Beside him Joe’s face shut down, like he was regretting he’d said too much.
What the hell was the old man on about? ‘C’mon, Joe. Spill your guts. What makes you think Tammy was neglected?’
Joe sat silent, poking the ground with the stick he’d used to toast his marshmallows.
‘Joe?’ What could be so bad that he felt he needed to hide it?
The old man looked up but his eyes were glazed like he hadn’t taken in his question. ‘Mae was her grandmother,’ he said in a remote voice.
‘I know. What happened to her parents?’ asked Trav again, but more quietly this time.
Joe’s eyes were still unfocused, his mouth a grim slash, as if he was looking back in time and not liking what he saw. ‘Didn’t ever find out who the father was, but the girl got pregnant just out of school. An end-of-year party to celebrate entering the real world. What an entry that was, a belly full of arms and legs.’ Old Joe grimaced again. ‘She was a pretty girl too, just like Mae. Big brown eyes, long dark hair. Natalie was her name. Anyway, she stayed with her parents, had the baby, was going to go on to university and do nursing, they said.’ Then Joe lapsed back into silence.
‘And? Where is she?’ said Trav, thinking of Katrina. Another runaway he’d bet.
‘In row number 24B, third from the left.’
‘Row what?’
The old man glanced across at him. ‘She’s in the cemetery. She died. Went down to the Narree River to have a midnight swim with some friends just before heading off to Melbourne. Mae was going to have the baby during the week, and Natalie was going to come home on weekends. Or so the stock agent told Nellie.’ Joe seemed to take a deep breath. ‘The river had been in flood that year. Lots of snags around. The girl dived in, didn’t come back up. It was night time, no one could find her. That was it. Gone.’
A chill crept up Trav’s backbone.
‘They dragged the river, but nuthin’. Found her body a week or two later, somewhere down near where the Narree meets the Gippsland Lakes. Anyhow, Tom and Mae took on the baby and brought her up. And they tried. Well, I guess they did. But they were getting on themselves and grieving. The child ran wild. I used to see her through me scope – she was a real feral bit of gear. But she seems to have made it through all right.’
‘Your brother and his wife must have been devastated by it all,’ said Trav, thinking of how he’d feel if Billy died. Probably beyond grief. ‘Then to have to bring up another baby. Shit. What a big ask. It’s hard enough when you’re my age.’
Joe stared into the night sky. ‘I guess so. To be honest . . .’ He turned and looked Trav straight in the eye. ‘I really wouldn’t know. Never spoke to them.’
Trav digested this for a moment then asked quietly, ‘So if you never talked, how did you know all this?’
‘Nellie. She’d find out things in town and then there was the stock agent. He was always up for a yarn after Nellie plied him with her cakes. He told her lots of stuff that was going on down the bottom of the hill.’ Joe suddenly seemed defensive. ‘I told you, I was a loner. Don’t know how Nellie put up with me really.’ Boots, sensing his master was upset, gently slid from under Billy’s arm and came to sit at Joe’s side. Right where he could reach his soft ears without bending too far down.
‘You mustn’t have been too bad, Joe. For an old reprobate bushie, that is,’ said Trav, with a gentle half-smile.
‘Yeah, well. She was a good woman and I didn’t deserve her but she stuck with me. Didn’t realise what I had until she was gone.’
‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ said Trav thinking of Katrina.
Both men stared into the fire as they thought about what they’d loved and lost. Hot burning coals shifted as a log dropped lower into the drum.
‘Tammy took me on a tour of Montmorency the other day,’ Joe cleared his throat, ‘to have look around.’
Travis stared at the old man, shock written all over his face.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Joe, sounding indignant. ‘Hadn’t seen the place for a while.’
‘And?’ Travis raised an eyebrow.
‘She’s doing a good enough job.’
‘Good enough, hey? You tell her that?’
‘Nope.’
‘Probably would’ve meant a lot if you had,’ Travis observed.
‘She don’t need no opinions of mine. And what’s more, don’t you go saying that I’ve been talking about her. It’s not like me to open me trap and I don’t want her thinkin’ I make a habit of what’s her business to be coming from me.’ The old man cast Trav an evil look. ‘Or I’ll come and do somethin’ drastic to you.’
