They rode into the bush in silence for a while, then the old man looked at Jeremy alongside him and started to speak. ‘Ceddy, mate, did you hear that on our last leave Jimmy Costello spent his whole pay packet on a peach?’
‘Fair dinkum?’ said Jeremy.
‘Reminded him of home, he said. From New South, he is. We all thought he was stark raving crackers. Reckon he must have had an inkling he was gonna be blown to smithereens that week.’
‘Struth.’ Jeremy looked shaken.
John went on, ‘Enjoyed that blinking peach, he did. The bugger ate it in front of us, juice everywhere. Must remember to tell his ma if we ever get out of this hellhole.’
There was another short pause before John rambled on. His confused babble was punctuated with wartime anecdotes. Jeremy and Alice heard about the shortage of toilet paper and what the men had used instead. John made a jibe about the powerful smell of frightened Hughey’s sweat, stronger even than the smell of the corpses. He also threw in some morbid jokes, the kind that are born amid death and destruction in an attempt to pull through sane. As he spoke, a chill pervaded the innocence of the sunlit bush around them. The birds were chattering and an intermittent breeze was toying with the young gums, but Alice was touched by a creeping horror from a war long past. Something which had been little more than a story in a history book, half listened to at school, suddenly became sickeningly real.
Alice hadn’t known that as well as his forty years of droving, old John had also been a digger in the Second World War. It seemed that the first of the two chapters in his life had been the one to leave a lasting impression on his worn-out old brain.
At last he fell silent. Marmaduke lagged a little and Alice pulled up and looked at Jeremy. ‘I think we should head back.’
‘Righto. Spooky old bugger, isn’t he?’
Alice could see that Jeremy was trying to make light of what had happened, but she sensed that he, too, had been shaken by John’s stories.
On the way home, John was calmer, and quiet. The rhythmic movement of the old horse, the fresh air and the smell of the sun on the leaves had worked magic. Marmaduke seemed to find a new lease of life now that they were heading back. The loose horse trotted on ahead.
They rode in silence until the open gate came into view. Then John suddenly pulled his horse up and looked around, bewildered. ‘Where are the cattle?’ He looked hard into Alice’s face.
She smiled at him sadly, and Jeremy for once stayed quiet.
‘They’re gone, aren’t they?’ John said, looking around again, then staring back piercingly at Alice.
‘Yes, Mr Collins, they’re gone,’ she answered gently.
‘Damn shame,’ he said softly, then thumped Marmaduke into a walk again.
Ellen insisted Jeremy and Alice stay for a cup of tea afterwards. A minute or so after sitting down in his hard wooden seat, John fell into an exhausted doze. Jeremy lifted him gently into the squatter’s chair, and Ellen looked over wonderingly at the wilted sleeping form.
Alice and Jeremy spoke little on the drive home, both mulling over the events of the day. As she turned in to the Redstone road, Alice glanced at Jeremy. His face was a mosaic of multicoloured bruises and the knuckles of his right hand were swollen.
‘Queer bloody day,’ he said.
‘That’s for sure,’ Alice agreed.
‘You just never know about people, eh?’ He looked across at her. ‘You know, he just looks like a crusty old codger, and yet he . . .’ Jeremy left the sentence unfinished. ‘That thing your pa goes on with, about not knowing what’s under a hat, well, he’s dead right, I reckon.’
Chapter 21
While she worked with her young horse in the yard, Alice could see Jeremy loitering aimlessly around the shed, and she read slight dejection in his posture. It was Sunday and as usual she’d been to church that morning with her grandparents, but Jeremy had declined the invitation to accompany them to town. His bruises were almost healed now, but he hadn’t been back to the pub since the fight. His reluctance to talk about it had more or less confirmed for Alice that she had been the cause.
This morning he’d gone instead to the Cedar Tree stockyards to replace some rotten timber. Now he was leaning against the ute, watching her handling the flighty Arab mare. Trying to win the suspicious animal’s confidence was a painstaking process, and at times it seemed that for every step forwards with the nervy creature, there were two steps back.
