Winter

by John Marsden

  Oh no, I thought. Oh Jeez. What do I do now? Get the vet out? Great start to my career looking after Warriewood.

  Then I decided maybe I was wrong, maybe it wasn’t the twine I’d seen, just another length of hay. So I started searching again, and about four minutes later found it.

  It wasn’t exactly a great thrill, just a relief. I sat back on my heels looking at the cattle and thinking, I’ve sure got a lot to learn.

  I went and let the chooks out for their daily graze, threw some wheat around for them, checked their pellets and water, and got the eggs. Only four. Seemed like the chooks were slowing down for winter. I wondered what had happened to the eggs in the past. Guess they were just another perk for Sylvia and Ralph.

  Back in the barn I got a mattock and some thick gloves and went out to begin the campaign that had been in the back of my mind—at the front of my mind quite a lot of the time—since I returned to Warriewood. Those bloody blackberries. I hated them from the moment I took my first early-morning walk along the creek. I figured it’d probably take ten or twenty years to get rid of them, but I was going to make a start. Every journey begins with a single step.

  I knew the easy way would be to do it with poison, but I didn’t want that. Maybe just because I’m pig-headed; if there’s a difficult way to do something I’ll always find it. But I couldn’t bear to think of poison washing down into my beautiful creek, killing the trout and the turtles and the platypuses, and even the little insects that skimmed across the water. I felt they trusted me to keep the water safe for them, and I was going to do just that.

  So I went at the blackberries with the mattock, digging out the big plants and pulling out the little ones.

  I soon realised I was lucky in one way. Because we were well into autumn there’d been a good bit of rain, and the ground was quite soft. So the roots came out easier than I could have expected. The further into the gullies they were, the more easily they came out. Once I got up onto the higher ground, it was hard work. I don’t think I got all the roots on any of them, but I had to hope that I was getting enough to stop them making a comeback.

  When I got a big one out with most of its root system it was deliciously satisfying, like no other job I’ve ever done. Some of them were huge. I’d walk back from the gully, dragging the plant with me, and sometimes I’d have to go twenty metres to get it all out from the undergrowth. It was like holding up a huge fish pulled from the bottom of the ocean.

  I soon came to realise that blackberries are the most pernicious, evil creations on the face of the planet. They’d crept through the bushes, along the ground, where no-one could see them, putting down new little white roots wherever they went. And they hid their roots so cleverly. Some of them were actually growing out of the trunks of tree ferns. Those ones were almost impossible to get out.

  And they fought me. They fought tooth and nail, writhing around my legs like tentacles from some ferocious jungle creature. They grabbed me like they wanted to wrap me in barbed wire. They bit and scratched and swore and tore.

  All of this made destroying them more satisfying, in spite of the frustrations. Three times I went into tantrum territory, just like I was back in school, or at the Robinsons’. I lost all rational thought each time. I swore and tore right back at the mongrels, ripping them with all my strength, and not stopping till I was hot and sweaty and exhausted.

  The good news was that after a couple of hours I could actually see some changes. Some improvement. The big plants covered such huge areas that by removing one blackberry I opened up quite a space. Looking back along the bank of the creek, in among the ferns and hydrangeas and rhodies, I could see grass again. I felt I’d given the garden and lawn room to breathe, room to grow. And I’d done it all myself.

  The bad thing was that it got kind of lonely. I wanted someone working with me, so we could swap the odd comment, have a laugh together, hold up a massive blackberry and say ‘Hey, look how big mine is’, or something equally dumb.

  Round about eleven o’clock I threw down the mattock and gloves, staggered to a patch of lawn and flopped onto the grass. I was exhausted. I really wasn’t fit enough for this kind of work. It was different from the stuff you do in a gym. I must have been using different muscles or something. I lay there with an arm over my eyes, listening to the sound of the wrens and red-tails and kookaburras, thinking, I must get a dog for company, and wondering again how my mother had really died. Deep down I knew she hadn’t been killed in such a stupid dumb accident.

  ‘Winter, hi!’ a voice said.

  I sat up quickly, looking around. I hate surprises. I hate shocks. I hate anything unexpected.

  Standing there was Jessica McGill. At least this was a nice surprise. She had been so much fun at dinner the night before. I’d been quite nervous when I got to her place. Not only because of my post-traumatic stress after the Ralph and Sylvia Show, but also with the lump I get in my stomach when I meet new people. It’s like I’ve swallowed a billiard ball.

  With Mr McGill being an architect I knew they’d have a pretty nice house, and it was nice, but not like those ones that hit you from ten k’s away. Not some wog-palace with a pair of white lions guarding the front gate. This was a long low timber place that stretched into the distance to the left and right and had big flower gardens all around. The path leading to the front door was a real obstacle course, with heaps of pot-plants and little trees and creepers, and a bronze figure of a girl holding a lamp.

  Inside it was comfortable and warm, but I started to realise how big it was, with rooms leading to rooms leading to more rooms. To be honest you’d have to say it was shabby in some ways. The sofas looked like they were out of a dog kennel, and not just because a couple of golden retrievers were snoring away on them. The dogs were so old and lazy they opened one eye each, looked at me, yawned and went back to sleep. But the sofas were falling apart at the seams, and they could have done with a shampoo. There were cracks in the ceiling, and books and magazines and CDs in piles everywhere.

