‘I’ve been thinking, Pa, that we could split some of these bigger paddocks into four. Then we could rotate the stock and spell the grass. It would also force the cows to graze the scrubby bits that are going to waste at the moment.’ Alice looked tentatively at her grandfather. He was still regarding the new fence, now with a slight frown. She went on cautiously, ‘There’d be less unused grass to go rank and we might not need to burn so much. We could plant some legumes then, and they’d have a chance to get established.’ She eagerly searched his face.
He suddenly looked tired. ‘You’re a glutton for punishment. You enjoy fencing then, do you, Alice?’
Alice said no more.
Driving home past Eagle Tor dam, she spotted a solitary red form standing near the water. When they got closer they saw it was a forlorn calf, not much more than a scrap of red hide stretched over a skeleton.
Sam sighed. ‘Another bloody poddy.’
Olive was feeding three poddy calves already. As much as she complained, they knew she liked this job; otherwise, with the cost of the calf milk, they were hardly worth saving. This one was so weak that Alice was able to run him down on foot. They tied his feet and hoisted him into the ute.
‘Did all the grown-up poddies from last year go to the meatworks?’ Alice asked.
‘I kind of lost track of them again,’ Sam answered guiltily.
‘Pa, no one breeds from poddies! Most people don’t even save them.’
‘Yes, I know.’ He looked sideways at Alice. ‘Only two of them were heifers,’ he added hopefully. ‘It won’t happen again now that you’re home, Ali.’
When they got back to the house, Olive whisked the poddy away for urgent ministration with electrolytes and water. Alice took herself out into the garden to do some watering and cool off. As she strolled here and there with the hose she saw the familiar mouse holes in the soil around the roots of the gnarled old mandarin and bush lemon trees. She placed the nozzle into one and was pleased to see the chooks streaking across the garden: they still remembered the ritual. The guinea fowls that her grandmother kept to deter the snakes began their automated squeaking.
There was a moment of suspense, then telltale rustles in the grass nearby. The mice were evacuating out of the escape holes. The chooks were ready, transformed from chuckling old ladies into ruthless predators, their beady eyes resembling those of their raptor ancestors. Each victorious hunter would run, drumsticks pumping, with her victim dangling from her beak, closely followed by a string of cackling friends; the mouse, too big to swallow whole, would eventually be torn to shreds between them. Alice would wait until all the action had died down before choosing another hole. Sometimes, in the aftermath, an offended cane toad would emerge from a hole and hop clumsily away.
Alice loved the Redstone homestead. It had changed very little in half a century, the only obvious addition being that of a slanting white satellite dish, perched up on the roof next to the aged copper weathercock. Olive had insisted Redstone have access to the internet. Everything about the house spoke of enduring strength. It was a large, rambling, solid timber structure with open airy rooms and a generous veranda all round. The veranda was bordered by small decorative shrubs and herbs that her grandmother conscientiously managed to keep in good health, even during the driest times. Alice could almost feel the house embrace her as she wandered in for dinner. She paused on the veranda to pay her dutiful respects to King Henry the Ninth in his tall cage.
King Henry the Ninth was an ancient sulphur crested cockatoo who had been in her grandmother’s family for longer than anyone could remember. None of his Elliot owners had ever had the cheek to shorten his name. Before coming to Redstone, he’d lived with Olive’s bachelor brother, Eustace Elliot, whom she’d loved dearly. Olive now kept King Henry the Ninth out of loyalty to him. He had none of the clichéd vices of talking cockies, such as swearing or hurling insults. He never said ‘pretty boy’ or asked for a cracker. But he did on occasion feel the need to produce a loud, rattling smoker’s cough. Sometimes this performance was topped off with a throaty gagging, concluding with the distinctive sound of phlegm being brought up and spat out. Eustace’s slow death from emphysema had obviously scarred the elderly bird, and he hadn’t as yet moved on. So Eustace’s cough was his legacy, living on after his death. Alice, who loved most animals, had for some reason never taken to the bird, and she was certain that the feeling was mutual.
