Hope's Road

by Margareta Osborn

  Travis stepped up to grab Dean around the shoulders and push him back towards the ambulance. ‘Good to meet you, Dean. You and your mate there’d better get the old bloke loaded and to the hospital, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, right. Best be off.’ Dean threw another look at Tammy as Travis propelled him on his way.

  Tammy moved to where Billy sat in the dirt, still playing with the dog. The border collie was lying on his back, legs spread wide, paws drooping like unworn socks. His tongue was lolling this way and that in ecstasy as Billy rubbed along his belly.

  If only her life could be as simple as a dog’s.

  Chapter 14

  Tammy stood in front of the old miner’s shack, took a deep breath and mounted the front steps. She grabbed the handle of the wooden screen door that sheltered the inside of the house from prying eyes and slowly drew it open, hesitant to enter a space that was not her own.

  She walked inside slowly, Billy following close behind. The screen door sprang shut with a whack and Tammy jumped. The boy silently took her hand as though he too was unsure of himself. She took another step. If she and Billy didn’t do this, what was Joe going to have with him at the hospital? She should just get on with it.

  The hallway was floored with hardwood boards; an old Axminster carpet runner lay on top in a vain attempt to hide the wear on the fading varnish. Turning to the left, she opened a door and took in the ‘best room’ – the lounge or parlour of the old house. The faded flowery wallpaper was peeling. Unfamiliar ancestors glared from ornate photo frames. Over-stuffed club chairs were parked formally at the fireplace and a tattered chaise longue sat with decayed elegance in the corner. There was an antique auto-trolley parked in the middle of the far wall, laden with a blackened silver tea service. The handworked doily spilling over the edges was spotted with brown rustlike stains. The air smelled of age and damp. She shuddered. Only dust, ghosts and memories inhabited this room.

  Tammy pulled away, nearly stepping on Billy, who was right on her heels. The boy hurriedly moved back and she quietly closed the door. She swung around and saw the hall table and the phone Billy had used to ring 000. Thank heavens they taught that sort of thing at school these days.

  Beyond the table was another door, slightly ajar. She pushed it back to reveal a bedroom with an old featherbed, black iron bedsteads standing sentinel at the head and foot. The bed was covered with a beautifully handworked bedspread. Once cream, the bedspread was now riddled with grubby dirt and possum poo, which had fallen through the parting tongue-in-groove ceiling boards. Except for the shadow of an old cedar chest of drawers, the room was bare. No one – at least of mortal soul – inhabited this space either.

  Where the hell did old Joe sleep?

  Within four strides she was back in the hallway and into the next set of rooms. She peeked shyly around the door. An antique cream wooden and flywire-encased cot, which looked for all the world like a huge meat safe, sat adrift in the centre of the small space. Forgotten, unloved, untouched. A cot full of dreams that never came true.

  Tammy couldn’t help but wonder what the story was. Did her Aunty Nellie get pregnant but lose the baby? Why didn’t they have kids? They obviously wanted them, judging by the contents of this room. She couldn’t suppress another shudder. The whole house reeked of loneliness and she despaired for the old man who was so dead against leaving this place in the back of an ambulance.

  ‘Geez, it’s not much chop, is it, Tammy?’

  She started. She’d forgotten Billy was with her. He was staring all around him, eyes wide, like he was trying to work something out.

  ‘No, mate, it’s not.’ So he felt it too. The despair, the loss of all hope and love.

  She looked around the small kitchen. A functional table sat against the far wall. A single wooden ladder-back chair was parked at the end. And still no sign of where Joe slept.

  They moved on, down a small step and into the closed in back verandah. To the left a loo, which Tammy was glad to see, as she’d feared the old man was still relying on an outside toilet. To the right was a shower and ancient twin-tub washing machine. In front of them under some louvre windows was a camp stretcher, swag laid out on top. An old-fashioned eiderdown was perched at the end of the swag. Finally they had found where the old man slept. And it was pitiful.

  A small gentlemen’s wardrobe was standing with its doors slightly ajar. Billy walked over. Inside, neatly folded, were some work clothes, a couple of pairs of faded plain pyjamas, rolled black socks and jocks and singlets. All white.

