billy. The front door led straight into the living and dining room. Two doors led off the westward side into the main bedroom and a smaller guest bedroom where visiting grandchildren would have slept. A third door, opposite the front door, led to a large kitchen, laundry, bathroom and toilet.

  ‘Waste goes into a septic tank,’ said Billy. ‘I always figured a vegie garden would go below the absorption trenches where that green patch is.’

  ‘It’s exactly what I’m looking for,’ said Linda.

  ‘And what exactly are you looking for?’ Billy regretted his bluntness the moment the words left his lips. It was none of his business.

  Linda studied him for what seemed like an age, as though assessing him and deciding how much to reveal.

  ‘Solitude,’ she said simply, and turned away to look at the stove.

  Solitude. Billy shook his head.

  ‘Well, you’ve sure hit the jackpot here.’

  She offered him seventy-five dollars a week, cash in hand, and all his reservations about a city woman taking up residence vanished. He hadn’t expected her to take the house, not for a moment, and under the circumstances even fifty seemed over the top. Seventy-five dollars. He did his sums and quickly calculated that it added up to three thousand, nine hundred dollars a year, which would buy a fair bit of feed if the rain held off and pay a few wages to shearers and the casual help he employed from time to time. He also figured it was about time his parents’ house paid back some of the money that had gone into it. The prospect of having this amazing, apparently single woman living nearby didn’t enter his calculations at all.

  He showed her how to pump bore water up to the tanks and header tanks when the rainwater ran low and how to switch gas cylinders for the cooker. He promised to get a grader to have a go at the track so she could get a truck up with her furniture and gave her numbers to ring to get the electricity and phone turned back on. Thirty-nine hundred dollars a year! For doing nothing. He couldn’t get the figure out of his mind. Maybe it was piss in a bucket to his brother, but it was thirty-nine hundred very welcome dollars to him.

  She counted out a month’s rent, three hundred and twenty-five dollars in crisp notes, handed them to him and then said something strange.

  ‘The deal’s off if you tell anyone. Okay?’

  Bill
y nodded.

  ‘Tell no one. I don’t want anyone to know I’ve rented this place, or even moved into the area.’

  ‘Fine with me.’

  ‘I’ll do all the arrangements from Sydney. I’ll put the electricity and phone in a company name and give you a call when I’ve moved in. As far as anyone else out here is concerned, I don’t exist, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Billy couldn’t imagine how her arrival could possibly remain a secret for long. What about mail, supplies, her white Range Rover? She stood out like a prize rose in a cabbage patch.

  ‘So, Billy Dwyer, we have a deal.’ She offered her hand and Billy shook it. ‘Oh, one more thing. Whatever you do, don’t tell Jimmy.’

  Billy’s face cracked into a smile. He tucked the three hundred and twenty-five dollars into his back pocket. She had Jimmy pegged all right. She’d used him to make light of her need for secrecy, but a change had come over her, however fleeting, like a passing shadow.

  Linda went home to the city and Billy went back to the job of crotching and spraying his ewes against flystrike. The procedure was simple enough, just a matter of shearing a horseshoe shape around the beasts’ hindquarters and spraying the shorn area with Vetrasin, but with the lambing season hard upon him he borrowed a young Aboriginal man who worked for his neighbour to help out, paid him wages, fed him and provided him with a bed. The lad’s name was Shane and Billy liked him because he was well mannered, quiet by nature and a genuinely hard worker. They got on well together, sharing meals, watching television and occasionally exchanging views on matters of common interest. The constant work and the presence of Shane crowded Billy’s days and nights to the exclusion of everything else. He forgot all about Linda and was caught by surprise when a bank cheque arrived for the following month’s rent. It helped pay Shane’s wages and he was grateful for it.

  The cold winds eased a week before the first lambs arrived and the seasons changed as abruptly as though someone had thrown a switch. With the prospect of rent money supplementing his income, Billy hung onto Shane for another few weeks to help him mend fences and gates. He also had some corrugated iron sheets to replace on the roof of his shed before the summer rains and it was a job more easily accomplished by two. When Shane departed, life returned to normal with spring lambing in full swing. But it also brought a brief period of lesser activity and time for Billy to put his feet back up on the rail over a midmorning cuppa and rollie.

  By his reckoning, seven weeks had passed since Linda had appeared out of the blue in her Range Rover and he’d begun to wonder whether he’d ever see her again. Yeah, she’d sent him a cheque, but that could simply have been a means to buy time while she came to her senses. Then again, there was her need for a hideaway, otherwise what was the point of her conditions of secrecy? It occurred to him that maybe she didn’t need a hideaway any more. If she did, he reasoned, she’d already have moved in. Billy shook his head to get his mind back on to the present and swung his legs down off the rail. Two rollies had hit the apricot jam tin, which was a sure sign that he’d wasted too much time thinking about her. He was pretty well resigned to never seeing her again.

  He could hear his kelpie shuffling about under the front steps, getting impatient, reminding him he had a bit of mustering to begin, a bunch of steers he needed to bring in and get ready for market. He’d kept a paddock full of Mitchell grass for that purpose and bought in some corn to help fatten them up. He rose and rinsed his mug in the kitchen sink. His cattle dogs, chained to their kennels, started up a chorus of barking and by the time he’d put his hat back on and closed the screen door behind him they were straining at their leashes. He hadn’t a clue how they knew there was work to do, but they always did. Maybe they’d heard him getting the trail bike ready, replacing the pin and float in the carburettor, cleaning the plugs and re-setting the gap. Maybe they saw him wiring up the front guard so that it stopped catching on the tyre. Maybe he gave out a hundred little signs that they noticed and he never gave a thought to. Maybe they were just more attuned to the cycle of things.

