The Road Home

by Margaret Way

  Midafternoon, she had a visit from James Kellerman. She wasn’t happy to see him arrive at her door. She was well aware of his roving eye. She also knew it had landed on her. She wasn’t in the least attracted to him, however much he was a hit with the other ladies. It was all so unwelcome. She would have to move cautiously. She so enjoyed being with the group, all fine musicians, but if the price of entry was an affair with the leader, she would have to move on.

  “How did you know where I lived?” she asked when he arrived at her front door.

  “You’re in the phone book, Isabelle,” he said, swaggering past her into the apartment, blond, blue-eyed, handsome and well aware of it. She remembered now his wife had left him. Rumour had it he had taken up with a very attractive blonde violinist in the Symphony Orchestra.

  “Of course. Please sit down. I must apologize again for not being able to get to the rehearsal. A family matter came up. I had to attend to it.”

  He swung back to her with a piece of advice. “I hope you’re not going to have to attend to family matters often, Isabelle,” he said, returning to roaming about. “Our rehearsals are extremely important.”

  “I do realize that, James. It won’t happen again.”

  “Good.” He was very much playing the leader. He who had to be obeyed. “Your parents live in Adelaide, don’t they?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. She couldn’t bring herself to mention Norville’s visit. Her psyche had been rubbed raw.

  “Both doctors?”

  “I’ve told you that, James. Can I offer you coffee?” Tea or coffee, the universal specific.

  “Coffee would be lovely,” he said expansively, as though he were ready to settle in for the afternoon. “Where do you practise? You couldn’t practise here.”

  “At the Conservatorium,” she said. “I’ve made arrangements. Soundproof room. I practise the piano there too, although I have my own in storage.”

  “They have lots of good things to say about you at the Con,” he said, as though she were dying for a compliment. “No harm in giving the Young Performers a shot. I won it some years back.”

  Ten years, she knew. “I do intend to enter,” she said. “My biggest award was in Belgium.” Her former professor’s opinion of her was all that she had or would ever need in the way of confidence building.

  “I’m not surprised,” James drawled. “You’re very good. A black coffee and a sandwich would be great, if you could manage it. We didn’t stop for lunch.”

  “No problem,” Isabelle said, wondering how much longer he intended to stay. She hadn’t been able to contact Bruno. She had left a one-word message for him: “News.” She could have made it two: “Bad news.” She knew he would ring back when he could.

  James made short work of the chicken and avocado sandwiches. “That was lovely!” he enthused, his blue eyes sliding all over her as she sat in her leather armchair. “Filled the spot for the time being. If you’re free, we could do dinner?”

  It was the second time he had asked her. She was supposed to say yes. She knew a lot of women would accept, including Emma, their viola player. She was madly in love with James, but Isabelle knew James would never invite Emma out to dinner. “Don’t you have a partner, James?” she now asked.

  His gaze hardened. “I do. No matter.” He threw up a hand. “It’s not a soul-shaping love affair. Both of us feel free to have dinner with . . . friends.”

  “That sort of arrangement wouldn’t suit me,” she said. “It would break my heart if the man I loved felt free to go out with other women.”

  “Isabelle!” He laughed, steadily trying to magnetize her with his eyes. “You’re not a born-again Christian, are you?”

  “I am a Christian, James. I have ethical standards. I should tell you, I do have someone.”

  His blue gaze went oily. “You just made that up, Isabelle. No need to be nervous. I don’t bite. You’re a very interesting girl. I was merely hoping to get to know you better. The better I know you, the better we’ll perform together. As a quartet, of course. I can see you’re nervous with me.”

  She shook her head. “You’re quite wrong, James. I’m a great admirer of yours as a solo violinist and the leader of the quartet. That’s as far as it goes.”

  “You’re not trying, Isabelle.” He reached across the coffee table to grasp her hand.

  She glanced away quickly as the intercom buzzer echoed through the flat. “Excuse me, James,” she said, retrieving her hand and making towards the intercom wall unit.

  The cavalry had arrived. It was Bruno. She felt like bawling in relief. “Come up, Bruno,” she said, aware her voice sounded quavery.

