Secrets of the Springs

by Kerry McGinnis

  ‘Once. I went down there; I was on crutches, fresh out of the hospital. I suppose I looked like death because the sight of me scared the crap out of her. I dunno what Julie had been telling her, but it was nothing very good. I stayed two hours and the only words she spoke to me were, ‘You killed Mummy.’ I haven’t been back but I’ve written her letters, sent cards. God knows if she’ll ever speak to me again.’

  ‘Of course she will! What she said – she was just parroting her grandmother. Anyway didn’t she send a card for your birthday? I saw it in the mail.’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Mind you she’d written nothing, just signed her name. And it was probably Julie’s doing – that’s her grandmother. I’m guessing it’s a legal precaution, so I can’t claim she’s being prevented from keeping in touch, if I went to the Family Court about it.’

  ‘I see, but maybe she’s, you know, softening her attitude.’ He didn’t answer that and I hesitated before asking my next question. ‘Obviously you couldn’t have gone to the funeral. Where —?’

  ‘They took her home,’ he answered. ‘And came out here and cleared the cottage. When I finally got out of hospital there was nothing of Gail’s or Celia’s left – just a couple of toys they’d overlooked in the sandpit.’

  ‘They sound horrible.’ I admitted. ‘If everybody reacted that way to every road accident . . .’

  ‘They knew,’ he interrupted, ‘about us. Gail had told her mother. That’s why she accused me of killing her, even went to the police about charging me. Which is another reason for thinking that your letter must’ve ended up in Gail’s hands. Because there’s no other way she could have known. Not for certain.’

  ‘It seems there’s no end to the harm we’ve done each other,’ I said sadly.

  ‘No, my love,’ he said firmly, and grimaced as he lifted his arm. ‘Hell’s bells! I feel as if a herd of buffalo have galloped over me. Come here.’

  ‘Why?’ But I complied, stooping to his level then slipping to my knees before him. ‘What was it you wanted?’

  ‘To kiss you.’ Accompanied by a soft groan, his arms went round me. ‘It’s gotta be worth the pain,’ he muttered, then his voice roughened. ‘God, Orla! I’ve missed you so much.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said breathlessly, as our lips met, wanting to engulf him, to feel his hands on my body. ‘Oh, my dear love, it has been so long.’

  It was the sound of a vehicle that drew us apart.

  ‘What now?’ Reluctantly I rose, rubbing my knees. ‘Surely nobody wants tea yet, it’s barely eight o’clock.’ The four-wheel drive at the gate wasn’t local though; it had an interstate number plate, I saw, as I went down the steps to the gate, and a roof-rack piled high with camping gear. ‘Good morning.’ I smiled at the driver, a lean, energetic-looking man in his forties. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Yeah, I mean, if you would.’ He got out and gazed curiously around. ‘The wife and I, we’re from Canberra – bit of a road trip, you know. We’ve been to the Menindee Lakes and we’re presently heading up to Tibooburra. Doing the camping thing. Anyway, we dropped into Emu Springs for a look and saw your flyer.’ He shuffled his feet. ‘I guess you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this? Thing is it’s our anniversary today – twenty years – and I wanted, well, I wondered . . . I know it’s short notice,’ he said placatingly, ‘but any chance we could book in for the night? Just overnight, a treat for the wife.’ He looked so hopeful that I couldn’t refuse, much as I wanted to. I stifled a sigh and smiled at him.

  ‘Congratulations on the anniversary,’ I replied. ‘I do normally insist on bookings but if it’s just one night . . . Only I can’t take you now. My last party just left and the rooms aren’t prepared. But if you want to come back – say about two-ish? I could book you in then.’

  ‘Great! We’ll do that. And thanks a lot.’

  ‘That’s okay. Perhaps, as it’s a special occasion you’d like to pick up some wine in town?’ I suggested. ‘I’m afraid we’re not licensed but BYO is fine. I’m Orla Macrae, by the way – and you are?’

  ‘Peter Mackenzie, and my wife’s Flo. Thank you so much, Mrs Macrae. She’ll be tickled pink.’

  ‘I hope you both enjoy the experience, and call me Orla, please. Things are pretty informal in the bush.’

  ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘And it’s Peter and Flo too. See you this arvo then.’

