At the far end of the paddock, distant but drawing nearer, a billowing dust cloud spiralled into the air. A willy-willy traversing the unsealed crossroad she’d passed a few hundred metres back was Cait’s first thought, until she heard the bassy doof-doof of speakers and the roar of a straining engine growing nearer. Dread stopped her mid-whistle, her head toing and froing between the fast-moving dust cloud and her best mate bounding towards her obediently.
‘No, Karma, no.’ She held out both hands as if they possessed magical stopping powers, but her faithful friend kept running. ‘No!’ Cait screamed louder, managing to intercept the dog, wrapping her arms around the oblivious mutt just as the black ute thundered by, swinging onto the loose road shoulder, a mushrooming red dust cloud blanketing the sky and turning the sun into a burnt-orange glow ball.
‘Moron!’ Caitlin shouted at the ute’s disappearing back end, more out of relief than anything else. ‘Come ’ere, gorgeous girl.’ She gave Karma a big hug and a ruffle behind the ears as the powdery film settled around them both. ‘Sorry, sweetie. Looks like Calingarry Crossing still has its country morons and country dirt. Oh, and look at that. Now I have a dust-covered car. Great!’
She slammed the suitcase lid closed and spent twenty minutes wiping the tan leather seats, grateful she hadn’t opted for the cream interior, especially after seeing how the red dust had coloured her cardigan.
Bringing her new car out here was dumb.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
A road trip had not been at the top of her list nine months ago when she’d decided to treat herself to the limited edition VW Beetle. But who was she kidding? There was no list. Between her directorship with the family business and her specialist work with the sports injury practice, there was little room for too much else in her life right now. She had come close to unleashing the rebel Cait when she’d ended her marriage—much to the disappointment of her parents—finally standing on her own two feet, finally making her own decisions. Sadly, her dad had died soon afterwards—myocardial infarction—and she found herself sucked back into line and into the family business, her mother and twin brother again at the helm of her life, leaving thirty-eight-year-old Caitlin still doing the right thing by everyone else.
The cream-coloured towel she’d used to wipe down the car’s interior was now a mottled brown.
‘Ruined,’ she grumbled, throwing it into a ball on the floor of the passenger seat.
‘That’s as good as it gets for now, Karma. Let’s go, girl.’
They’d not driven fifteen minutes when Caitlin saw the same black ute parked inside a boundary gate, the driver’s head buried under the tonneau covering of the rear tray.
She pulled over, told Karma to stay, flung open the door and yelled over the moron’s music.
‘Do you have any idea what you did back there? You could’ve run over my dog.’
The head emerged from under the cover, a mop of unbrushed blond locks. Big blue eyes ogled Cait from top to toe, infuriating her even more.
‘I can assure you, lady, I never run over dogs. You parked your car in the shadows and over the crest of a bloody hill. What did you expect? I didn’t even see you until it was too late. I would’ve stopped, but I was in a bit of a hurry.’
‘I noticed.’
He switched his examination from Caitlin to Caitlin’s car. Then he leaned inside his window, switched off the music and retrieved a large black hat.
‘Must say, we don’t get too many of those around Calingarry Crossing. That’s where you’re headed, I assume, or are you lost?’
‘I can assure you, mister,’ she mimicked, ‘I never get lost. I’m headed for the Dandelion House.’
‘The what?’ He posited the broad-brimmed felt hat on his head, squishing his curls into submission, and cast a curious eye over her one more time.
How stupid! What are you—a teenager still?
Not everyone knew the friends had called it the Dandelion House twenty years ago, certainly not a man who had probably only just left his twenties behind.
‘The old place on the river.’
‘Oh, right, you mean Gypsy’s old place. Gotcha! That explains everything.’ His constant nodding—like one of those daggy head-bobbing dashboard dog toys—annoyed Caitlin more than the silly smirk. ‘So then, you’re one of them.’
‘One of them? What does that … Oh, forget it,’ Caitlin huffed with a dismissive wave of one hand and turned, almost tripping over her dog. ‘Karma, I told you to stay. Get in the car. Now!’