  Funny though, it wasn’t a mess. It didn’t look grubby or unloved. I don’t know how some houses can be like that and some can’t. Maybe it was all part of Mr McGill’s architectural genius. Maybe the whole room was carefully planned and he’d paid a fortune to get sofas with that dilapidated look. Maybe not.

  Mr and Mrs McGill were both there and they were really friendly. I asked for a Diet Coke and of course that turned out to be the only thing they didn’t have, so Mr McGill went off to another room to look for a straight Coke. I headed for the sofas and started slobbering over the dogs. It’s what I do when I’m nervous, use dogs as security blankets. The retrievers didn’t seem to mind. Mr McGill came back with a Schweppes Cola, which I hate, but I wasn’t about to say that. I remembered my manners and went and helped Mrs McGill in the kitchen, and that was quite good, because it was easier having something to do, being able to talk while chopping carrots and stirring the sauce.

  Jessica had arrived home just in time for dinner. Jessica’s one of those people who bounce. She bounced in the front door, like she was running on different batteries to the rest of us. The dogs actually dragged themselves off the sofas to greet her. I was impressed by that. I was impressed by the relationship she had with her parents too. Right away she launched into a big conversation about her flute teacher and how he wanted her to get a new flute and it was going to cost some amazing amount of money, two thousand dollars I think. Instead of her parents going ‘No way, you’ve got to be joking’, they took it pretty well, asking about where it was made and stuff, and instead of Jessica going off her head and yelling ‘Either I get a new flute or I’m out of here’, she was like ‘But I don’t really know whether I need it—I’m going to ask a few more people on Monday’.

  She’s doing a music course at the College of the Arts, majoring in flute and harp. At dinner she started telling us about her trip home, and how a group of them started singing a capella on the tram on their way to the station and the driver stopped
the tram and ordered them off and the passengers booed the driver, but he wouldn’t back down, so Jess and her mates got off the tram singing ‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling’ at the driver while the passengers all cheered.

  So the next thing Jess and I are singing ‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling’, and then we discover we both love Kasey Chambers, so we get into the whole Kasey Chambers songbook, starting with ‘The Captain’ and going on to ‘This Flower’, and then Mrs McGill brings out the nasi goreng.

  It’s a bit hard to sing with your mouth full of rice.

  ‘All the music you kids listen to,’ said Mr McGill, ‘it’s the same songs we listened to, recycled. What goes around comes around.’

  ‘Yeah, right, Dad, you musical legend,’ Jess said, ‘like you’d really know what we listen to.’

  ‘Well, what’s number one on the Top 40 at the moment, for example?’

  ‘Dad!’ Jessica speared a prawn with her chop-stick and held it up in the air like she’d harpooned it. ‘What language are you talking? Top 40? We don’t talk like that.’

  ‘Triple J’s Hottest 100 now, that’s a different matter,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, I’m a J girl,’ Jess agreed.

  ‘OK then, what’s a song that’s really popular?’ Mr McGill asked. ‘I bet it’ll be a re-hash from the sixties or seventies.’

  ‘Um, how about “When Your Baby Says it’s Time to Come, You Know It’s Time to Go”,’ Jess said.

  ‘Jessica!’ said Mrs McGill.

  ‘Oh. I must admit, I haven’t heard of that,’ Mr McGill said.

  ‘That’s because I just made it up.’

  After dinner Jessica and I spent the rest of the evening in her room, with me singing and Jess switching between harp and flute. We tried making up words for ‘When your Baby Says it’s Time to Come, You Know it’s Time to Go’. It was pretty funny. I wish I’d written them down.

  On second thoughts, maybe not. My life’s ambition is to be the Princess of Cool, and I don’t think I’d have earned many votes with the lyrics I was suggesting.

  I loved the whole evening. It was such a relief after all the bad stuff. We hadn’t talked about my parents, but I wasn’t in the mood anyway.

  Mr McGill drove me home. It was 12.30 before I got to bed. That was good too, because I was so tired I didn’t think about being alone on the property: sixteen years old and just me, on six hundred hectares of farmland and bush.

  But I felt a flush of delight to see Jessica again so soon.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, jumping up. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I rode over. Wow, look at the blackberries. Have you pulled all these out this morning?’

  ‘You wanna see my scars?’

  ‘My God, Winter, you really are serious about this.’

  I just shrugged, but I was pleased with her praise. After all, she was two years older than me.

  ‘You want a hand?’

  ‘Are you kidding? No, I couldn’t ask you. It’s such sweaty horrible work, and you’ll scratch your hands so badly you’ll never play harp again.’

  ‘I’ll take the risk. It looks quite fun actually.’

  ‘Well, to be honest it is strangely satisfying.’

  We walked up to the barn and got another pair of gloves and a spade. On the way back Jess told me her great idea. ‘I was thinking, do you want someone to come and stay here for a while? ’Cos I’m sick to death of living at home but I can’t afford to live anywhere else. And you know how you were saying last night you were finding the house so big and empty . . . ’

  ‘Oh wow. That’d be so cool! I’d love it!’