It was when she was working with animals that Alice most wished she’d known her father. According to Sam, he’d been quite remarkable when it came to handling horses and dogs. It puzzled her that someone who cared so much about animals would have so little interest in his own daughter. Did he ever think of her and wonder what she was like? Or did he, like her mother, just consider her to be an unfortunate accident? How she wished she could pick his brains now.
Still, during the past week Alice felt she had made good progress. The mare now let Alice rub her all over, even inside her ears and under her belly. She could also pick up the mare’s feet without fear of her kicking out, as she’d done initially if anyone had even bent to touch her hooves. And she was starting to lead beautifully. In the beginning, she’d furiously resisted any tension on the lead rope, pulling back and even rearing. But now she’d learned that as soon as she cooperated and moved closer to Alice, the pressure was removed. Alice believed the animal was extraordinarily intelligent, and this inspired her to persist.
But today Alice cut the session short and let the filly loose into the night paddock. It was clear to her that Jeremy was in greater need of attention than the horse. She carried her gear over to the shed where he was still lingering beside the ute. He looked at her sheepishly and explained, ‘I was just heading back out to Cedar Tree.’
‘Do you want a hand?’ Alice offered.
He perked up immediately. ‘You betcha! A Sunday date at the yards. Just you and me, baby!’
‘Don’t get too excited.’ Alice hung up her gear and jumped in to the ute.
As they drove along the track, she observed, ‘It can’t be too exciting for you on weekends here. You’ll be glad when you get your licence back.’
She waited for a witty confirmation. But all Jeremy said was, ‘Hell, I can think of worse things. This old place isn’t so bad. Can’t complain about the company anyway.’ He winked at her.
Most of the solid old ironbark rails of the Cedar Tree yards were still sound, but the gates had been made from planks of lighter timber and many of them were splintering or rotten. Last time Lower Cedar Tree paddock had been mustered, two more gates had been broken by weaners squeezing their heads through the gaps. For the past five years, Sam had been patching the gates with smaller pieces of timber and wire, and a proper repair job was now long overdue.
After the first ten minutes of work, the pair had a good system going. Jeremy was measuring the replacement planks and cutting them with the chainsaw. Alice fixed them in place with a G-clamp, drilled the bolt holes and reused the old bolts to fix them on. The recycled bolts were a bit rough and rusty, so Alice used a small sledgehammer to bang them through, before greasing them up and screwing on the nuts.
One bolt proved particularly stubborn, and after several bangs with the hammer she pulled it out again and bent over to inspect it. She made sure the two holes were properly lined up then replaced the bolt. She stood up suddenly and swung the hammer with more gusto than before. But on the backwards stroke, it hit something behind her, and Alice heard an agonised grunt.
She spun around in horror just in time to see Jeremy crumple and drop. He lay on the ground in the foetal position, issuing a groan.
‘Oh no! Jeremy, are you alright?’ Alice flung the hammer away and dropped to her knees beside him. She lifted his head onto her lap.
‘Vicious bloody woman,’ he moaned.
‘Where did I get you?’ she asked urgently.
‘Fair in the family jewels,’ he croaked, then groaned again.
‘Oh Jerem
y, I’m so sorry! I swung that hammer as hard as I could!’ Alice stroked his forehead soothingly. ‘Can I get you something? A drink of water?’
Jeremy looked up into her guilt-stricken face and suggested hopefully, ‘Can you kiss it better?’ He spoke in his normal voice this time, his eyes twinkling.
Alice instantly stopped stroking and pushed him roughly up into a sitting position. ‘You seem to be recovering. I think you’ll live.’ She spoke wryly, to hide her immense relief.
‘Cruel, hard wench,’ Jeremy complained as he clambered to his feet.
‘You’re the cruel one, to scare me like that. Did I even hurt you?’ She could now see he was absolutely fine.
‘It did hurt a bit! You hurt my pride!’
‘Well, I hope you got a thrill out of upsetting me so much,’ Alice said accusingly.
Jeremy looked at her slyly. ‘You must like me a bit then? To be so upset?’
‘I don’t enjoy inflicting pain on any creature,’ Alice said calmly.
