Return to Roseglen

by Helene Young

  ‘I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to keep flying right to the end, according to this email.’ She gestured at her phone. ‘After that I don’t know. They may need me somewhere else.’

  ‘We could go to Bali?’

  ‘You go. Have fun with all those babes who like a man in aviator shades.’

  ‘I’m not interested in babes. I like my women mature, funny, smart. Even better if they love flying as much as me.’

  She laughed at that. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, Jacko. I don’t do casual.’

  ‘From what I hear you’ve never dated anyone here.’

  She shook her head. ‘I just don’t broadcast it if I do. I’ve been flying aid missions in the Hercs for twenty-eight years and I’m not a nun. Maybe this is the push I need to do something different. Retirement even, whatever that looks like.’

  Jacko looked shocked. ‘Retirement? You’re too young to retire.’

  ‘I’m never going to see sixty again, my friend, so I think I may have earned some me time.’

  He laughed at that and got to his feet. ‘You’ve got my number. I’m game if you are.’

  ‘Thanks, Jacko, we’re best as friends.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He squeezed her shoulder and then went to join a knot of men by the door. Georgina stayed in her seat as the room emptied around her.

  This could be the push she needed. She didn’t fly for the money anymore. And, truth be told, staying at the top of her game grew harder. The flying conditions throughout the Middle East had tested her skills time and time again. But at the end of a long horrible day, when all that they did was too little, too late, she never lost sight of the fact that women and children were usually the worst affected by war and natural disasters. They were the reason she flew. But perhaps it was time to hand the baton to someone younger, someone with quicker reflexes and burning ambition.

  Retirement was rushing down the tunnel at her. Even her ex-husband, Dan, had shocked her with his plan to buy a caravan and drive around Australia. When had they all become middle-aged, so damn pedestrian?

  And where was she supposed to retire? She could barely consider Australia home after all these years living overseas. She Skyped Felicity regularly. And Ella. She smiled at the thought of her niece. Another pilot in the family. Georgina had fallen in love with Ella the moment the tiny baby opened impossibly blue eyes and smiled at her. She was fond of Sean too, but she didn’t feel the same strong tug of maternal pride for Felicity’s son as she did for Ella.

  She was due to fly back to Australia in just under a month, anyway. Ella had convinced her to be there for Felicity’s surprise fiftieth birthday party. It was nice that Ella had gone to a lot of trouble to round people up. Felicity never asked for anything and reaching half a century was a big deal. Even Georgina had felt the weight of it when she’d hit the milestone. Turning sixty had been nowhere near as problematic.

  Of course, it meant she’d be seeing her mother as well. She and Ivy were like flint on stone, even from a distance. That was never going to change.

  She’d also have to put up with Kenneth. Georgina’s earliest memory of her older brother was being forced to hand over her Christmas present of a dump truck because he’d cried until he’d thrown up. If he’d matured into a man she admired, things might have been different between them.

  She shoved her phone in her pocket and got to her feet. It was time to get ready for this afternoon’s flight. Then, she would go back to Australia and see how the chips fell.

  She’d miss the crew here. She could say the equivalent of ‘fuck off’ in French, German, Dutch, and a dozen other languages. She smiled. Definitely not something Ivy would approve of at all, but it had been fun teaching Ella.

  The air-conditioner high on the wall rattled and stopped, and the rise in temperature was instantaneous. The backup generator always took a few minutes to kick in. Georgina made her way across the dusty quadrangle to the flight planning rooms.

  They were flying water purifiers into a camp built out of shipping containers. The cramped, unhygienic conditions of refugee camps had changed her opinion of immigration quotas. Aid went a long way towards slowing terrorism. Any fool could see that. She ignored anyone who told her she was wrong. She’d learned that approach to dissent from her mother and she rarely lost an argument.

  Half an hour later, with her crew in tow, she strode out to the ramp. She was grateful for her short hair and the Dunmore lean build. The heat was oppressive, the flies constant, yet she enjoyed the thrill of a tarmac and all that it promised. Sometimes it reminded her of Roseglen in the middle of summer.