Contrition pricked at her conscience the minute she barked the order that sent her beloved mutt, tail between her legs, back to the car. Caitlin never, ever yelled at her dog.
‘Karma?’ The moron was scratching his head, forcing the black hat to dance up and down, a couple of defiant blond locks springing free.
‘That’s right. Karma.’ She took aim and fired. ‘You know about karma, don’t you? The bad you do always comes back and bites you on the bum.’
Bullseye! Yet the man seemed unfazed, if not a little amused, driving Caitlin’s irritation off the scale.
‘So you’re telling me your dog bites?’
‘No! Of course Karma doesn’t bite,’ she replied, hearing the hysterics in her own voice. ‘I’m not talking about my … That’s not what I … Argh! Forget it.’ She stormed back to her car, slammed the door and drove off, wishing she knew how to spin her wheels to leave behind her own cloud of duco-destroying dust.
Welcome home, Caitlin.
39
Stripped of leaves for the winter, the gnarly limbs on the colonnade of liquidambars lining the overgrown track from the punt allowed Caitlin her first glimpse of the house, and it was like an injection of sanity, which she obviously needed after her tantrum. She told herself the uncharacteristic reaction back on the road was the shock of seeing Karma almost run down, on top of death by dust and a long, very long, day of driving.
‘Here at last, girl,’ she said, guilt making her voice gentle, the harshness gone. Not so the sorrowful look on Karma’s face at having been banished to the car earlier.
Cait slowed at the on-ramp to the punt that would take them to their home for the next three months. Playing the brake and accelerator, she let the car jerk forward centimetre by centimetre, her shoulders hunched and face scrunched in a Will it or won’t it bottom out and scrape my shiny new spoiler? expression. Only once on board did she breathe.
The old car ferry still held such fond memories as the place she and the others had played, fished, read and gossiped. For a while it had been their official girl-club headquarters, an after-school meeting place so Willow could make her way down the hill to join them, tottering clumsily as her limp struggled to keep up with her excitement.
‘Careful, Willow,’ Sara would call—always the carer.
*
‘We can start. She’ll catch up,’ Poppy said, impatient fingers snapping at Amber busily removing the cellophane wrap from a packet of Winfield Blues. ‘You going to share those smokes around or not?’
Amber huffed. ‘You could try bringing your own one day, Poppy.’
‘Not for me, thanks,’ Caitlin said. ‘I don’t know how you can stand the taste. It’s disgusting.’
‘Really disgusting,’ Sara echoed. ‘Those things will kill you.’
‘As if anyone cares.’ Poppy lit up, blowing a smoke ring for effect.
‘I care.’
The four girls all looked in the direction of the small voice and the odd, heavy shuffle of feet as a breathless Willow joined them on the punt.
‘Well, you’d be the only one. Where’s Gypsy?’ Poppy asked.
‘You’re safe. Mum’s painting in her room out the back. What are we doing?’
‘Sara’s about to tell us how she lost a shoe the other day and how she’s waiting for Will Travelli to pop over in his pumpkin carriage and propose marriage.’
‘Am not,’ Sara whined. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Amber.’
‘Ignore them,�
�� Caitlin said. ‘They’re just stirring you.’
‘My dad bought this for me.’ Amber reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out her latest Mary Kay makeup, presenting the palette of eye-shadow colours like a Sale of the Century gift shop model. ‘Want me to do your face, Poppy? I can make you look like a girl.’
‘As if!’ Poppy shoved a finger in the air.
‘Charming,’ Amber groaned.
‘You can do me,’ Willow said excitedly.
‘Good idea,’ Poppy said, pouting that her precious Greer Girls—the group she’d named after her guru, Germaine Greer—were turning into a feminist’s nightmare since Amber joined. ‘I’ll wear that muck the day hell freezes over.’
*
That’s exactly what it was starting to feel like to Caitlin now the punt was in the middle of the river and the sun was almost completely gone for the day. Not even Karma seemed keen to get out of the car. They both stayed put, a sense of coming home warming Cait against the night air. Her body relaxed. Even her toes uncurled after being clawed and tense from the drive.
‘Not to mention the moron, hey, girl?’