‘Like what?’
‘I’ll tell Mizz Greenaway you’ve got a different woman in bed every week.’
‘I don’t think that’ll matter too much, Joe. I’m thinking Miss Jacinta’s already gone off me.’
‘Really? Things go that well with my niece?’
‘Yep.’ Trav felt a twist in his gut. He swallowed the hard lump of apprehension that had become lodged in his throat. ‘She’s a great girl. I need to get this dog that’s causing her so much grief.’
‘That’s a pretty good description of Shon Murphy.’
Trav laughed softly. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yep,’ said Joe, ‘I sure do. You can have a go at both the domestic and feral dogs if you like.’
‘Dad?’ mumbled Billy, opening his eyes. ‘Is it home time?’
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Trav, leaning down to drag the boy from his cosy hole in the canvas. The child came out of the swag all limbs and Trav slung him over his shoulder. ‘I’ll put you in the ute. Hang on tight.’ And the little boy did, his arms sneaking hesitantly around his father’s neck.
‘And another thing,’ called Joe, slowly staggering to his feet.
The old man grabbed a log from a stack he had beside the fire and threw it into the drum. More bright sparks flew through the air around him, some whizzing up into the night sky. Then Joe looked at the father with his boy clinging tight to his back like a koala. Waiting.
‘You should talk to your brother. Forever is a long time to live with regret.’
Chapter 34
The radio beside her bed burst to life with a scream of rock music. Tammy rolled over, opened one eye. Surely not. It couldn’t possibly be six am.
She slung her legs off the bed and staggered to the bathroom, tripping over the tissue box, which was lying empty on the floor. Shit. Bugger. Blast. Tissues like clumps of snow dotted her bedroom floor.
No wonder her eyes felt like they were seeing through slits. She made it to the bathroom and peered in the mirror. Swollen red lumps stared back at her, ringed by heavy bags of black and cerise. Lucky she didn’t have to be anywhere bar the dairy this morning. What in the heck happened?
And then it all came crashing back. The lawyer’s phone call. Crying. Milking the cows. Crying. Staggering back to the house. Crying. The wine bottle. A maudlin daze. She was selling Montmorency and Shon Murphy, along with his solicitor, were ‘very pleased’.
‘I’ll bet he’s flamin’ pleased,’ Tammy muttered as she struggled into her milking clothes. On went the old jeans, the flannel shirt, a wind-cheater stained with last night’s milk, followed by a peaked cap covered in cow-shit. ‘He’ll get a share of a multi-million-dollar property. And he knows selling it will just about kill me.’
‘Kill who?’ said a voice from around the door.
‘Christ! What the –?’
‘You can’t kill Christ.’ Lucy entered the bathroom wearing the brightest scarlet Betty Boop PJs Tammy had ever seen. ‘He already died. But he came back. Mind you, he went again. Just like most men. Well, that’s what I think happened. Anyway, you’re a Catholic, you should know.’ She peered right into Tammy’s face. ‘Damn, you look terrible.’
‘No shit,
Sherlock. What’re you doing here?’ said Tammy, squinting her eyes to try to allay the sledgehammer knocking around in her skull.
‘You rang me, remember? Some tripe about selling the farm. Thought you’d been drinking so I came round straight away. In my pyjamas too. You shouldn’t drink on your own, Tammy. Bad form, my girl. Even Betty for company would’ve done.’
‘I wasn’t drinking!’
Lucy’s eyebrows shot into the air. ‘So what was the empty wine bottle doing on the bench? Having a party all on its own? You’re a one-pot screamer, girl. I would’ve thought with your breeding you could do better.’
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’
‘Joe. Look at him. He can hold his drink no worries at all. But you, you’re hopeless. Remember that night at the Burrindal B & S? You and one of the McDonald boys. Which one was it? Macca? Tys? Maybe it was Sean?’
