If Blood Should Stain the Wattle

by Jackie French

  I am ashamed that our nation is sending boys who do not want to fight in a war most Australians feel we cannot — even should not — win . . .

  JED

  ‘Jed! I’d like you to meet Felicity. Felicity, Jed’s an old friend. She’s helping with the campaign.’

  Jed kept her face steady, the smile ready as she turned to face Nicholas and his fiancée.

  She had already recognised her as the horse rider. The young woman looked smaller, here in the hall, self-conscious and mousy in a brown shirtdress and slightly unsteady cork wedges. She must have changed in the loo outside. The confident young horsewoman had vanished.

  ‘Hi,’ said Felicity politely. Tanned skin, blue eyes. A nothing-in-particular young woman, without the stick-thumping courage of her grandmother.

  ‘It was a good speech,’ said Jed.

  Nicholas grinned. ‘No, it wasn’t. But it went okay.’

  Jed met his grin, just as she had so many times before. ‘Tonight “okay” is good. Too much polish and professionalism might have put their backs up.’

  Nicholas’s shoulders relaxed slightly. ‘You really think so?’ He shook his head. ‘I forgot. You never lie.’

  Felicity had caught the thread of emotion travelling between them. She looked at Nicholas, puzzled, then back at Jed.

  Then they were gone, Nicholas turning to answer more questions from a woman with a blue rinse and a teacup of chateau cardboard, a small quiche Lorraine in her other hand.

  Their meeting had been appropriate. Polite, friendly. Watching eyes — and they would be watching, not just those who loved her, like Nancy and Matilda and Scarlett — would have seen nothing untoward.

  But once again, as soon as Nicholas turned to her, Jed had seen that future glimpse of him, the one she had seen when they first met. That older Nicholas, bearded, with flecks of grey. Once again she had felt the flood of love for the man Nicholas would one day become, the certainty that on that day he loved her too.

  And yet . . .

  She didn’t love him now. She cared for him. Of course she cared for him. They had been through so much together. But she no longer felt even the love that had possessed her as a seventeen-year-old. That girl had needed someone to love, someone to love her, and there Nicholas had been, handsome but, most of all, vulnerable, no physical threat to a girl who had faced too much violence.

  The image still left her shaken. Would she really love Nicholas in the future? What if he was married to Felicity? Her own early life had been shredded by her mother’s inability to divorce her first husband, forced to vanish for fear of losing her child, and possibly her fortune, as the guilty party. Would the love she’d glimpsed wreck a marriage too?

  ‘Your grandmother made a superb speech, Miss Kelly.’

  ‘Pardon?’ She blinked at a man in a white suit, in front of her, then said, ‘Thank you,’ automatically, though Matilda was her great-grandmother, and by marriage only. ‘Excuse me. I need to get my sister home. It’s getting late.’

  ‘The girl in the wheelchair? I’m so sorry. Has she been in an accident?’

  That smile was . . . wrong. Jed Kelly, who never lied, could smell a liar. This stranger knew that Scarlett had never walked. The whole of Gibber’s Creek knew that.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she repeated. She brushed past him. He smelled of some strange herb — not dope or tobacco, not even cigars or oregano. Odd, but not unpleasant. She hurried through the crowd to leave him behind.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Sam casually. His hair was loose, like old grass on the hills.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. A bit tired.’ She arranged a smile. ‘It was quite a night.’

  ‘Jed!’ Matilda stalked towards her, her stick merely for emphasis. ‘Did you bring the notes for Nicholas’s speech at Rocky Valley tomorrow?’

  ‘I didn’t know you wanted some.’

  Matilda’s raised eyebrow said without words: ‘You heard what he said tonight. That boy needs a speechwriter.’

  Jed sighed. ‘Okay. I’ve got the speech I was going to give you for the announcement of the election. He can use that. I’ll bring it over tomorrow. Early. Before breakfast.’

  Which would mean no chance of seeing Nicholas and Felicity, who were staying the night with Felicity’s Uncle Andy, Drinkwater’s semi-retired manager, who still lived in the house down the hill from the main homestead.

  ‘Excellent.’ Matilda looked at Sam with approval. ‘Better get her home now, young man, if she’s going to be up early tomorrow.’

  ‘Matilda, I can get myself home. They’re all coming in my car anyway.’

  But Matilda was smiling, and so was Sam. Matilda kissed her cheek in a wash of violet-scented talcum powder. ‘Of course you can, dear girl. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘I used to be terrified of her,’ admitted Sam as the crowd parted for Matilda and her stick.

  ‘Me too.’ And now she was the dearest person in her world. Scarlett was dear too. But she and Jed had their whole lives together. Time with Matilda was precious. And so yes, of course she would take the speech to Drinkwater before breakfast, even if she had to get up at five am to polish it.

  ‘I’ll gather the horde,’ said Sam. ‘You find Scarlett.’

  Jed gazed over the crowd. Scarlett sat in her wheelchair next to Nicholas, obviously basking in the glory of knowing the new electoral candidate. Jed caught Leafsong’s eye, then gestured to the door. Leafsong nodded.