  Packing was going to be easy.

  ‘Right, Billy, we need a bag. Can you have a look around and see if you can find anything suitable? I’ll pack up his clothes.’

  Tammy rolled her shoulders and moved towards the ward­robe, laying bits and pieces out on the eiderdown. Then she looked down at their threadbare state in dismay. There was no way she could send the pyjamas to the hospital. Brought up by a woman who kept a couple of new nighties up in the cupboard ‘in case I have to go to hospital’, she just couldn’t send these with her uncle, even if he didn’t want to admit they were related. She’d have to stop in town and buy him some new ones.

  She put the PJs back in the cupboard. Hunting around under the bed she found some old slippers which would do the job. She moved into the little room that held the shower, collected some toiletries from under the vanity basin and put them on the bed too.

  ‘Find anything, Billy?’

  ‘What?’ The boy appeared in the doorway.

  ‘That would be “pardon me”. Did you find anything?’

  ‘Nah. Nothing I can see except these shopping bags. Will they do?’ Billy held up a bundle of white plastic.

  Good Lord. Surely they could do better than that. He’d be at the hospital looking like an old hobo. Her mind whispered, But that’s what he really is, Tim Tam!

  Bugger it. She’d buy him a cheap overnight bag too.

  ‘We’ll load the stuff into those bags for the minute, Billy, and buy him something nicer when we get to town. I won’t have anything at home; Shon’s probably used it.’

  Billy looked at her.

  Tammy shrugged. ‘He’s left me.’ Not knowing why she felt so comfortable saying this to an ten-year-old boy yet was unable to ring her best friend Lucy and tell her about it.

  Billy nodded, just the once, and then got to back to work. Ah. That was why. Lucy would have wanted to know the ins and outs of everything; and Tammy wasn’t ready for that. She needed to come to terms with the fact that her marriage was finally over.

  ‘I’ll carry these bags out to the truck.’ Billy’s quiet voice broke into her thoughts. He’d loaded the pitiful pile of clothes into a couple of bags. ‘Dad’s out there waiting. He’ll be wondering what we’re doing.’

  ‘Right. No worries. I’ll just –’ Tammy waved her hands around, not really knowing what it was she was going to do, but recognising she needed a minute to herself. She was standing in her uncle’s house and she felt like an alien. Unwanted, unneeded, an intrusive presence in the private world of Joe McCauley.

  She moved to close the cupboard doors and walk away from the camp bed, but spotted something which made her halt in her steps. A photo frame, propped up by the bed, on a rickety table beside an old-fashioned alarm clock with bells. It held a photograph of Joe’s wife, Nellie. Tammy reached to pick up the cheap frame. Mission brown plastic bordered a photo of a woman who was smiling into the camera. Wearing a dark green cotton dress, she was broad across the shoulders and had a large, squarish-looking bust. A straw hat shaded the woman’s eyes but Tammy could see deep creases around her temples, and her smile was a mile wide. Such a lovely, comforting looking woman.

  If only she could have known her.

  If only Nellie could have made it all better for both of them. Her husband and her great-niece. ‘Tammy . . . ?’ Hunter’s voice came echoing down th
e hall.

  ‘Coming!’ She hesitated a moment, glancing again at her aunt, before she tucked the photo frame under her arm. The alarm clock followed. The old bloke might want a few familiar things around him. She took one last look at the camp stretcher he used for a bed, shook her head and moved back through the house. She met Hunter just as he was removing his boots to come in the door.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ he said, leaning down and pulling his boots back on. ‘We’d better be going. Do you want me to drop you at your place to pick up your ute?’

  ‘Umm . . . not sure.’ She wondered if Shon was gone. ‘I’ll ponder that for a minute and let you know.’

  Travis gave her a slightly bemused look. Tammy could just about hear him thinking: Women!

  He turned to yell at his son. ‘Billy! Grab those dogs and tie them up, will you?’ He swung back to Tammy. ‘I’ll come over and feed them while Joe’s away.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d appreciate that. He wouldn’t want me to do it.’

  ‘Want to tell me about that?’ Trav raised one eyebrow, and slung her half a smile.