Tammy shut her eyes. The sledgehammer was really going to town now. What’s more her brain felt like it was being squashed in a vice. And yet despite all that, a vivid picture of the McDonald boys, all cousins, snuck into her mind. She could never go past the new section of boundary fence without thinking of Macca and what he’d lost on that fateful day. The afternoon his girlfriend, Patty O’Hara, died when her red ute crashed into a B-Double truck. Bluey Atkins, the rig’s driver, had never been the same after the smash. He and his wife had finally sold up their fertiliser and stock feed business. Going to Darwin, they said, as far away from Narree as possible. The whole incident had rocked the district for months.
Tammy shook her head, then wished she hadn’t as the hammer went wild. Anyhow, things had turned out all right for him in the end. Macca was with another girl now. Lived somewhere up around Mount Isa.
‘Luce, about selling the farm . . .’
‘It was all bullshit. Me and Betty know. By the time we got here you’d finished the bottle and passed out.’
‘Luce . . .’
‘I know. I’m good, coming around at that hour. But all I did was respond to a friend in need. I think even a bloke like Christ would be happy with that.’ Lucy paused for breath and then said, ‘Although, it beats me why you weren’t ringing Travis Hunter.’
‘I think I tried but he wasn’t home.’
‘Probably for the best. You seriously look like shit.’
Tammy shut her eyes again, counted to ten. Be nice, Tammy. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘Hey, don’t you ever wash your milking clothes?’ Tammy opened her eyes and saw her friend, who was by now back near the door, wrinkling her nose. ‘I think I’ll go make coffee. Much easier on the olfactory senses.’
‘The what senses?’
Lucy gave Tammy a sympathetic glance. ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head over my nose. I’ll go inhale caffeine. That’ll fix it.’
‘Fix what?’ Tammy was by now completely lost. But Lucy and Betty Boop were gone.
Tammy flipped the lid of the loo closed and sat down. How the hell was she going to get through all this? As well as the headache, her face was now coming out in sympathy and throbbing too. Probably from all the crying the night before. Crying never got anyone anywhere, anyway. She’d learned that a long time ago from her grandparents.
Tammy had been told right from when she could first comprehend that her mother had died and had assumed it was when she was being born. Of her father she had no idea, didn’t even put it together that there was a missing significant ‘other’, until she got to kinder and school and met other children with two parents.
She also worked out very early on not to ask about Natalie, otherwise her grandmother would get upset, disappear into her room for hours. For days afterwards she would walk around with a tragic and grief-stricken air that struck Tammy to the core. She was the cause of her grandmother’s pain; it was her fault for being born.
And compared to Tammy’s friends’ mothers, Mae was a distant maternal figure, like mothering was something she did out of reluctant duty. Beautifully groomed, Mae also seemed to want a replica of herself in her granddaughter, a mirror image that could be moulded to fit Mae’s idea of perfection. But all she got was a tomboy with a wild streak.
‘Oh, but you’re always wearing jeans!’ Mae would say, in that tone of voice. ‘Oh, but your hair is so short . . . You’re so strong-minded . . . You’re such a farmer,’ like it was the worse thing in the world for a girl. Much and all as she loved her grandmother, Tammy eventually shut it all out and spent her time outside with Grandpa Tom or running wild around the property and surrounding hills. Somehow she instinctively knew she would never meet Mae’s high standards and approval no matter how hard she tried.
On the day Mae let it slip that Tammy’s mother had actually drowned, they’d been in the middle of a howling argument over whether fifteen-year-old Tammy could stay overnight at her boyfriend’s place.
‘I’ll tell you why you can’t,’ cried a distressed Mae at the rebellious teenager after the argument had rocked back and forth. ‘You’ll end up just like your mother, pregnant and then dead in a river!’
Her grandmother had then clapped a hand over her mouth, sat down and broken into tears, while a shocked Tammy had yelled back, ‘What do you mean, dead in a river?’ The only answer she got was heartbreaking sobs, crying that went on and on from a woman who sat swaying back and forth.
