Land of Golden Wattle

by J. H. Fletcher

It was so lovely: a lifetime of good and bad days, of ecstasy and turmoil, come to this: two old fogies walking barefoot on a sandy beach, their ears filled with the rumble of surf and screaming of gulls.

  ‘Life,’ Bec said. ‘Life.’

  Each moment was more precious to her than diamonds. A smear of smoke from the barbecue; the taste of the fish they’d eaten for supper; a placid stroll along the beach as the evening sky darkened and the first stars appeared: she could think of no better way to end a day, to end their lives.

  Except that she felt more vigorous than she had for years. She thought it was the sea air that perked her up; that and the awareness, renewed every day, that she loved and was loved. Forty-seven years married; it was hard to believe.

  Three wars, one depression, one near bankruptcy, and there they were.

  Often, these days, she thought about her son. Giles was a strange one, no getting away from it, but Bec’s love for him encompassed even his sometimes difficult ways.

  Giles’s son David was twenty-two and showing every sign of fulfilling her early hopes for him; she remembered cradling him in her arms as a baby and wondering whether he would be Derwent’s future. He was a fast learner and showed intelligent interest in everything that went on – which was more than you could say for his father. Bec’s daughter-in-law Kath had grown away from the glamour of her modelling days and was no longer determined to outrage everyone she met. In its place she had taken up riding and was apparently good at it. Bec suspected Giles was unfaithful to his wife but that was none of her business and she had no plans to interfere.

  As for the youngest member of the family… Tamara was five years old and a delight.

  Things could have been a lot worse, Bec thought. Better still, there seemed no reason why the tranquil days should not continue for years to come, although she never said it aloud and crossed her fingers even when she thought it.

  She’d read some writer who had talked about what he’d called the skull within the sunrise; it was a potent image and Bec watched out for it every day.

  She was watching for it on a day in March when she helped Jonathan launch the runabout and take off into a sunrise that seemed to her more brass than gold, with a surly stirring to the waves she didn’t like.

  ‘Why don’t you give it a miss today?’ she suggested.

  He looked at the sky and the water and shook his head. ‘She’ll be right.’ He loaded up the tinny and climbed aboard. ‘Bumper catch today. I feel it in my bones.’

  She stood with her feet immersed in the wet sand; the waves ran up the beach and she did not feel happy at all. She watched the silhouette of the boat draw further and further away from her. The noise of the big outboard faded. Only when the boat was too far away for her to distinguish the details did she turn and make her way back up the beach to the shack.

  She thought of going for a walk but didn’t feel like it. She picked up a book but couldn’t settle to reading. Every few minutes she poked her head out of the door but the sky remained clear, the seas tranquil.

  ‘What is the matter with you?’ she said.

  An hour passed; two hours.

  Hand shading her eyes, she stared out to sea but could see no sign of him.

  Time passed. Nothing.

  Time passed. Nothing.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when she made up her mind she had to do something. She had a horror of making a fuss but he had said lunchtime and it was now nearly four.

  Tension eating at her heart she got into the car and drove the two miles into town.

  Spotter planes searched; police boats ran this way and that. It had been a calm day with little wind; it was impossible to imagine what could have happened.

  Nothing was found.

  There were theories; the papers loved theories.

  Jonathan Penrose had run away; mention was made of a twenty-year-old model who might have been holidaying in the area although no one could say who she was or where she’d been staying. Another theory hinted but, mindful of the libel laws, never specifically stated, that his wife had murdered him. Less sensational suggestions were that Jonathan had fallen overboard, which did not explain the disappearance of the boat; or the tinny, known to be long in the tooth and lacking flotation tanks, had sprung a leak and sunk.

  To Bec none of it mattered. It was a month before she could bring herself to face up to it but at the end of that time she came to a bitter acceptance of the reality. Jonathan had gone, no one could say why, and taken a large slice of her life with him.

  In the night he comes to me. He is smiling, happy, the young man I remember from the days before the war. He holds my hands, smiling. He touches my ardent flesh. We are one again and will be so forever.