At dinner that night, Sam told Olive how good it had been to have help with the fencing and how glad he was that nothing dreadful had happened to Alice while she’d been away at college.
‘I hope you can stop worrying yourself silly now she’s home, Samuel,’ Olive said so sternly that Alice had to hide a smile. ‘I don’t know why you have to be so melodramatic. I’m sure you never wasted a thought on poor Lara when she went away.’ She placed a wedge of apple pie in front of him.
‘Well, it’s a funny old world out there,’ Sam said, looking apologetically at Alice. ‘Wasn’t sure how you’d go, Ali.’
She smiled at him to show she’d taken no offence.
‘You don’t seem too much the worse for wear,’ Olive added drily.
Alice laughed. ‘I’m fine. Longreach was alright – quite safe. Not exactly the big smoke. But I’m so happy to be home.’
‘You look like you definitely need a bit of decent home-cooked food,’ Olive put in.
Alice nodded obligingly. It seemed to her that, unlike her grandfather, her grandmother had barely aged during the last two years. She was still a robust woman, a little younger and a fraction taller than her husband. She was broad-shouldered with a heavy bust, but her hips and legs were slim. This gave her a top-heavy, sometimes overbearing air. Her clothing was always ironed, in spite of Sam’s insistence that it wasn’t necessary out in the paddock, and in defiance of the ubiquitous red dirt she persisted in wearing light colours. Most often she was in a dress, and she always wore an apron in the kitchen. Her thin hair had once been silky straight and blonde but now it was always curled and rinsed a shade of pale ginger. Her eyes were expressively large and blue and could alter in mood at lightning speed. She spoke with a definite, decisive manner; without ever raising her voice, she possessed the knack of making herself heard by anyone in the vicinity.
Sam fiddled with his dessert spoon, drawing circles on the tablecloth. Alice could see he was building up the courage to say something, and she waited for him to speak. Anything that could delay his apple pie had to be serious. Finally he launched into a pre-considered spiel, speaking in a quiet monotone.
‘I know you must be bursting with ideas on how to improve this place, Alice. Like your idea about splitting the paddocks today. New you-beaut techniques and technology. And I know I must seem like a bit of a dinosaur. I want you to know that I’ll do my best to listen to your ideas, and we’ll even try some, as long as we won’t be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.’ His message delivered, he exhaled with relief.
It was the longest utterance Alice could ever recall him making and it had clearly been an effort. She looked fondly at his lined, weather-beaten face. How could he always read her so well?
Keeping her afloat during her time away, ideas and strategies for Redstone had been building in Alice’s mind. They had come not just from what she’d learned at college but also from her weekend and holiday stock work on various properties around Longreach. In spite of how unpleasant some of these experiences had been, they’d served a double purpose: not only had she been able to cover a large portion of her college fees with the money she’d earned, but she’d also had the opportunity to quietly observe a full and varied array of property operations.
Was her excitement about all these possibilities for Redstone so obvious? Or was it just that her grandfather knew her so well? All her life he’d been able to read her thoughts and emotions by merely glancing at her face. As a result, Alice had never felt the need to explain herself to him. Today she’d been afraid of insulting the old man, of m
aking him feel inadequate by suggesting changes to the way things had always been done. Realising this, and always the true gentleman, he’d given her an opening. She picked up his knobbly old hand and squeezed it gratefully.
Olive watched Alice take Sam’s hand and felt the familiar twinge of jealousy. Thick as thieves, the pair of them – always had been. Alice was Sam’s little girl. But she was nearly an adult now, and her personality, though unobtrusive, was beginning to emerge. Looking at her granddaughter, Olive noticed the same new self-assurance that Sam had seen. How very different she was from their own daughter, Lara. With a tremor, Olive realised that Alice was almost the same age as Lara had been when she’d come home from finishing school and dropped a bombshell: at nineteen and unmarried, she was pregnant.