  With a sharp shake of her head she started working her way through her flight deck checklist, but her mind was still on Roseglen and the first time she’d flown over the sprawling cattle station. The silvery trees meandered along the river courses, the only relief from the sandy brown and russet earth. Like the spokes of the wagon wheels lying idle in the old machinery shed, the spidery trails of cattle tracks led to and from the waterholes.

  The topography was flattened, craggy ridgelines like strewn rocks, the valleys mere shadows beside them. Charlie had leant over, pointing out the dams and the windmills, orientating her so that she could picture each place as though she were on the ground in her swag sleeping beside cattle in their temporary stockyards, or under the giant melaleucas dangling her feet in the pools that survived summer only in the deepest bends of the river.

  Her first officer cleared his throat and she focused back to the present. ‘Sorry, Ray. You good to go?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I believe we are.’ Fresh faced, and not long out of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Ray took rank very seriously. Georgina hated being called ma’am. It made her feel a hundred years old.

  ‘Call me Georgie and start the checklist, my friend,’ she said with a smile to counteract the brusque tone of her voice. ‘Let’s make each flight count for the next two weeks.’

  He gave her a cautious smile and then started running through the checklist. She was too old for this. Time for a change, she thought, as she responded to his calls, her fingers unerring as they found each control and switch. Running on automatic could lead to complacency and crash investigations were full of pilots with 30 000 hours who’d lost concentration at the wrong moment. Now was not the time to have an incident, or worse.

  Felicity lifted her hair off her neck and slipped a band on to secure it. The air felt thick and sullen with the doors to the back deck still closed. She couldn’t even look out there. She was grateful the emergency department at the hospital had been keeping her busy with overtime shifts for the last few days.

  She picked up a cloth and re-wiped the glass-topped dining table, then straightened the vase in the middle. Why had she insisted on throwing Todd out? She should have moved out. Then he’d be stuck with getting the place ready for sale. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel bereft about selling. The memories didn’t tug at her, not like their first home. No one wanted to relive arguments and terse silences. She wondered for the millionth time why she hadn’t seen the end coming.

  She had new sympathy for her brother and sister.

  Ken’s wife left him after a terrible fight when she called the police. Their two girls were late teenagers at the time and they rarely came back to visit Arran Downs. Or their grandmother.

  And Georgina had walked out on Dan, and then her career, and headed overseas to fly for an aid agency twenty-five years ago. That break-up had rocked Felicity’s world. Looking back now, she realised she’d turned her sadness into anger at her sister. And maybe at Todd.

  They’d been happy in those early years, building a life together. Ella’s birth was uncomplicated and she’d been an easy child. Sean’s arrival seemed to bring them even closer. Until the day she found Todd’s second credit card and discovered his secret trips to men’s clubs. But even then they’d navigated their way through the rough patch, carried on, raised their children, paid their bills.

  Was this what a midlife cr
isis looked like? The point when you realised that the man sharing your bed was a stranger and you no longer even liked the same food, let alone movies or music, or even life ambitions?

  God, what a mess. Her mum was going to have field day with this one. She could almost hear Ivy. ‘The embarrassment of it all. I always told you he looked untrustworthy from the beginning.’

  Felicity walked across and plonked down at the kitchen bench and pulled her notebook closer. The list of things she needed to finalise with the house kept growing, like bacteria in a Petri dish, but it was the only way she could make order out of her world, stop herself revisiting the carnage of her marriage.

  The front door flew open with a bang and she leapt to her feet. Surely the real estate agent wouldn’t barge in. Or was it Todd?

  ‘Felicity?’

  Oh shit. Her heart started to race. It was Olivia, Misty’s mother. She couldn’t very well hide in the pantry.

  ‘Olivia.’

  The door slammed shut again and the other woman teetered through in her high heels, hair immaculately straightened to match her tasteful make-up. ‘How dare your family take advantage of my baby!’ she shrieked. ‘You knew she was vulnerable, missing a father in her life. Todd’s despicable!’