‘Oh . . . ta. I’m honoured. You mean you’d feel no different if it was a cane toad you’d belted?’
She laughed out loud, any anger at his trick gone.
Jeremy hung his head in mock sorrow. ‘You really know how to build a bloke up.’
As they drove home, Jeremy was still tingling from the sensation of Alice’s fingers stroking his head and elated from the few minutes of lying in her lap.
‘How are your family jewels now?’ Alice asked as they pulled in to the shed.
‘Right as rain.’ Jeremy grinned. ‘Not like I’ll ever be needing ’em anyway. No chance of me having any kids.’
Alice looked at him questioningly.
‘Marriage and kids,’ he continued. ‘You won’t ever catch me falling into that old trap.’ He spoke confidently, but his intention was more to convince himself than Alice. Since meeting her, his once-firm resolution against marriage had started to weaken, and this frightened him. His own experience of family life hadn’t been a good one and he’d escaped it as soon as he could. Now he could do what he liked, when he liked, without answering to anyone. And he wanted to keep it that way.
‘What were you doing there anyway? Right behind me?’ Alice asked with a probing look.
Jeremy suddenly felt like a small boy who’d been sprung stealing cookies. ‘Do you really wanna know? . . . You were bending over, and your butt in those jeans was just too bloody tempting. I came over to pinch it, then chickened out at the last minute.’ He examined her face warily, not sure how she’d take this revelation. ‘That’s when you hit me.’
She laughed softly to herself before replying, ‘Well, I guess you won’t be trying that again in a hurry.’
Chapter 22
It had been an unseasonably wet winter. This, combined with the mild autumn and the good rain they’d had the previous summer, had resulted in a large build-up of dried grass and other plant matter. Hazard-reduction burning and the updating of firebreaks with the grader were two jobs that were on the cards for the near future. But after a particularly hot Wednesday in early spring, an out-of-season electrical storm took the crew at Redstone by surprise. Sitting at dinner, Sam looked out at the frequent flashes that were illuminating the range to the west, his face full of concern.
Sure enough, when Alice woke at dawn the next day, she was met with the acrid smell of smoke. She leapt out of bed and ran out onto the veranda in her pyjamas. Standing in the small yard at the front of his cottage, Jeremy saluted her. He’d been observing a billowing brown cloud in the west that was obscuring part of the range. He called out to her, ‘G’day, mate. Better get your gear on. I’ll fill up the slip-on fire unit and water trailer. Lucky the grader is already out at Red Gully.’
‘It needs more fuel though,’ Alice called.
‘Righto, I’m onto it. Meet you at the shed in ten.’
Alice hurried back inside, where her grandmother could be heard scolding her grandfather animatedly from the direction of the bedroom. She poked her head around the door frame and found her grandfather struggling to pull on his overalls while her grandmother stood beside him in her dressing-gown, hands on hips. Olive looked stormily at Alice. ‘Will you please tell this silly old man that his days of firefighting are over?’
‘Liv, if I drive the grader it’ll free up Alice and Jeremy to patrol the breaks,’ Sam said determinedly.
‘Did you listen to anything Dr Wong said about your heart? And what about that cough? I’m sure the smoke will do wonders for that.’ Olive was furious.
Alice cut in. ‘Ma, have you phoned Eden and Glenorchy?’
‘Yes, of course! They’ll be here as soon as they can. Alice, will you please back me up with your grandfather?’
‘Ma, if we can stop the fire before it gets to the flat country, it will all be over quite quickly.’
‘Well, if it gets away on you, send Sam home as soon as the neighbours arrive.’
‘Oh, that’ll look bonza, won’t it?’ said Sam sulkily.
Alice left them bickering and hurried back to her room to get dressed. Then she grabbed the two-way radios, filled some water bottles and threw them with some fruit and leftover quiche into a small esky, before jogging out to the shed where Jeremy was filling some drums with fuel. She loaded the rakes, chainsaw and the hand-held drip torches or fire bugs that they would need for backburning. Then she went to fuel up the motorbike.