Chapter 3
Olive Day prided herself on her ability to remain composed and in control in the face of almost any challenge (the only exception to this was her extreme and paralysing fear of snakes, which she had been unable to conquer). Her resilience had been well tested over the fifty-one years of her marriage, by the many trials accompanying a relatively isolated life on the land.
Sam had inherited Redstone from his own father, George, at an early age. The older man had been killed suddenly, falling off a horse when Sam was still in his teens. Sam had no memory of his mother, who had died in his infancy; his maternal grandmother had arrived at Redstone to fill the void. The old woman had remained there until her own death, less than a year after George’s.
Redstone was then a well-known and respected property of one hundred and ten thousand acres. It was widely renowned for the quality of beef it could turn off because of the mineral-rich soil that made up a large part of its area. Olive was eighteen when she first danced with Sam at a local ball; direct and forthright as she was even then, there was something about Sam’s steady gentleness that won her heart. Her wealthy and refined local family thought it an ideal setting for their daughter.
But once Olive had come to live at Redstone, it became clear to both her and Sam that she had few skills and little knowledge that would be of any practical use on the land. Instead she’d been groomed for a role as a lady of the ‘landed gentry’. However, in the nineteen fifties this regal breed was close to extinction. The profitability of beef had declined, unpaid labour was outlawed, and extended dry seasons had ravaged the land. Redstone was no exception, and Sam had discovered upon inheriting the place just how badly things had been allowed to slip. There were also exorbitant death duties to pay. Other than selling up, he’d had no alternative but to go into debt.
So both Olive and Sam soon discovered that things were not at all as they had envisaged before exchanging their vows. Life was difficult, but they were in the first flush of love and back then everything seemed like an adventure to Olive.
After several meetings with the local bank manager of the day, Olive discovered she had an (untrained) aptitude for figures and business. In no time, she’d organised an efficient set of books to keep track of the operation. She insisted on tighter records of cattle numbers and began to chart incoming and outgoing funds. Using this information, she developed a tight budget to which she made sure they slavishly adhered. In hindsight, Sam had acknowledged that Olive’s number-crunching had been more instrumental in saving Redstone than anything she could have done with a crowbar.
Once she’d grasped the gravity of their circumstances, Olive herself had immediately refrained from any unnecessary spending and put aside the lavish habits she’d grown up with. She learned how to milk a cow and grow vegetables. She taught herself how to cook and did it with style: her chutneys, jams, pickles and sauces soon became the envy of the local Country Women’s Association. Sam always expressed admiration for his wife’s uncomplaining acceptance of the situation, and Olive found that being useful appealed to her practical nature.
Lara was their beloved, miracle baby who came to them after fifteen childless years. An exceptionally attractive child, she had large, winning eyes of an extraordinary blue, and her pale gold hair was curly and silky soft. Long lashes and a full, pink mouth added to the angelic impression. Olive adored and doted on her.
From an early age, Lara discovered that she could use her beauty to great effect. The combination of her innocent face and some well-timed tact proved very difficult for most people to resist and she almost always got her way. Olive was aware of this, but her desire for Lara’s happiness overruled any qualms and she could never bring herself to chastise her for it.
Pampered, treasured Lara: nothing was too good for this cherished child. Olive dressed her in pink and white, like a little lady. Sam bought her an expensive fine-boned white pony called Dove, which she used for pleasure rides close to the house. Watching Lara at pony club each week, Olive would glow with pride. It was an ideal opportunity for Lara to display her beauty and outshine the other bush kids on their more common, stubborn, scrubbing-brush varieties of pony.
Worried about the rough talk of the stockmen and the possibility of accidents, Olive never allowed Lara to go mustering or working with Sam. He began to complain to Olive that he couldn’t understand their daughter and that he was at a loss when it came to disciplining the headstrong girl. As Lara approached her teens, Olive noticed Sam begin to withdraw, leaving the raising of this fairy-like female completely to her. The older Lara grew the more defiant she became; Olive searched for any common ground between Sam and their bewildering daughter, but it had been left too late and the distance between them continued to widen.