  He set off with his kelpie up on the fuel tank, leaning back against his shirt front, and his working dogs chasing along behind, and decided to forget about the city woman. It was a decision easily made but not easily adhered to. He’d spent so much time thinking about how he’d use the rent money, what should’ve been a bonus now felt like a loss. And there was something else too, no less disquieting. He hadn’t undergone an epiphany or been blinded by sudden revelation, but something had happened, something which he couldn’t ignore no matter how hard he tried, something that felt strangely like an awakening.

  Chapter Four

  Although things hadn’t always been so, Linda prided herself on her management and organisational skills and her ability to handle people. She was a fast learner, which had taken a lot of people by surprise, none more so than her ex-husband. The Range Rover had gone, replaced by a second-hand drab green Toyota Land Cruiser, little different to the others she’d seen around Walgett, Coonamble and Collarenebri on her earlier reconnaissance. People wanting to keep a low profile did not drive Range Rovers. She’d left the Castlereagh Lodge at Coonamble at 2 am and motored steadily up the Castlereagh Highway so she would arrive at her new home well before dawn and still have time to attach bright yellow ribbons to poles at each turn-off to guide the furniture truck. She’d rung around to find a removal company that had an unpainted truck, and settled on one that was using a Budget rental to cover for a truck that was in for repairs. She’d given the company detailed maps but still didn’t trust them not to get lost. Although the ribbons might attract attention and some curiosity, they were a far better option than having the driver ask locals for directions. The driver and his mate were also under instructions to stop and remove the ribbons as they passed by. Linda was satisfied she’d done all she could to conceal the fact of her arrival.

  Wherever possible she attached the ribbons to poles immediately before turn-offs, to give the driver time to wake up and react. Country driving had a way of dulling the senses, particularly of those driving a slow, heavy vehicle. She left the ribbon ends loose so that they’d flap if there was any breeze. Experience had taught her that the eye was drawn to even a small amount of movement. She turned up the track that led to the car shelter beneath her new home just as her watch ticked past 5 am and the sky had only just begun to hint that another day was in the making. Her timing was about right, she figured. First, a stretch and maybe a light doze in the car until it was time to make breakfast. She’d brought a kettle, toaster and a pot to boil two eggs. A cup of tea, buttered toast cut into soldiers and two runny eggs out on the steps of her veranda sounded like the perfect way to take up residence, until she realised she’d forgotten to include an eggcup. The eggcup hadn’t even made it onto her checklist. The oversight made her smile. So she wasn’t Miss Efficiency after all.

  She parked the Toyota and got out. With the headlights off, night still held a firm grip on the land despite the soft glow in the east. She decided to cancel her loosening stroll and simply do a few stretches. It wasn’t that she was scared of any specific thing, she just didn’t know what to expect at that time of the day. She knew some snakes were nocturnal and that there were feral pigs about and maybe even dingoes or wild dogs. Just because nobody had mentioned dingoes didn’t mean they weren’t there. Maybe whatever was around would take off once she started shining her torch about. Maybe. But maybe wasn’t good enough for Linda, who liked to do her homework and deal with certainties. She climbed back into her Toyota, wound down the front windows a little to let in some of the cool dry air, reclined her seat and closed her eyes.

  Billy had been good enough to give her the plans to the house, so she’d bought furniture that would not only suit in terms of character but also dimension. By the time the truck arrived around eleven, she’d have strips of tape or chalk marks on the floor indicating where each piece had to go so she wouldn’t have the problem of moving furniture around single-handedly
later. She began practising the breathing rhythms she’d learned at meditation classes to ease herself into a light sleep. Ten minutes later, the first stone thudded into the side of her Toyota.

  Linda shot bolt upright and looked anxiously around. She could make out the shape of bushes and trees against the lightening sky but not much more. Maybe something had fallen from a tree but it sure hadn’t sounded like it. When a second stone thudded into the Toyota she realised she had a problem and she made a desperate grab for her torch.

  ‘Bar-tid! Bar-tid! Pid off! I know whad you’re afda!’

  Linda pointed her torch in the direction the voice had come from and jammed it hard against her side window. It took a few moments for the torch to find its target and then Linda almost wished it hadn’t. All the horror stories and myths about outback psychopaths and murderers flooded back in one nerve-jarring instant. She didn’t know what scared her most: the rifle pointing at her or the face of madness behind it.

  ‘Garn! Pid off be-fore I toot you! Garn, ya thie-vin’ bar-tid, git lod!’

  The sentences were delivered in a strange staccato fashion, with every second syllable stressed, which made them hard to understand. But there was no misunderstanding the sentiments or the consequences if she ignored them. Dust blurred her vision as she dropped her torch, jammed the gear selector into reverse and spun the Toyota around so it faced back down the track. She hit the lights and accelerated away, expecting to hear a crack from the rifle at any second, sobbing with relief when it didn’t happen, only slowing once she’d negotiated a bend. She had to slow down, not just because of the condition of the track but because her hands were shaking so badly she barely had control. She’d never stared down the barrel of a rifle before or into the eyes of a madman. The combination had been nothing short of terrifying. Her life could have ended in a blink of an eye, through no fault of her own and for no good reason. Linda was shaken to her core.