  He drove off and I returned to Mark’s side. ‘Those are our first unsolicited PGs.’ I felt pleased despite the inconvenience of their timing. ‘Still, it does mean I’d better get busy. Bother, there’s so much I wanted to tell you, but I haven’t touched the rooms yet, and there’re all those sheets . . . I suppose I’d better tell Joe, too. At this rate we’ll be running out of sheep for him to shear.’

  ‘Why not skip it, if they’re only here tonight, and give Les a call instead? I ought to see about getting the Rover towed in and I’ll need Joe for that.’

  ‘Good idea, but can’t you leave it till tomorrow? You can hardly stand, Mark.’

  ‘It’s just a bit of stiffness.’ He stood to prove it. ‘See, the sun’s warmed me up.’

  ‘Just don’t overdo it.’ I kissed him and sighed. ‘Bother PGs! Well, there’s always tonight.’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘much as I want you, this time we’ll do it properly, Orla. No more hole and corner stuff. It’s for keeps this time, right?’ His eyes probed mine until I nodded and he reached to pull my face towards him until we were nose to nose, the blue of his irises filling my vision, as bright as a summer sky. ‘For always,’ he reiterated, ‘so we’ll do it right and wait for marriage.’

  I went into his arms whispering, ‘We don’t have to.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘we do. Now, quit tempting me, wench, we’ve both got work waiting for us.’

  The rest of the day fled by in a haze of joy and expectation. I had forgotten the difference happiness made. I sang as I stripped the beds and made them afresh, then vacuumed, and later hummed my way about the garden, changing hoses and picking bits of greenery to carry indoors. Marty, busy with her mixing bowls as I filled vases, shot me a look.

  ‘You sound happy today.’

  ‘I am.’ I beamed at her. ‘Do you fancy cooking for a wedding, Marty?’

  She looked startled. ‘Whose?’

  ‘Mine and Mark’s. Do you know, if that wretched Darren was here now I believe I’d kiss him. If he hadn’t almost killed Mark we’d probably still be bristling at each other. When I think —’

  ‘Mark?’ Marty interrupted. ‘When? I mean . . . I thought you didn’t like him, Orla?’

  ‘Oh, Marty. I’ve been in love with him since I was seventeen. Why do you think I left? Did it honestly never occur to you that it was over a man?’

  She stopped papering the biscuit tray to stare at me. ‘I suspected some boy was involved but – he was married, for heaven’s sake!’ She looked momentarily shocked, then her gaze shifted as if she were thinking back. ‘I don’t ever remember seeing you together . . . So where did you meet? It can’t have been in town.’

  ‘It wasn’t, and yes, I know he was married. It made no difference – we loved each other, Marty. Great-grandfather’s old hut was our place, but sometimes we’d meet at the bore here. Those Sunday mornings I didn’t go to church, nights, too. I’d bike out of town and he’d pick me up at the boundary.’

  ‘Would he indeed?’ She sounded seriously put out. ‘He ought to be ashamed of himself! You were a child!’

  ‘I was eighteen by then,’ I said sharply. ‘Plenty of girls are married at that age – Fee wasn’t much older when she tied the knot – so don’t go blaming Mark. You don’t know what his wife was like. In the end I saw it was hopeless and I left, because I couldn’t bear to stay and not be with him. So don’t, Marty, please don’t grudge me my happiness now. It killed me to leave him and he’s suffered too, with his injury and losing his daughter . . . Though maybe we can get her back once we’re married and I can make a home for her. I
hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Well,’ she said dryly, ‘I must’ve been blind. If it’s that way with the two of you, how did you manage to stay away so long?’

  ‘I didn’t know Gail was dead, and she always swore she’d never give him a divorce. She was Catholic,’ I said. ‘So how would coming back have helped?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, ‘I can see it wouldn’t.’

  ‘“The course of true love,”’ I quoted. ‘It’s not always easy, is it? You and Ben, for example, but it doesn’t mean it can’t turn out right in the end. So please don’t think badly of him – or of me. Because your opinion matters to me, Marty, you know it does.’

  The bell on the front gate chose that moment to ring. She glanced at the stove where the kettle spout issued little puffs of steam. ‘That’ll be customers for smoko. Will you fetch them in? And I am happy for you, Orla, if he’s the one you want. I guess five years is long enough to know your own heart. And by the way, you said Les is coming out – will that be for lunch?’