It wasn’t long before Lara discovered she had the attention of all the local boys; alarmed, Olive sent her away to board at a reputable Catholic girls school in Brisbane. She returned home for part of each holiday, but always brought a friend with her and spent the rest of each vacation away, visiting in return.
Lara was academically gifted and had inherited her mother’s mathematical brain. Once she’d graduated from year twelve with excellent results, she returned home to Redstone for a break before choosing a career path. There, she threw her energies into toying with the hearts of the local young men, and playing them off against each other. Olive tried to steer her in the direction of a few wealthy and respectable boys from church, but nothing pleased Lara more than doing the opposite of what was expected of her.
At that time, Sam had in his employ an exceptionally charismatic and talented young ringer called Benji Wilson. Benji had an affinity with animals the likes of which Sam said he had never seen before. In the three years that he was at Redstone, musters and yard work flowed without a hitch. Horses and dogs would bust themselves to please Benji. Apart from his occasional alcoholic benders, during which time he’d disappear to town for a few days, even Olive had to admit that his character was impeccable. As a rule, although she was ashamed to admit it, she didn’t take kindly to Aborigines. But this young stockman was an exception.
However, Lara objected to Benji because he was the only young male she knew who didn’t admire and adore her. She did her utmost to gain his attention and when this failed, resorted to taunting and joking. But still, Benji remained disinterested. Olive knew that her daughter was perplexed by this, but thought that the influence of someone who didn’t simply fall at her feet every time she demanded it, might do her good.
With her high school studies completed and no useful occupation, Lara began to show up at the yards whenever Benji was breaking horses or working weaners. She sat by him in the shed and handed him tools when he tinkered with the machines. When he went on checking drives, she began to tag along too. At the time, Olive saw no real danger in this, despite the fact that Benji was the complete antithesis of the respectable matches she’d picked out for Lara. It was impossible for her to believe that a blackfella would be of any real interest to her daughter, handsome though he was. Sam seemed to have total trust in Benji, and because of this, Olive dismissed any slight concerns she had about the situation. So when she discovered them in bed together in the early hours of the morning afte
r Lara’s nineteenth birthday party, her shock was complete.
Olive immediately dismissed Benji, and Lara was packed off to a pricey finishing school in Brisbane. After that, Olive thought the whole unfortunate incident was over and that they would never need to mention it again. And then, four months later, Lara had returned to Redstone to defiantly deliver the unwelcome news.
The first time Sam held Lara’s child, it was dawn and he’d driven through the night over corrugated roads to get them all safely to the hospital in Emerald. As the baby girl rested her large eyes on his face, he suddenly felt as though he’d heard an elusive line of music or tasted sweet cold water coming out of rock. In that instant the tiny creature had pierced his soul and taken possession of him. Sam said nothing, but Lara noticed his pale, wide-eyed expression as he looked at her baby, and immediately assumed he disliked the child.
Olive, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate to speak her mind and Sam winced at her bluntness. ‘She’s pinker than I thought she’d be. She’s not so terribly dark after all. In fact, she could almost be taken for a white child.’ Olive looked hard then at the child and Sam saw her receive the same penetrating gaze in return. A little taken aback, Olive continued on nonetheless, saying, ‘Her eyes are rather big for that tiny face, but I’m sure we won’t have any trouble adopting her out.’
At this, Lara protested, as she always objected to her mother’s well-meant plans. Sam wondered whether adoption was in fact exactly what Lara intended to do, after a respectable battle with her mother. But he was still tingling from the look the child had given him and there was no way he’d allow it. He spoke simply, his voice firm and final. ‘This child belongs at Redstone, Olive. We won’t hear another word about adoption.’ It wasn’t often that Sam opposed Olive’s wishes.
Lara’s mouth fell open to speak and then closed again. Sam could see she hadn’t counted on an ally in her half-hearted bid to keep her child.
Redstone Station Page 2