  ‘No arguments there,’ Felicity conceded, keeping the bench between the two of them. She’d heard the yelling and crashing coming from next door. Olivia might have become a friend of sorts in the last two years, but she had a temper.

  ‘You should have seen what was going on in your own home,’ Olivia ranted. ‘You all make me sick to my stomach.’

  Felicity resisted the childish urge to stick her fingers in her throat and pretend to vomit.

  ‘If you looked after yourself,’ Olivia continued. ‘Lost some weight, bothered to do something with your hair, none of this would have happened! You should have been here, not out all the time!’

  ‘What? It’s my fault?’ Felicity spun on her heel and marched to the front door, flinging it so wide it bounced off the wall with a satisfying crash. ‘Get out, Olivia! Misty is twenty-six years old. God knows what she sees in Todd. He’s a fifty-five-year-old man who’s losing his hair. Now go! It’s not my problem anymore.’

  Olivia’s belligerence evaporated. She stood wringing her hands as she began to sob. ‘But what will happen?’

  ‘I have no idea. Todd doesn’t live here anymore and I won’t be here for much longer. Good luck with the next family.’ She tapped her toe furiously on the floor, adrenaline sending blood thundering in her ears.

  Olivia gave up, and finally left. ‘I thought you were my friend,’ she said as she brushed past Felicity.

  Anger and revulsion kept Felicity’s spine stiff and her lips sealed until she closed the door and slumped against it.

  She wished the scene she’d witnessed by the pool would stop playing over and over on an endless loop. There was undoubtedly something repulsive about Todd screwing a woman the same age as his daughter. Predatory, even.

  Sean had initially seemed to take it in his stride. ‘It’s cool, Mum. I get why you told Dad to leave. But you two’ll work it out.’ Now that he’d realised there was no going back and he’d have to find somewhere else to live, he was a little less supportive. Men. What the bloody hell do you do with them?

  Ella’s reaction had been pragmatic, echoing Paula and Steph’s sentiments. ‘It’s horrible that it’s happened, Mum, and I’m gutted for you; for me too, and Sean. But perhaps it’s your time now. It seems like work has been wearing you down lately. Maybe this is a chance to start fresh. You can always come stay with me in Cairns. It’s closer to Granny D and we can do girl things together.’

  Felicity had wept after that phone call. ‘Withering’ was the word she thought most apt. A tree that’d been transplanted to the wrong climate and starved of food. The north of Australia would always be home, with its monsoon rains, skin-peeling burn of summer, air rich both with decay and new life, and soft blue dry-season sky.

  Winter in Brisbane left her bones brittle, as though the cold had hollowed them out. The horizon here was crowded with houses and high-rises, the sky dulled, the view crisscrossed with lights and cables and power poles. And the ocean didn’t call to her the way it called to her husband and son. The ranges and the plains were her siren song.

  She straightened, walked back through to the dining table and picked up her mobile. Paula answered almost immediately.

  ‘Lissie, how are you doing? Has the estate agent been yet?’

  ‘No, just Olivia from next door. She’s furious with me.’ Felicity needed coffee. She set the phone to speaker and put it on the bench as she began to brew herself a cup.

  ‘Oh God, that must have been fun. She was never really your friend,’ Paula said with a laugh. ‘Honey, you don’t need a woman like that stealing your oxygen. You told your mum yet?’

  ‘Yes. She was surprisingly restrained. No doubt she’ll have more to say when I see her tomorrow.’

  ‘Mrs D’s never been a fan of Todd.’

  ‘No, but she loves nothing more than pretending we’re all one big happy family.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘Except she’ll have told Ken and he will also have an opinion on my marriage.’

  ‘There’s no easy way with this, Lissie; everyone has an opinion. But yours is the only one that matters.’

  ‘At least Todd can’t complain I’m visiting Mum again. Or working overtime.’ She hated to admit that Todd’s barbs had struck a nerve. She never would’ve guessed that he felt lonely.

  ‘Don’t you dare go down the guilt path, Lissie. It’s a slippery slope. Besides, all those extra hours you worked helped Ella pay for her flying lessons. Not to mention the thousands of dollars Sean’s braces cost. You kept your family afloat.’