  ‘I wouldn’t be here during the day, because of school, but I’d be here nights and weekends.’

  ‘That wouldn’t matter.’

  Jess got really warmed up then. She’s such a nice person. ‘And I had another idea, why don’t we put an act together and do some busking? If I played flute, or guitar, because I can get by with that too, and you sang, I reckon we’d make a fortune. You’ve got such a good voice. Some of the kids at school make eighty bucks in two hours busking. But the singers always do the best. We might even get some proper jobs, like in a bar or something.’

  ‘Except I’m underage.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot that. Well, in a cafe maybe. There are some good gigs around, if you know where to look. What do you think?’

  ‘Let’s do it!’

  ‘I was thinking, you should apply for a place at the college. I reckon you’d get into the singing course. You’re better than half the kids there even now. Dad gives me a lift most days, or we could get the train in together.’

  That did make me think. It made me hopeful. Deep down I knew I shouldn’t really have left school. These days it seems like you have to go through school, and beyond that, if you want to get anywhere. I’d never planned to leave altogether, just till I sorted myself out, but I hadn’t thought of any solution. All I knew was that if I’d stayed at school any longer I would have killed someone, and that someone might have been myself. The college sounded better than a normal school. I liked the idea of being with creative people all day long.

  I attacked the blackberries with new vigour. Jessica was a good worker. She seemed to enjoy it, amazingly enough. And having some company did make time pass faster.

  Mr Carruthers arrived just before lunchtime. He brought a whole heap of food: bread rolls, salami, sun-dried tomatoes and capsicums, cheese, mushrooms, plus some cakes. It was a pretty good peace offering, although I did cynically think that if I checked the estate accounts later I’d probably find he’d claimed it under petty cash.

  He was in quite a subdued mood. After we’d had a picnic on the lawn beside the old fountain, the ex-fountain, he asked me if we could have a chat. Jess tactfully went for a walk, and I sat there raising my eyebrows at Mr Carruthers, waiting for him to make the first move.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to find you in good spirits,’ he said. ‘I was worrying all night about you. I actually rang a couple of times but you must have been out.’

  ‘Yeah, I went to the McGills for dinner.’

  ‘Winter, I’ve been looking into the management of the property. It’s too early to come to any conclusions, but I must say there seems to be evidence of some improper practice. If that proves to be the case, then I can only apologise for not being aware of it earlier. It is very difficult though, with me being in the city, and only able to come out here every three months. And I’ve never claimed to be an expert on agriculture. Ralph and Sylvia had excellent references, and from what I saw they were doing everything that could have been expected. But the potential for dishonesty was there, and they may well have succumbed to it.’

  ‘So what happens next?’

  ‘I suggest we advertise for a new couple to take over. And I think it would be good if you were involved in the selection process. I feel it’s very important that we have a couple you can work with. Quite frankly, if Ralph and Sylvia decide to play it hard, we might have to make a substantial pay-out to them, unless we can prove criminal activity. The estate can’t afford any more mistakes like this. We have to get it right next time.’

  He made it sound like it was my fault that Ralph and Sylvia were crooks.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s advertise. There’s no harm in doing that. But I don’t want anyone here for a little bit. I know I’ll need someone eventually, but just for a few weeks I want to be on my own. Well, with Jess maybe. She’s offered to move into the homestead.’

  ‘But what about farming problems? You don’t know anything about farming, surely. And Jessica—I can’t remember what her father said, but isn’t she doing music? That’s not necessarily a good recommendation for cattle work.’

  ‘I know. But I think Mr Kennedy, next door, will help.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, at least we’re agreed on putting the advertisement in, so let’s do that for a start. In the meantime I suppose you can always call a consultant, or a vet if there’s an urgent problem. Expensive way
of doing things though.’

  Not as expensive as Ralph and Sylvia, I thought.

  I was glad to see him go. I stood waving as the big Toyota turned out of the driveway. I was keen to get back to the blackberries.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Before I left Canberra, during the long train journey, and many times since I’d been back, I’d wondered if I’d feel my parents’ presence at Warriewood. Would they haunt my footsteps? Would they appear at night? Would they invade my dreams? Maybe they’d be like guardian angels, and warn me if I was in danger. I wondered if they’d be happy at my being there, but for some strange reason I often imagined them as angry, like dark clouds of thunder. I didn’t know why they might have been angry.

  That first night I spent at the homestead, there was a strong sense of life, and energy, but it wasn’t like ghosts. I don’t know if there’s meant to be a difference between ghosts and spirits, according to the experts, but using the words the way I want to use them, the spirit of my parents was in the homestead but there were no ghosts.

  After a couple of weeks I’d stopped thinking about stuff like that much. So it was a shock when I walked towards a paddock I hadn’t been in before, and felt a force so strong that it almost winded me. I mean, literally. It was like the air had been punched out of my stomach. Suddenly I was gasping for air, looking around to see if a UFO had landed and was sucking up the atmosphere. I got the most awful sickening feelings. I actually had to retreat. Like, physically.