  The months passed. Bec’s energy inched back, never as it had been but sufficient to provide solace for whatever time remained to her.

  Twelve months after Jonathan’s disappearance, Kathleen Penrose walked out on her husband, citing serial infidelity. The divorce cost Giles an arm and a leg but, his income from the trust being what it was, that did not affect his lifestyle at all.

  In 1966 the White Australia policy came finally to an end. As soon as it was official Bec contacted Bryan Chan and told him she was arranging for the property to be transferred into the name of his company.

  He came for a visit, bringing his wife and four children. They all made a big party together.

  In 1980 David, Bec’s grandson and Tamara’s brother, was on a trip to Europe when he was killed in a car accident, run down by a drunken driver in Milan.

  The shock and pain were indescribable. Bec thought she might never become a functioning human being again but she did.

  1982

  After her return from Zurich Bec had told Tamara they would do what they had to do – they would carry on – but Tamara had the idea it wouldn’t hurt if she nudged things along a little.

  She spoke to Grant about it and early one morning, after her ritual plunge in the pond Bec still insisted on calling She-Devil’s Water, Tamara came to see her grandmother in her bedroom. Her hair was still wet, a towel was hung around her neck and she was carrying a tray of coffee and what Bec called Tamara’s significant smile.

  Bec was still in bed.

  ‘You,’ Tamara said, ‘are getting lazy in your old age.’

  ‘At least I am still breathing,’ said Bec.

  ‘And hopefully will be for many years yet,’ Tamara said.

  She poured coffee for them both and sat on the edge of the bed while they drank together and Bec gave her a succession of bird-like glances.

  ‘You are up to something,’ she said.

  ‘I am?’

  ‘It’s written all over your face.’

  ‘I would never win playing poker with you,’ Tamara said. ‘You’re going to have to manage without me for a couple of days. Grant and I are off to Sydney for a spell.’

  ‘You deserve a break.’

  ‘This is business. We’re going to see a man about a dog.’

  Bec drank, studying her granddaughter over the rim of her cup. ‘The man being your father?’

  ‘And the dog being Derwent.’

  ‘Be careful with him. He can be awkward if you drive him into a corner.’

  ‘He’s my dad, Grandma. You think I don’t know that?’

  ‘No doubt you’ll tell me what this is all about when you get back.’

  ‘No doubt we will.’

  Giles lived in the penthouse on the top floor of a block overlooking Manly beach.

  A maid let them in. ‘He says he’ll be with you directly.’

  Tamara looked around the flat appraisingly.

  ‘Pricey,’ she said.

  ‘All very mod, too,’ Grant said. ‘A bit different from Derwent. Nice view, though. Plenty of bunnies on the beach.’

  ‘That’ll please him,’ Tamara said.

  Giles came into the room and he was not alone.

  ‘This is a pleasant surprise,’ Raine said.
/>   Tamara gave an ambiguous smile. ‘We want to talk to you about Derwent’s future,’ she said.

  ‘That subject is very close to our hearts,’ Raine said.

  ‘I am sure.’

  ‘We are simple graziers,’ Grant said. ‘We know nothing of these things.’

  ‘I am sure we can get a lawyer to draw up a suitable agreement,’ Giles said.

  ‘Which is why we decided to obtain legal advice before we came here,’ Tamara said. She gestured at the dining table, all plate glass and chrome, standing in the window bay. ‘Shall we sit down?’

  Giles and Raine looked uncertainly at her, then at each other, but did as she had suggested.

  ‘And what earth-shaking discoveries have you made?’ Giles said.

  His tone made it clear how much he resented being put on the spot by his daughter. But she had never been one who knew her place.

  Grant sat facing them across the table. Shoulders squared, he stared at them both in turn, as uncompromising as a front-row rugby forward. ‘Before we go into that, maybe you should tell us what your thoughts are,’ he said.

  ‘I would have said that was a matter for the family to discuss,’ Raine said. ‘In private.’

  ‘I can assure you we have no objection to your being present,’ Tamara told her. ‘And Grant is a most important member of the family.’