  Tammy felt her tummy curl up into little knots, and it wasn’t all due to the family feud. A half-smile that made a man look so delicious should be deemed illegal.

  She got her thoughts back on track. ‘He and my grandfather never got on. Something to do with my grandmother. I was never told, just something I heard once made me think perhaps both brothers were in love with her.’

  She remembered a conversation one day in town. It was a Friday afternoon and Mae had just walked out of the hairdressers to meet her teenage granddaughter in the street. Mae looked beautiful, hair all tinted, falling in waves. Nellie was walking in, and she looked awful. Dowdy, hair in dire need of a perm, a cut, anything to give her a bit of style. Or so Tammy’s grandmother had said in the car as they were travelling home. ‘I can’t understand what Joe saw in that woman.’ There was a churlish note to her voice, like she was miffed, which set Tammy to wondering: Why would her grandmother care who Joe married? Her grandmother had gone on, ‘Tamara, always remember that land means everything. Money, power, security. Love doesn’t necessarily make for a comfortable life.’

  Trav’s voice came crashing through her memories. ‘Is that all?’ he asked. ‘I overheard Joe calling you a land-grabber.’

  Tammy tried a smile to prove she hadn’t been hurt by the old man’s words. She could feel the ends of her mouth turn up, but inside she was cold, remembering her earlier argument with Shon. Bloody land. It made you but it could also break you.

  ‘Montmorency Downs once included McCauley’s Hill. When my great-grandparents died, they left the arable land to my grandfather and the marginal hill country to Joe. At the time Joe was working away, falling trees up the bush. That was his job and he was only home on the weekends. My grandfather, on the other hand, had leased the low country off his parents when they retired and was working it, all day, every day, milking cows. It seemed fair the way my grandparents explained it when I wanted to know why Joe hated us. Now, well, now I’m not so sure.’ She remembered the state of the house she’d just been in, and compared it with the more stately and opulent homestead down at the bottom of the hill. The antiques, a legacy of five generations, crowding the rooms at Montmorency; the single wooden ladder-back chair in the kitchen behind her.

  ‘Dogs are done, Dad.’ Billy arrived at their side.

  ‘Righto, boy. Let’s move then.’

  Tammy glanced one last time at the house. The rocking chair, the culprit of all the commotion, lay discarded on its side. The rifle was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Trav? The rifle?’

  ‘Locked it up in his gun cabinet. Found one in the shed.’

  ‘Right, thanks.’ Although Tammy wasn’t sure why she was thanking him. It wasn’t like she had the right to thank anyone on Joe’s behalf. She jumped into the ute beside Billy as Trav piled into the driver’s seat and took off.

  As they drove down the road to Tammy’s, Trav lifted his eyebrow. ‘Decision time, Ms McCauley. What’s it to be? Our company or your own?’

  Tammy took a look down the drive. Shon’s twin-cab was nowhere to be seen. Good. But at the moment, her own company sucked.

  ‘I’ll ride shotgun with you boys, if you don’t mind.’

  A clap from Billy beside her sealed the deal.

  And Trav turned to her and half smiled.

  Tammy amended her thoughts on that look being deemed illegal. By the feel of her tummy, outlawed was more like it.

  Chapter 15

  ‘What’s wrong with plastic bags?’ Trav asked, perplexed, as he watched Billy and Tammy load Joe’s things into a new overnight bag. They’d stopped off at Drapers Emporium on their way and were now standing in the hospital car park.

  ‘Dad! You can’t send him to hospital with plastic bags. He’ll look all different from the others.’

  ‘The others? What others?’

  ‘The other patients.’ Billy stopped short of rolling his eyes. Trav was about to tick him off for his attitude, when he could have sworn he saw Tammy rolling her eyes as well.

  ‘Right. The others. I get it.’ Of course he did. But when had he, Travis Hunter, ever worried what anyone else thought of him? Since Kat left you with a two-and-half-year-old son to raise, you hard-arsed bushman.

  ‘Let’s go find out what old Joe’s done to himself,’ said Tammy as she zipped up the bag. ‘I reckon he’ll still be in casualty. The Narree ED has never been known for its ability to fast track its patients.’