She was sure it wasn’t normal to love a dog so much, but the thought didn’t stop her. Karma had no expectations and made no demands.
‘Faithful to the end, aren’t you?’ Cait whispered, stroking the dog and feeling the heat radiating from under the short, spotted brown-on-white coat. The vet at the shelter had suggested Karma was part dalmatian, but it had been the way the dog smiled—a curious combination of bared teeth and gums and a wagging tail—that won Cait’s heart.
All was quiet when she pulled up in front of the house.
‘Stay, Karma,’ she ordered, bracing for more cold air. She walked to the boot, opened it, then went back to reach inside the car window and gave two short, sharp blasts of the horn, loving the cute Beetle toot. When the beep brought no response, she let the dog go ahead, shooing Karma up the steps and watching for warning signs—for the wag to stop, the hackles to lift, the ears to flatten.
‘Hello!’ Cait trod lightly on the boarded veranda, nudging the open door, and Karma barged in unperturbed. The dog’s lack of interest in anything other than whatever tiny morsel she could sniff on the floor satisfied Caitlin that nothing—human or otherwise—waited inside in the dark. Her unquestionable belief in Karma did not, however, stop her from flicking on every light as she made her way through the entry foyer and into the kitchen.
‘Wow.’
The house was exactly how she remembered—only too tidy, too unlived in, too unloved.
‘We’ll fix that, won’t we, girl?’
After fetching her suitcase and a bag of food supplies, including the all-important doggy kibble, Cait lugged the rest of her dog’s travel bits from the car, including the new doggy swag, an impulse online buy she had managed to finalise without adding the matching Driza-Bone coat and ‘dogloshes’ for Karma’s feet.
‘Okay. Room next.’
Caitlin hadn’t stayed over in the house like Poppy and Sara used to do, so she hardly expected to find a room just for her, with a nameplate that matched the other doors she passed in her search. It was Gypsy’s room, at the end of the second hallway, and the name plaque featured the same stick-figure family drawing as on the others. Only, rather than her first name, the words underneath the image read: ‘Wynter’s Way’.
‘What on earth…?’
After wrestling with the lock and the stubbornness of swollen architraves, Cait stumbled into the room and gasped at the mural on the walls, the noise pricking Karma’s ears and causing a curious tilt of the dog’s head.
‘It’s okay, girl.’ Cait crouched down to reassure the dog, stroking her back, not knowing whether she was comforting Karma, or vice versa. She suspected the latter. This past month—the anticipation of coming back, the arguments with her mother and the prospect of facing the memories from all those years ago—had left her with a gigantic knot in her chest. Clearly, she was more worked up about this homecoming than she realised, which might explain the anti-moron missile she’d fired on that poor man earlier.
‘I’ll be all right in a minute. Your mother’s in need of a good cry is all. And I’m thinking this room is just the catalyst I need.’
A menagerie of hand-painted animals—grinning kangaroos, goofy-looking koalas and smiling snakes—covered one wall. A pearl-wearing, handbag-toting emu was hiding behind the trunk of a tree, branches spewing across the ceiling to form a canopy of green. Behind the bed was a small brown circus pony with a ruby-coloured headdress made of feathers. Karma stalked the room, investigating the emu with her nose, protective hackles twitching.
‘Relax, Karma girl, you’d best get used to them. This is home for three months.’
Who’d have thought!
Almost a year ago, Cait had found herself in a conference room with her old school friends, realising she had no idea what had happened to the last twenty years of her life. She certainly hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from her youth. Now here she was, one of four unlikely beneficiaries of the place her old best friend Poppy had once nicknamed the House of Wishes. It was all still a mystery as to why them—why Caitlin? Being naturally curious about all things medical, the first thing she planned to do while in town was find out the circumstances of Gypsy’s demise. Once face to face with Calingarry’s one and only resident doctor, she figured she’d seek clarification on the cause of death, although such detail would seem irrelevant to many.
Gypsy was gone.
As daughter of the town doctor, Cait had known about some of Gypsy’s struggles. The woman had endured so much and yet when Caitlin thought about her now, she never pictured her as anything but smiling.