  Grant gave Raine the full benefit of his slaughterhouse smile. ‘Tamara and I are husband and wife, after all.’

  ‘I have told you what I intend to do,’ Giles said. ‘As trustee and principal beneficiary of the trust I have the right to realise assets as I choose. I can also have the deed amended to include new beneficiaries.’

  ‘Meaning Raine and Jaeger?’

  ‘Meaning whomever I choose.’

  ‘You see,’ Tamara said, ‘there is a problem about that. You can’t.’

  ‘Can’t?’ Both Giles and Raine sat up straight. ‘It is my property,’ Giles said. ‘I can do what I like with it.’

  Tamara was shaking her head. ‘No. It is not your property, Dad. It belongs to the trust. And Raine and Jaeger aren’t family members. So our advice is they can’t be beneficiaries.’

  ‘I intend to adopt Jaeger,’ Giles said.

  ‘I don’t think so. Both Jaeger’s parents are living. For the court to approve an adoption, they’d both have to give their consent. Tell me,’ she said to Raine, ‘how do you fancy your chances of getting your husband to agree to that?’

  ‘It would be embarrassing if the whole affair came out in court,’ Grant said.

  ‘Are you threatening us?’ said Giles, reaching for the bridle of his high horse.

  But it seemed the horse was unwilling to gallop.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Grant said. ‘But a well-publicised law case involving such a high profile property…’

  ‘And such a high profile family,’ said Tamara.

  ‘Difficult to see how the whole sordid mess could be kept out of the papers,’ Grant said.

  ‘So embarrassing,’ Tamara said. She smiled at Raine. ‘And you a married woman.’ She turned to Giles. ‘We suggest you resign as trustee. You will retain your interest as a beneficiary, your distribution to be ten thousand dollars a month. Naturally, if you want to fight this in court, the offer is withdrawn.’

  ‘And bear in mind we’re doing it to protect you,’ Grant said.

  ‘How d’you work that out?’

  ‘It lessens the danger of Raine putting poison in your coffee,’ Tamara said.

  ‘I shall sell up the entire estate and you will get nothing,’ Giles said. ‘How do you like that idea, eh?’

  ‘I doubt the courts will go for it,’ Tamara said. ‘But you can always try.’

  Giles glared at Tamara. ‘How can you talk to me like this? I am your father!’

  ‘You should have remembered that years ago,’ Tamara said.

  ‘How did it go?’ Bec said.

  ‘We got him to see our point of view,’ Tamara said.

  ‘And so?’

  ‘He will resign as trustee and I shall take his place. He has agreed not to interfere and as a beneficiary he’ll get ten grand a month.’

  ‘He was taking almost that anyway,’ Bec said.

  ‘Now it’s official.’

  ‘And limited to that amount. What happens to Raine?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘It makes me sad to think of your father being lonely in his old age.’

  ‘No danger of that. With ten grand coming in every month, I don’t see Raine going far.’

  Bec seemed to have lost her appetite. She’d always been handy with the knives and forks but recently food hadn’t interested her and she had an uncomfortable, bloated feeling as though she’d been stuffing herself for weeks. On top of it all she was finding it increasingly hard to drag herself out of bed in the mornings.

  ‘You are getting old,’ she told herself. ‘What else can you expect?’

  Yet she’d been getting old for years and had never felt like this before.

  She hated the idea of calling in the doctor. She’d known Doc Walker a long time but still resented the idea of being poked and prodded by a man she barely knew outside his surgery. But eventually it got too uncomfortable to ignore.

  ‘Perhaps he can give me a tonic,’ she said.

  It was August when she phoned. The doctor came and gave her the once-over. He sent her for a succession of tests which she took, making sure Tamara knew nothing of what was going on.

  The whole nonsense infuriated her. ‘Such a waste of time,’ she said.

  The doctor did not give her a tonic but sent her for a full examination in Hobart with a Dr Valerie Shinbone.

  Bec thought it a remarkably suitable name for a doctor, and said so.