  He was there in seconds flat. She all but walked into him, white cotton shirt, blue jeans, tooled boots. Warmth and fresh male fragrance. He had his arm hard around her, his eyes making a sweep of the living room, taking in James Kellerman’s presence.

  “James is here,” Isabelle said unnecessarily. “I had to miss rehearsal.”

  “Hi there, James,” Bruno called, and then proceeded to take Isabelle by storm. He tilted her chin, bent his head and kissed her mouth. It was a profound experience and completely unexpected. Wave after wave of sensation began swooshing through her bloodstream. She was reacting as if she had been totally deprived of such a kiss. By the time he let her go her heart was pumping wildly and her head was reeling.

  Watching this from the sofa, cold lights flared in James Kellerman’s blue eyes. He stood up, a man full of disappointment and discord. “Time to be off,” he said in a clipped voice much at variance with his practised drawl. “Many thanks for coffee, Isabelle. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Nice to see you, James,” Bruno said suavely, opening the door for him, then shutting it afterwards with an air of satisfaction. “Can you beat that?” He gave a short laugh. “James Kellerman might be a fine musician, but he’s a serial womaniser.”

  “Aren’t most men?” Isabelle was having some difficulty speaking. Her mouth was still throbbing. “He’s going to sack me, you know.” To her surprise, she wasn’t all that worried.

  “His loss! I’m just appalled at his trying to make a move on you.”

  “I had to tell him I had someone.” Now she was deeply inhaling. She could feel the blush of colour in her cheeks.

  “You do have someone,” Bruno said. “You have me.”

  “I mean a someone someone, though I guess that was a pretty convincing kiss. A lot of chivalry in it.”

  “I’m an expert when it comes to reading situations,” said Bruno.

  “You’re an expert at kissing as well. Fair warning. You might have to kiss me a thousand times more before we’re finished.” She was attempting to turn a heart-stopping moment into a joke. No need for him to see her vulnerability. It was clear kissing her had been no earthshaking event for him.

  “No problem!” he confirmed. “Actually, you’re lovely to kiss, Bella mia. I can see a long line of future admirers coming to swords and blows. So what’s the news?” he asked, steering her into an armchair. “Have you been crying?” His dark eyes had turned very intent.

  “It’s a sad story.”

  “Bella, Bella,” he groaned. “I’m guessing the ceiling has fallen in on you?”

  “Something like that,” she said. “Norville isn’t my dad.” Her heart contracted as she said it.

  “I knew that.” Bruno spoke gently, taking the armchair opposite.

  “’Course you did. I’m getting used to your impressing me. My entire life has been a circus.”

  “And I am so sorry for your pain. We’re going to get your fake parents out of your life, Isabella.”

  “Hilary is not my fake mother,” she told him in a melancholy voice. “She’s the real thing. God, what a mess! You and your dad got me into this, Bruno.”

  “Don’t you want the truth?” he asked.

  She gave a pained laugh. “The desire for the truth only comes in fits and starts. I’m afraid of what we might turn up, Bruno. Didn’t you tell me
your father was killed by a hit-and-run driver? Any decent human being couldn’t run from such a scene. Could the accident have been deliberate? Maybe your father was stirring up trouble? Maybe he had found out something the Hartmann family wanted kept quiet?”

  Bruno looked down at his clenched hands. The knuckles were white. The pain of his father’s violent death and the fact that it was never solved would never go away. Bella was only asking what he had asked himself innumerable times over the years. The driver of that car remained a shadowy figure. Police investigations had turned up nothing. No witnesses, not even a witness who was determined not to get involved. The murderer had slammed his car into his father and gotten clean away.

  “So.” He looked at her, internalising her anguish. Isabelle in no time at all had managed to get under his skin. “Time to pass on your news in its entirety.”

  Isabelle did.

  “Why should we believe him?” Bruno asked, after Isabelle had told him word for word the meeting with Norville Martin.

  “He’s absolutely sure of it, Bruno.”

  “He isn’t,” Bruno flatly contradicted. “There’s no bitterness in you?” If there was, she was showing no sign of it.