  Travis moved to take the bag from Tammy, but stopped when she threw him another killer look. She took off across the car park.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets instead and strode towards the front entrance after his son. Where was this desire to help a woman he didn’t even know coming from? He’d never had it before. Well, not since Kat left.

  ‘Mr Hunter? Mr Hunter! Beatrice Parker’s my name, and tracking you down is my game.’

  He swung around and met clear space and fresh air.

  ‘Down here, Mr Hunter, down here.’

  He shifted his line of sight south a couple of feet and was rewarded by two twinkling blackcurrant eyes staring up at him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Beatrice. ‘Not hurt, are you? What about your boy? He all right?’

  An Uzi couldn’t have spat questions faster. ‘Nope. Just visiting.’

  ‘Well, I’m here to cheer. You look like you need a bit of jollying along. Was that Tammy McCauley who went in just in front of you? There’s a likely sort of nancy to fancy.’

  ‘She’s married, Mrs Parker.’

  ‘Not for long. I just met Mrs Sellers. She sells craft on a stall here at the hospital for the church, and she’s been texting . . . or was it sex-ting?’ The old woman put a finger under her chin in studied thought. ‘All these odd words they’re putting in the dictionary these days, I don’t know. How’s a woman supposed to keep up with it all, I ask you?’ The blackcurrant eyes widened to the size of sultanas.

  ‘Anyway, she’s been chatting to her husband Rob on one of those fancy iPhone thingies. I really need to get one of those. Did you know you can play Scrabble on them? Now where was I? Oh yes, Rob. Anyway, he’s just been buying a sausage roll at the corner store, although I think the roadhouse makes them better . . .’

  Trav was still back at sex-ting. What the hell? ‘. . . and he was talking to the alcohol deliveryman, from the pub? And he said, Shon Murphy’s just moved in with Joanne at the Lake Grace Hotel.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He’d moved from Scrabble to Shon Murphy.

  ‘Yes, and it’s all happened today! Although that man has been dangling the angles all over the place, just like those Murphys do, so it doesn’t surprise me he’s finally hustled for a hussy. So tell me, what’s Tammy doing here?’

  ‘Her uncle,’ he said, distrac
ted. The bastard was gone?

  ‘Joe?’ Mrs Parker’s jaw dropped. Her mouth started flapping but no sound came out. The sight was enough to make Trav refocus.

  ‘Yes. Joe,’ he said as he went to walk away; the damned woman slipped around in front of him and blocked him.

  ‘Those families haven’t talked in years. In fact, I don’t think Joe’s ever talked to the girl. What’s happened?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know, Mrs Parker, but if you’ll excuse me, I’d better be –’

  ‘Don’t you go getting all tetchy now, son. I’m just worried for Tammy. Donald once told me the whole story, but I hoped Joe might have been able to put it aside, make up with the girl after she lost her family.’

  Story? What story? Trav stopped then tried his half-smile. It seemed to work on Tammy, maybe it would work here too. ‘What story was that, Mrs Parker?’

  He watched as the little blackcurrants went slightly misty, and Beatrice’s head dipped, like a confidence was about to be shared. ‘We-ell,’ drawled the woman as she paused for a deep breath. ‘Joe used to work for my father up the bush. It was when Joe was a young fella and he started up there in a logging coupe, cutting down trees by hand with a crosscut saw. He was wanting to earn money to buy some woman an engagement ring. But while Joe was up the scrub, his brother met the same woman. Mae was her name. She married him.’ An arthritic hand came up to dab at something which looked suspiciously like a tear. ‘Joe was devastated. He never went back to the farm. Never spoke to his brother again that I know of. Didn’t even go to their funeral when they were killed in that car accident.’

  So Joe had been found wanting too. By Tammy’s grandmother. Mae had moved on to another bloke. Bloody women. It only confirmed his opinion once again. Love them and they leave. Love them and you’ll get hurt, big time.

  ‘It was a train, you see, that killed Tom and Mae. A level crossing without lights or boom gates, just on the other side of Lake Grace. Bang, and they were both gone, leaving their granddaughter on her own. Oh, she was in her late twenties by then but even so . . .’ Beatrice paused, seeming to run out of words.