  ‘Not really,’ Doctor Walker said. ‘She’s a gynaecologist.’

  ‘You think there’s something wrong with me?’

  ‘I think it would be a good idea to have a look.’ He gave Bec a professional smile. ‘That way we’ll know for sure there’s nothing to worry about.’

  So to Hobart Bec went and had the examination and listened to what Dr Shinbone had to say about things before heading home.

  Well, she thought, getting to be a hundred might prove more of a problem than I’d thought.

  Tamara pounced on her as she came through the door. ‘Well?’

  ‘Stop fussing, girl. She told me I had the heart of a twenty-five-year-old.’

  ‘I am surprised she had an opinion on your heart at all, seeing she’s not a cardiologist.’

  Bec might have guessed Tamara would check.

  They walked into the drawing room. Through the big windows Bec could see Derwent’s lands glowing golden in the evening light. They sat down in easy chairs and looked at each other.

  ‘I looked her up,’ Tamara said. ‘Dr Shinbone is a gynae-oncologist.’

  ‘Yeah well,’ Bec said.

  ‘It’s cancer, isn’t it?’

  Straight questions deserved straight answers but Bec still chewed over it before coming out with the truth. ‘Talking about it somehow makes it more real. Foolishness, of course. Very well. Yes, cancer it is. Ovarian cancer, she tells me. But it’s really of no consequence,’ she said brightly. ‘My ovaries are past their use-by date anyway, wouldn’t you say?’

  Tamara was not deceived. ‘Did she give you a prognosis?’

  ‘Three months,’ Bec said. ‘Six tops.’

  Tamara’s hand tightened on the arm of her chair. ‘Did she talk about an operation?’

  ‘At my age she says my body wouldn’t stand it.’

  ‘So what does she suggest?’

  Ever since her discussion with Dr Shinbone Bec had been fighting shock. Now she mustered her courage and poured it into her smile, making it radiant. ‘Something along the lines of putting my affairs in order and having palliative care available when the need arises.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ Bec saw that Tamara was willing to go to war with the fortunately abs
ent Dr Shinbone. ‘She’s saying there’s nothing she can do? Nothing?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘You’ll get a second opinion, of course.’

  ‘I’ve had all the tests and there is no doubt about it. And Doc Walker says that in her field Valerie Shinbone is the best in Australia. I don’t plan on being messed about more than I’ve been already so the answer, Tamara, is no. No second opinions.’

  Tamara still wanted to fight. ‘There must be something you can do.’

  ‘I told you. I shall put my affairs in order –’

  ‘Other than that.’

  ‘Of course there is. Lots of things. I’ll do them too, or as many as I can. If I could I would walk every inch of Derwent land and say hurroo to each tree and blade of grass. If I were up to it I’d climb Blackman’s Head and say see you later to the eagles. That would be the way I’d do it, given the choice. They’ve been around a lot longer than I have.’

  ‘I doubt they’d thank you for it.’

  ‘I couldn’t manage it anyway, not now. You die by inches and don’t even realise it. I did climb it once, you know.’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘I daresay I did. A dozen times, probably.’

  Tamara smiled. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘There are one or two other things I’d like to see sorted too. As Derwent’s trustee you should be thinking of having a child to continue the line.’

  ‘How old-fashioned of you!’

  ‘Old, I grant you, but there’s nothing old-fashioned about wanting to see the future settled. It’s the women of this family who’ve made this place what it is. Women like us. That’s how things have been ever since Emma’s day. Because of her, Lady Arthur persuaded her husband to issue what may well have been the last free land grant in the colony. Without Emma there would have been no Derwent. Without Alice and Bessie and Jane there would have been no you or me. The women of this family have always been the movers and shakers.’

  ‘Like you,’ Tamara said.

  ‘I’ve kept the flame burning,’ Bec said. ‘I think I can say that.’

  ‘If you hadn’t gone to Switzerland Dad would have married that ghastly woman and her son would be busy turning Derwent into a golf course right now.’

  ‘Let’s not forget the wind farm,’ Bec said.