It’d taken the sudden entry of Tom into the kitchen for a cup of tea to end the stand-off. He’d taken Tammy down the paddock, giving a distraught Mae time to collect herself, and explained the story of Natalie’s death. That they really didn’t know who Tammy’s father was. The fact Mae couldn’t deal with her daughter’s death, the sense of failure of it all, so it was just easier never to mention her, to forget Natalie even existed. There was only one reminder left now and that was Tammy herself.
Tom had held his granddaughter’s hand tightly while he tried to explain her grandmother’s fragile state of mind on the matter, his eyes begging forgiveness for not telling her the whole story earlier. His need to protect Mae had overridden everything else.
And finally Tammy had understood why she’d felt like an outsider to her grandparents’ relationship. They were supposed to be a family circle, but they weren’t. She sat slightly to the left or right, never tight within. She wasn’t Natalie. She didn’t entirely belong. And it was all about Mae. Tom and Tammy pleasing Mae, the whole world pleasing Mae. It was just the way it was, whether the older woman did it consciously or not, and they were all a party to the deception.
Tammy spent hours dreaming of Natalie, and what she would have been like. It wasn’t that her grandmother didn’t love her, because Tammy sensed in her own way she did, it was just . . . well . . . Mae never focused solely on her granddaughter. Subsequently Tammy would have given anything to have known Natalie. What was she like? Was she a tomboy too? Would her mother have been proud of her?
She sure as heck wouldn’t be proud of me now, thought Tammy as she stood up and made her way out of the bedroom, steadfastly ignoring the mirror on the dressing table as she went. She could hear Lucy in the kitchen singing along to Rod Stewart. Time to suck it up, stop thinking about the past and move forwards.
First things first though, to have breakfast or not? Tammy knew she had to get something in her stomach, otherwise she’d never make it through milking without spewing. She’d have to run the gauntlet of Lucy and Betty Boop. God help them all.
‘I still don’t see why you have to sell the farm!’ Lucy was horrified all over again. ‘The bastard can’t make you do that.’
Tammy held a cup of tea in one hand, the other palm was in front of her face as if subconsciously trying to deflect Lucy’s attack. ‘Apparently he can,’ she mumbled into the hot tea. Then she mimicked the solicitor’s voice, ‘It’s going to be a great outcome all round.’
‘I’ll give her a great outcome all round. All round the bloody district. She’l
l never get work in this valley again!’
‘Well, she’s getting plenty of work at the minute. Apparently there’s a run on divorces.’
‘Mmm, another reason I should look into becoming a lesbian.’
‘Because lesbians never break up. Come on, Luce. What makes you think that’d be any different? They’re still your partner. Marriage certificates don’t mean jack-shit any more.’
Lucy looked taken aback. ‘I suppose you’ve got a point.’
‘Too right I have. Doesn’t help me with Shon though.’
‘So what do you have to do now?’
‘Go to town. Sign some papers. Sell the place. Give Shon his share of the proceeds. One hundred and fifty years of McCauley history – all over rover.’
When Tammy looked up from smothering jam on her toast, Lucy’s eyes were welling with tears. ‘Oh man, Tammy. No wonder you got drunk. What’re you going to do?’
Tammy picked up the jar of plum jam she’d made with the fruit from the century-old Montmorency orchard. Screwed on the lid. Got up from the table and pushed her chair in. ‘I’m going to milk my girls. Enjoy every last minute I’ve got with them. They’ll have to be sold too, I guess.’ Tammy felt tears started to prick her eyes. Damn. She wouldn’t cry again. She’d done enough of that. ‘And I have to try and work out how I’m going to tell Joe.’
Lucy gasped. ‘Oh, my Lord. I forgot about him. He’ll be shattered.’
‘I know,’ said Tammy. ‘He mightn’t have set foot on the place until recently but it’s still a big part of him, whether he knows it or not.’
‘How’re you going to tell him?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to blurt it out.’
‘Wait a bit,’ advised Lucy. ‘Just until you’ve got your own head around it.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Yep,’ said Lucy nodding. ‘You’ll need every bit of strength you’ve got for that conversation. In the meantime, go see to your girls. Me and Betty are going back to bed. We’ve got some serious beauty sleep to catch up on.’ And Lucy formed a pose reminiscent of Ms Boop.
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