  ‘And probably dinner if he can wangle it,’ I agreed. ‘If he was younger I’d swear he had a thing for you.’

  She shook her head reprovingly at me. ‘He’s old and lonely, and a cooked meal’s probably a treat for him. Now go on. Go and collect your tourists before they wander off and get lost in the sheds.’

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The morning fled by. I was pulling clean sheets off the line when the Mackenzies returned and from then on it was the now-familiar routine with guests, save that Flo Mackenzie was allergic to cats. I shut No Name into the office as a temporary measure and we carried on with afternoon tea – scones and cream and little fluffy butterfly cakes – by which time Les had his forge fired up and was ready to do his piece. Afterwards I walked them around the sheds while Marty served tea to the occupants of two more vehicles that had arrived.

  ‘You’re kept busy then,’ Flo observed. She was a pleasant woman, plump of face and shoulders, her skin liberally sprinkled with freckles.

  ‘Mmm.’ I agreed. ‘It’s very gratifying, we’ve only just started taking guests.’

  ‘The climate’s right for it,’ her husband said. ‘All those See Australia First ads. Half the success in any business comes of hitting the market just right; capitalise on that and you’ve got it made.’

  ‘You sound like a man who knows.’ I smiled at him. ‘Are you in business yourself?’

  He grinned. ‘Printing.’ He felt at the breast pocket of his shirt, plunged in two fingers and produced a card. ‘There you go, sample for you. Like it says there: no job too big or small. So if you ever need advertising leaflets or the like . . .’

  ‘I’ll know who to call,’ I finished for him.

  ‘You got it.’ We were strolling back to the house. ‘It’s a grand-looking place, built for the future at a guess, if it’s as old as you say. Is yours a big family, Orla?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid there’s just me now. My father was one of two sons; his brother didn’t marry, and I’m an only child.’ With a little shock I wondered if this was due, not to fate as I had always assumed, but to my parents’ marital problems. The thought was new and surprising. I had missed his last question and said, ‘Sorry. What did you say?’

  ‘In that case it’s not likely. Oh,’ he’d read my confusion. ‘I was just asking – the business next to ours has the same name as you, but obviously there’s no connection?’

  I shook my head. ‘There’s a couple of ways to spell Macrae – though I daresay one was originally a corruption of the other. I’m M-a-c and lower case r.’

  ‘Definitely not then. She’s Mc and capital r. Funny things, names. I’ve got McKenzie cousins in Canada, same thing. Some great-uncle went out there in the early days and lost the “a” somewhere along the way.’

  ‘Really?’ I said faintly, wondering if his business neighbour could possibly be my half-sister. A moment’s reflection however made it seem unlikely – they were most probably married, my sister and whoever the business woman was, so it would be their husband’s name, not theirs. Anyway it didn’t matter. I had all the family I needed right here in Mark and Marty and Joe, with Kevin and Rose for good measure. I said, glad to be able to mean it, ‘Well, it’s no big deal, it sounds the same however you spell it.’

  Flo laughed and tucked her hand under Peter’s arm. ‘Don’t mind my husband. Names are his thing. Give him half a chance and he’ll tell you which side of the Emerald Isles “Orla” comes from and what it means. Etymology is his hobby.’

  ‘It’s actually called onomastics,’ he chided.

  ‘Sounds serious,’ I said, ‘So what’s yours, Flo? Your hobby.’

  She laughed again. ‘Baking. And I’d really love to get the recipe for those butterfly cakes we had for afternoon tea. They were so light, like little puffs of sweet air. Do you think your cook would mind if I asked for it?’

  ‘Of course not. We can do it now, if you like.’ I smiled at her. ‘We’re here to please.’ I made a mental note to use the Crown Derby set for dinner and to set out the crystal as well for the wine Peter had handed me on arrival. Tonight I would simply serve them, leaving them to dine alone; it was an anniversary dinner after all. Which would leave me free to eat and spend the evening with Mark. After I had rung Rose. It would be lovely, I thought dreamily, to take him with me to meet them, once we were married and the bowl was sold. It would soon be too hot for tourists so, another month say, and we could surely slip away for a week. Perhaps we could even visit Gail’s parents and Celia on the way home? Begin the campaign to get her back. I put the thought aside to share with him later and returned my wandering attention to the PGs.

  ‘Sorry, what was that? I’ve been woolgathering.’