  Isabelle shook her red-gold head, almost abstractedly. “What good would that do? Bitterness is corrosive. Besides, I felt sorry for him. The man I called Father was good to me. Hilary ruined him.”

  “Very revealing, don’t you think? He’s not a real man, Bella. He’s a puppet on a string.”

  “He loves her,” Isabelle said. “Don’t they say love is a madness? Maybe you’ve never loved a woman, Bruno. Maybe you don’t want to love a woman? You know all about loss. Perhaps that’s why you’re on the run from Penelope and the rest of the pack?”

  “As long as you aren’t one of them, Bella.” He spoke crisply, a cool glitter in his jet-black eyes.

  “Never me,” Isabelle protested. “I told you. We’re partners. We’ve buddied up, as they say. You don’t believe Hilary is my mother?”

  “I’m having it checked out.”

  “Really?” she gasped. “You’re a fast mover.”

  “I’m like that. Whatever the outcome, our next stop is the Hartmann Outback stronghold. Eaglehawk Downs. A small spread,” he said, an attractive quirk to his mouth, “some five thousand square miles.”

  “Goodness me, that’s huge!”

  “There are a couple bigger. Australian Outback stations are the biggest in the world. They have to be, given stock have to forage over a vast arid area. Eaglehawk is in the Channel Country, which you probably know is the semidesert region in the corner of the South West, crisscrossed by innumerable rivulets. When in flood, those rivulets can run fifty miles across.”

  “It’s now I ought to tell you, I do watch the weather on the TV, Bruno. Most of the Channel Country is in Queensland, isn’t it? It runs into South Australia, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. I remember seeing the fantastic coverage of Lake Eyre that was turned into an Inland Sea years back.”

  “Cyclone Olga. That was 2010. My good friend and mentor, Ivor Lubrinski, hired a helicopter to fly a small party of us over a magnificent inland sea. It was the most awesome sight I’ve ever seen. And the birds! They arrived from all over. The Channel Country is a major breeding ground for nomadic water birds. The Lake, every billabong, waterway and lignum swamp were literally alive with birds, pelicans, ibis, spoonbills, herons. We were flying at about two hundred metres. An area of the lake was covered in green algae. It looked for all the world like grass with thousands of pelicans at rest on top. It was a fantastic sight. We couldn’t look away, including the pilot. It was then he told us how two light planes had crashed into one another over the Lake because the pilot had forgotten to check the altimeter.”

  “So what happened?”

  “They took a dive straight into the Lake. They managed to exit, shocked but unhurt, but the planes are still in the Lake. Too expensive to salvage. When the flood subsides and all the waterholes shrink, the enormous bird migration takes off again.”

  “I expect they’re nomads because they have to be,” she said sensibly.

  “Right. Though Eaglehawk and the other Channel Country stations, even in drought, have access to water via numerous bores that tap into the Great Artesian Basin. The Diamantina River crosses Eaglehawk Station.”

  “So tell me what you have to tell me,” she invited. “What’s the Hartmann history? I’m anxious to know.”

  “Listen closely, because it’s fairly involved. The lease was first taken up by pioneer pastoralist Adler Hartmann in the 1860s,” Bruno said. “Adler is German for—”

  “Eagle, I know. Hence, the Eaglehawk. I studied German for four years. German and French.”

  “What a pity, not Italian?”

  “Italian wasn’t on offer. Japanese.”

  “Italian is the most beautiful language in the world.”

  “Mozart thought so. I agree.”

  “You would do; you’re a musician. I’ll teach you Italian, if you like. You have a trained ear.”

  “Perfect pitch. One is born with it.”

  “I’m in awe of your talents,” he said with sardonic humour.

  “I suppose I am quite remarkable,” she answered, tongue in cheek.

  “I think you might be. Too early to say. To continue with our discussion, from all accounts, our intrepid Adler was a high-flying adventurer keen to make his fortune in the New World. He brought his German-born wife, Viktoria, from a minor aristocratic Prussian family, with him. They had four children, three girls and a son. Two of the girls died in childhood.”

  “How sad!”