Sam came out to join them, Olive tailing him in her floral dressing-gown, still berating him for his foolishness.
‘Mrs Day, you look a picture,’ Jeremy greeted her.
Olive frowned at him, distracted for a moment. He tipped his hat at her, leapt onto the motorbike and rode away. Sam had ducked out of sight into the passenger seat of the ute, but Olive’s ranting face was in the window seconds later. Alice jumped in to the driver’s seat and interrupted her grandmother mid-sentence.
‘Ma, when people arrive could you please tell them to go straight out to Upper Bullock then head west from there? That way is longer but the road’s much better and there are fewer gates.’
Her grandmother was glaring at her now, and didn’t answer. Alice started the ute and set off, certain that the irate woman would follow the instructions. Ma always rose to the occasion in emergencies.
By the time they reached the grader in Red Gully, the distant smoke cloud had become ominously thick and billowy, as though it had reached the open grass of the boundary paddocks. Alice fuelled up the grader with the drums, a process which seemed to take much longer than usual.
‘Bloody westerly,’ muttered her grandfather, referring to the wind that was just starting to pick up.
As she tipped in the final drum of fuel, they heard Jeremy approaching on the motorbike. He pulled up abruptly. ‘The fire’s in Cliff paddock and most of it’s staying up on top, but it’s burned down the southern face and come through the fence into Top Boundary paddock. It must have happened in the cool of last night, because by some flaming miracle it’s stopped at that overgrown road along the fence. But it’s burned all the way along the break into Bottom Boundary.’ He motioned with his hand in the direction of the fire. ‘I only went far enough to see that it’s jumped the break somewhere in there. That’s where we’ll need the grader, Sam. I’ll leave the gate open for ya, and me ’n’ Ali will try to find the front of it.’
Sam nodded and heaved himself up into the machine. Once they’d made sure the grader would start, Jeremy headed off in the lead on the bike with Alice close behind in the ute, towing the water trailer. As they came closer to Redstone’s boundary she could see the fire burning up against the sky on top of the cliff.
In Top Boundary, she drove along the fence road. The fire had burned through the fence from the national park, and one side of the track was black and still smouldering in places. Sections of fence had been roasted. The slope of the land had been in their favour, though, as the fire had been burning slowly downhill when it hit the track and stopped. Had the ground been flatter, or had
there been any wind behind it, the fire would have easily jumped the overgrown break.
Judging by the billowing smoke cloud ahead of her, Alice could see that the fire had advanced well into Bottom Boundary paddock. With the westerly behind it, the front would be travelling quickly now. She hoped they could block it on the downhill slope before it reached the grassy creek flats at the eastern end of the paddock. Otherwise, the fire would almost surely get away. In the heat of the day, the wind-driven flames would do extensive damage to pasture, trees and fences. After the good rain in the first half of winter there had been no early monsoonal storms, so there was no moisture about to protect the soil and plants from being cooked. All the gullies were bone dry and a raging grass fire like this one would jump them with ease.
The motorbike and ute entered Bottom Boundary at the corner gate; leaving it open for Sam, they headed along a cattle pad that veered away from the fence. Alice stopped and unhitched the thousand-litre water trailer so that she could drive across country. She’d have to take her chances with the six hundred litres in the slip-on unit.
The fire had jumped the old break along the fence and raced across the paddock in a narrow tongue to the east. The thin corridor had burned outwards then, so that by the time Alice and Jeremy arrived, there was a vast blackened V-shape, bordered by hungry flames. Alice knew they had to get to the foremost point of the fire and try to halt its advance before working back along the sides.
Jeremy had gone ahead and Alice was following the wing of flame, trying to see through the baffling smoke. The two-way came to life. ‘Alice, I’ve found the front. We need the tank here, quick as you like.’
Before she had time to reply, Jeremy’s silhouette loomed up out of the smoke and they moved around in front. Jeremy parked the bike where it would be safe on an area that had already been burned, while Alice started the engine on the firefighter unit to power the pump. Jeremy came to join her and unravelled the hose, then started blasting the wall of flame with water while she drove along in first gear.
Redstone Station Page 16