  ‘Very fitting,’ Peter quipped, ‘as I was asking about shearing.’

  The night had produced a full moon. I had glimpsed it earlier, through the kitchen window, a great orange ball slipping up the sky, its colour gradually lightening to silver as it rose above the atmospheric dust. Standing on the verandah where the shadows lay as sharp-edged as those at midday, I breathed in the night, scenting the change about me. Summer was coming. ‘You can smell it, colleen.’ My father’s voice was in my head. ‘The dust, the warmth, the difference.’ Most of the lights in the homestead were out by now, the good china back in its cabinet, the empty wine bottle consigned to the rubbish bin. Dinner had been a feast and afterwards I had left the PGs to their own devices and eaten with the others, my foot finding Mark’s good one beneath the table. He looked better tonight, some of the stiffness worn away, though his face still wore a livid bruise. Les predictably had stayed for dinner and would probably, I thought with amusement, turn up for breakfast too.

  Marty and I had cleared away and washed up as the men drifted off. Mark caught my eye as he called goodnight, the action sending a stab of pleasure through me. Nothing had been said but when had we ever needed words? With the homestead settling to sleep around me, I found a torch, caught up a light shawl that had been my mother’s and let myself out through Les’s gate, taking the path down through the sheds to the bore. Somewhere in the night a sheep bleated and a sleepy squawk sounded from the hen house reminding me that I must let No Name out of the office when I returned. The night was a study in monochrome, the iron roofs pewter-coloured under the moon. The mill head stood motionless as a tree beneath the pale stars and the shadows below the pepper trees were black as heartbreak. I trod confidently through them and found the bench where Mark waited, his cigarette end a ruby spark in the darkness.

  ‘You have to stop that,’ I said, as his arms closed about me. ‘Smoking’s bad for you.’

  ‘Yes, my love,’ he said, docile. He dropped the butt and I felt his body move as he trod on it. ‘Ouch. What’s that you’ve got?’

  ‘A torch.’ I turned it on, an intrusion of yellow light, and shone it on the wallet-sized photo I carried. ‘I brought this to show you. It’s the only picture I have of him with me. It’s our son.’

/>   He bent his head above it, holding the torch high so that the side of his face was visible. I saw the wonder imprinted there, and the grief, as his thumb moved gently across the laughing little face. ‘Jamie.’ He swallowed. ‘He was beautiful,’ he said raggedly. ‘I can’t imagine your pain, Orla. I wish . . .’

  ‘I know.’ I touched the tiny shadow that marked the incipient cleft in the chin of my child’s image. ‘He’s buried on the island. I’ll take you to see him when we’re married.’

  ‘I’d like that. And I’d like for us to be married soon. We’ve wasted so much time already . . .’

  ‘That’s behind us now. We have the rest of our lives to make up for it. To live and love and make another son.’ I snapped off the torch. ‘And to talk. I have so much to tell you and some of it I want to do tonight, to get it behind us. Come sit.’ When he was beside me I leaned my head against him, my gaze on the silver disc of the moon, its mysterious, continent-sized craters plainly visible. His arms came around me, warm and enfolding, and I clasped my hands over his for comfort.

  ‘Like what? I’m listening, Orla.’

  ‘Like Dad being a bigamist,’ I said. ‘I’m illegitimate, Mark. Oh, I don’t expect you to cast me off in horror but it’s still – unsettling, you know?’

  ‘What? You’re joking!’

  ‘I’m not. It’s true. Palmer had the evidence in that box of his. The divorce from Dad’s first wife was granted when I was three years old. Palmer had a copy among his papers. It’s one of the reasons he killed Dad – the other was to free my mother so he could marry her himself. Because she loved him, you see. I suppose Dad’s lechery finally proved too much for her. Did you know that he had affairs, Mark? Right here in the Springs. He didn’t even have the decency to take them somewhere else – to Broken Hill, or – I don’t know, Mildura even.’

  I felt the tiny betraying movement of his body and exhaled sharply. ‘So you did know. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You were still a child when I found out.’ He lowered his head and spoke with his mouth against my hair. ‘As my Celia was when I was committing adultery with you, though she was much younger, but I couldn’t help but see the parallel. When I first heard the talk around town I couldn’t believe it. They always seemed happy, your parents, and when I realised it was true, well how was I going to tell you? Then they both died and that only made it more impossible. I knew how you felt about your dad.’