  “It is indeed. Going down the family tree, we come to Helena’s grandfather, Konrad, who instigated the search and hired my father to investigate when police enquiries came to a dead end. I suppose they’d come to the conclusion she’d taken off like a lot of other young people sick of the isolation. Money was no object, though my father wouldn’t have taken advantage of anyone, let alone a grieving family. Konrad was a fine man, according to my dad. ‘A true gentleman.’ His first wife died giving birth to their son, Erik, Helena’s father. Konrad remarried about eighteen months later. A young Englishwoman, Lillian, he met on a trip abroad. They had a son, Christian.”

  “So two half brothers?”

  “Yes. Very different personalities, according to Dad. Erik, the heir, was supremely arrogant. Christian took after Konrad.”

  Isabelle tried to crystallize her thoughts. “And the offspring?”

  “Erik only fathered one child, Helena. Twelve years later, his allegedly promiscuous wife, Myra, took a fatal fall from her horse. Christian had two children by one Abigail Hartmann, a boy and a girl, cousins to Helena. There’s a grandson, Kurt. The granddaughter lives with her mother in Adelaide. Divorce in the family. Christian came to a sticky end. He was the victim of a shooting accident on the station. They had guests that weekend. The men went out on a duck shooting party. An inexperienced shooter picked off Christian by mistake. The death was investigated. The official verdict was a tragic accident. The family appear jinxed.”

  “Jinxed or targeted?” Isabelle asked. “What did this shooter take Christian for, a marauding lion?” She spoke as though she doubted the verdict was proper.

  “Accidents happen on properties, Bella. Accidents happen with guns.”

  “Too many accidents,” Isabelle said. “What if they take it into their heads to feed us to the crocodiles?”

  Bruno’s serious, even grave expression turned humorous. “You won’t find a crocodile where we’re going.”

  “I know that. Okay, giant goannas, perenties, aren’t they?”

  “For all we know, they could be very nice people,” Bruno said, thinking just the opposite.

  “Your dad didn’t think so,” Isabelle remarked darkly.

  “Would you be ready to make a start next week?” Bruno asked.

  “Next week! What do you think I am, rich?” She opened her emerald eyes w
ide. “Bruno, I should be chasing a job. James is bound to give me the push. He can easily find someone else.”

  “Not as good as you. He’d be a fool if he let you get away.”

  “I could be a fool to stay. James is not the man to tolerate slights.”

  “Then he can go to the devil. Anyway, I’m paying for this. You’re doing me a huge favour.”

  “Letting you pay for everything is just about as low as it gets,” she protested.

  “Nonsense, Bella. I don’t give a damn about spending money. You’re in need of help and I’m here to give it.”

  It would be very easy for a woman to work up a grand passion for Bruno McKendrick, Isabelle thought. She had enough turmoil going on inside her already. “So my knight in shining armour, then?” she asked.

  “It’s in my blood.” He slanted a smile, thinking there couldn’t be a more romantic looking creature than Isabelle. It was easy to picture her in some gorgeous medieval gown with a garland of spring flowers on her titian head. “My dad was that kind of man.”

  “Hallelujah!” Isabelle exclaimed. “I’m very sorry I never had the pleasure of making his acquaintance.”

  Bruno gave her a long, approving look from his fathomless eyes.

  Chapter Four

  She couldn’t wait to exit the Hartmann bumblebee, a Bell helicopter painted yellow and black with a white stripe. In one way, the flight was thrilling. This was the land of legend to city dwellers like her. The land of endless mirage and far horizons; of parallel lines of blood-red sand dunes that made up the Simpson Desert, fourth largest in the world, and the fearful desolation of the great Sturt Stony Desert, covered in gibbers that blinded the eyes with their silvery glitter.

  The vastness of it all affected Isabelle deeply. The antiquity! The white man had inhabited this ancient land for a mere two hundred years, the aboriginal people for some fifty thousand, living in harmony with the land they identified with so strongly. It was said when the aboriginal tribe living on Botany Bay’s headlands saw the first fleet arriving in the January of 1788, they turned their backs in fright, not having any understanding of what they were looking at. They had been looking at the end of their way of life. Witnessing the beginning of the white man’s Australia.