*
Karma’s warning bark woke Caitlin from a deep sleep, a shard of sunlight stabbing the corner of her eyes. She dragged the pillow out from under her head, smothered her face and yelled, ‘Be quiet, Karma. Get over it. The animals aren’t real. Go back to sleep.’
Too late.
They were both awake now.
She sat up, combed fingers through her hair and winced as they snagged in the tangled mess. She barely remembered de-cluttering the bed of clothes and surrendering her body under the double doona. She hadn’t used the crocheted rug folded at the foot of the bed, but it was only June. The real cold—the Calingarry Crossing cold—was still a month or so away. Cait eased her feet to floorboards that felt more like slabs of ice. Had there been any rogue cells still sleeping somewhere in her body they would most certainly be shocked awake now.
Karma barked again. This time Cait heard loud banging on the screen door that wasn’t stopping. Dragging on a robe and yesterday’s dirty socks, she shook a peppermint into her palm—a poor substitute for brushing her teeth, but given the taste in her mouth it was better than nothing. With a little sock-skating along the polished timber hallway, she called out, ‘I’m coming. I’m coming. Hold your horses.’
Throwing open the door with gusto, she grimaced at the blinding ray of morning sunshine that silhouetted the figure on the other side of the fly screen.
‘And good morning to you too. Beauty, isn’t it?’ said a voice not unfamiliar to Cait as her squint shifted to the black ute parked on the drive.
‘You!’
He stepped forward, his strapping torso almost filling the doorway. ‘I’ve been called plenty of things, but I prefer the name I was christened. Name’s Alex.’
‘You’re here to apologise then, Alex.’
‘Ah, no, I’m here to look at your Dorper,’ he said flatly.
His grin grew wide as he again cast his eye over Cait. She tightened the wrap of her robe, tugging the loosely knotted sash.
‘Look at my what?’
‘Your Dorper. Your lamb.’
‘I have a lamb?’
‘You have two. Twins. Just letting you know I’ll be out back giving them the once over. Didn’t want to be accused of trying to kill them.’
‘So, you’re a vet?’
>
‘The vet. Yep. Got it in one. Go to the top of the class.’ He tipped his hat, smiling the sort of smile people probably couldn’t stay mad at for too long.
‘I see, well, don’t let me hold you up.’
Cait closed the door in his face, shuffled to the kitchen, almost tripping over Karma, and waited until she saw the ute slowly pass the rear of the house and stop by the paddock and two raggedy-looking sheep with two tiny lambs.
‘Dorpers, of course! Who’s the moron now, Wynter?’ She snorted. ‘Better put checking out the estate on the list of things to do today, Karma.’
*
Rugged up in jeans, a woolly turtleneck jumper and the faithful suede jacket she’d bought in Boston on a trip to celebrate her thirtieth birthday eight years ago, she scribbled a shopping list. She needed to stock up on food and to call in and see Doc Davis, unpack her bags, and generally make the place home. The house looked surprisingly unlived in, considering three other women had stayed already. Half-lived-in was how Cait would explain the dearth of knick-knacks and a living room piled high with partially packed cartons. What had the others made of their time here? Going last, at least she had the shortest amount of time to wait. Come September they’d be arranging to meet again, presumably in the same stark city conference room.
‘No time to laze about today. Come on, Karma.’
Alex was on his way out when Cait locked the front door; hardly necessary out here, but a habit she shouldn’t break. In three months’ time she’d be back in Sydney. Sadly, the arty village in the Blue Mountains where she lived in a renovated Californian Bungalow–style home was growing, becoming a hotspot for loutish behaviour.
And morons.
‘Hello again,’ Alex called out the window, slowing the ute to watch Cait fold the Beetle’s soft-top away. ‘Got a jack in that thing?’
‘A jack? I guess so. Why do you ask?’
‘In case you get a flat. They come in handy if you get bogged too.’
Caitlin turned her face and palms up towards the heavens and said cockily, ‘Well, I don’t think it will rain any time soon, and given the car’s almost new, although it may not look it at the moment, on account of the dust storm that blew by yesterday, I’m sure I’ll be fine, thanks—jack or no jack.’
House for All Seasons Page 36