  ‘I just did what needed to be done.’

  ‘What did your lawyer say? Did you end up using Steph’s hubbie?’

  ‘No, he recommended a woman, so I’ve gone with her. She’s blunt and seems efficient. Told me to be prepared to fight. Todd’s superannuation is triple mine.’

  ‘So you’ll sell the house, split it down the middle?’

  ‘Once we pay off the mortgage there won’t be much left. My car’s fifteen years old and becoming more bad-tempered by the day. Thank God payday’s soon. You know Todd told me to ask Ivy for money when he came around yesterday to collect his stuff?’

  ‘He’s pathetic. As if you could hit your mum up for money.’

  ‘And apparently I’m being melodramatic and menopausal and I’ll regret this in a year’s time.’

  ‘What? Regret having to witness your husband having sex with someone else?’

  ‘I know, I know. He’s being irrational. But it still hurts.’

  ‘Of course it does. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tonight.’

  ‘Thanks, Paula.’

  Felicity’s shoulders slumped as she ended the call. As if she’d ask Ivy for money. If her mother lived as long as everyone expected her to, they’d need all her money to provide adequate care. Thankfully she didn’t have to worry about that. Ivy had always been frugal with her money, and she still had good health. Even her recovery after the quad bike accident had been nothing short of miraculous. Once the drought broke properly they’d need to restock.

  At least her move to improve Roseglen’s irrigation and then lease land to Mitch had kept Ken’s fingers out of the pie. Arran Downs had been just as profitable as Roseglen before Charlie had died. It was Ken’s problem if he’d stocked the wrong cattle and ended up losing money. In a place like Limestone Hill the gossip was unavoidable, especially for a well-respected local politician, even one who’d lost the last election. Everyone had an opinion about the Dunmores.

  A text arrived from Steph.

  You, me and Paula – therapy night. See you at 6 ☺

  Felicity groaned. Therapy meant more champagne. She didn’t need a hangover with such an early start. Then again, a couple of glasses of
bubbles might just turn her mind off for a little while.

  Okay, but no dancing, she sent back.

  The reply was a thumbs up.

  She downed the rest of her coffee and rinsed it in the sink before loading the cup into the dishwasher and turning it on. She had half an hour for one quick check through the house again before the real estate agent arrived for an inspection. And that was a whole new can of worms: the agent would be forced to put up with warring parties. She doubted she and Todd were even in the same book, let alone on the same page.

  Todd optimistically believed they lived in a mansion. The trait of a good marketing man. Walking around the house, Felicity had been shocked by how run down it had become. Doorhandles with cracks, light fittings that worked only with coercion, peeling paint. Thankfully the gardens were lush from late summer rainfall.

  Felicity rubbed her forehead where a headache was tightening its grip. She looked around. Fresh flowers had brought some colour to the room, but the soft furnishings weren’t going to hide the sagging age of the house. She did a lap around the open-plan room, plumping cushions on the couch, realigning a kitchen stool, straightening a stack of magazine on the bookcase. She stopped in front of the wall of family portraits. There was the one they’d had taken for Ella’s eighteenth. Sean was twelve years old, with his pre-braces bucktoothed smile, as he leaned into his father’s side. Ella glowed with good health and youth.

  Felicity had left school knowing that the career she wanted could never be hers. Charlie and Ivy, for all that they encouraged her to aim high, firmly believed she should be a nurse or a teacher. Women weren’t graziers – they were grazier’s wives – and the unwritten rule in the Dunmore family was that the eldest son inherited, so what was the point? Ken had everything handed to him on a silver platter.

  She hadn’t put up a fight. It was easier to drift along. Helping people sat comfortably with her. Pleasing her parents was no hardship. Teaching, she’d decided, might involve having to be cross with children, so nursing it was.

  There were no regrets on the career itself, but she had begun to question things in the last few years. The more help Ivy needed with Roseglen, the more Felicity realised she had a knack for farming, an affinity with the land that came from years of riding it, working shoulder to shoulder with her father.