  It was cool outside. The air smelled of sheep and horse. Felicity must have ridden from Drinkwater. There was only one horse. Presumably she’d ride back alone, while Nicholas drove back with the others from Drinkwater. A strange girl, out of place and out of time. What on earth did Nicholas see in her? He had loved the future, not the past. And from what Jed had seen, she’d make a terrible politician’s wife.

  Boadicea crooned along the main street, despite her load. The night air swept Jed’s hair back. JohnandAnnie crooned a lullaby to Sunshine. Jed dropped Scarlett off at Dribble first — she was almost asleep — then guided Boadicea carefully up the track to the commune. Was the election speech the right one for Nicholas to give at Rocky Valley? Or should she draft a new one? Something about mountains to climb . . . ? No, too The Sound of Music. Maybe that good farmers faced the same challenges as a good government, caretaking for Australia for the future . . .

  ‘Cool car,’ said Clifford, clambering out of the back. ‘Conspicuous bourgeois consumption though,’ he added hurriedly as the others followed him. Boadicea’s springs groaned in relief.

  ‘I do my best. Although conspicuous bourgeois consumption takes too much time for me to do it properly these days.’ Jed nodded up at a single small light inside the dome. ‘That looks like candlelight.’

  ‘Ah, must have forgotten to put it out,’ said JohnandAnnie.

  ‘Dangerous to leave a candle unattended,’ said Jed.

  ‘Thank you, Grandma,’ said Carol. ‘We’ll be more careful next time.’

  Leafsong gave her an apologetic grin. A nice girl. A bit odd — and not just her appearance or lack of speech — but Jed was glad Scarlett had found a friend of her own. Leafsong headed up the hill with her sister.

  Jed put out her hand to turn on the ignition again, then found Sam looming above her.

  ‘Come down to the river and watch the platypuses. It’s a shame to waste this moon.’

  She blinked, her mind still full of Nicholas, political speeches, the possibility of an Australia where a girl, pregnant and alone, would have medical care. If Jed had been able to go to a doctor, perhaps her baby would have survived. She’d be four years old now . . .

  ‘Platypuses,’ said Sam patiently. ‘In the river.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you look . . .’ he was hunting for the right words, then came up with ‘. . . like you need to watch platypuses for a while.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jed. Sam was right. She didn’t want to be alone with her memories just yet.

  More lights glowe
d from Leafsong and Carol’s house, and the dome now. Candles, or magic from those solar panels? But she didn’t ask as they made their way past the young tomato plants and lettuces down to the river, then along the white sand to the waterhole where they had swum before.

  They sat. Warm sand, glowing slightly in the starlight. The moon drifted above as if its only job was to light the ripples of the river. But the water below remained a deep green-black.

  ‘We should have brought a torch,’ whispered Jed.

  ‘Your eyes will adapt to the dark. Don’t look up at the sky, just the river. No need to whisper,’ he added. ‘The platypuses are used to us. This is their river; at least it is at night. Don’t move suddenly and we’ll be right.’

  ‘Okay.’ The silence crept through her, calming her. But it wasn’t silence. The river sang nibbles of water melody as it slid around its corners. The leaves muttered against each other. Maybe the stars sang too, on nights like that, a tinny sound just beyond human hearing . . .

  ‘There he is!’ said Sam as a small, shiny black blob moved across the water, then suddenly ducked down.

  ‘How do you know it’s a he?’

  ‘No male chauvinist piggery.’ Sam sounded amused. ‘There are usually four platypuses around here. He’s the big old male.’

  Suddenly she deeply envied his knowledge, his confidence. ‘Did your parents teach you about platypuses?’

  ‘No. I don’t think Dad has ever noticed a platypus in his life. Mum either, though she can tell the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo. My aunt taught me, mostly.’

  ‘Flinty McAlpine?’

  ‘That’s her. Did you like her books when you were younger?’

  ‘No. Too many horses, not enough people. I liked sci-fi. Still do. Or history. What about you?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t read books much. Unless they’ve got diagrams.’

  No one she knew shared her love of sci-fi, except Nicholas. They’d talked and analysed the possible future. She had helped him with his novel, urged him to toss out the whole first part, to rewrite chapter after chapter. Working on that book had been one of the deepest intellectual pleasures she had known, the two of them, side by side, Nicholas still in a wheelchair, her in her only piece of pretty clothing, an Indian dress with mirrored sequins . . .

  The platypus emerged again, floated black in the water. Suddenly Jed was back in the present, on the warm sand, feeling the starlight dapples, hearing the quiet breathing of the man next to her.

  ‘Do you come down here with Carol?’

  ‘Sometimes. Look,’ said Sam, ‘we’re not together, me and Carol. Never have been. Well, one night, that’s all. A mistake.’

  ‘Really? But she’d like you to be together.’

  ‘Maybe. Not going to happen. What about you and Nicholas Brewster? I couldn’t help noticing . . . something,’ he added.

  ‘Was it that obvious?’

  ‘Probably not. I happened to be watching you.’

  ‘Three kisses, three years ago. And a vague plan to live together while I was at uni. But we never did . . .’

  ‘It looked like more than that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Jed.

  ‘Try me.’

  She turned to him, the fury she had tried to quell erupting against Nicholas, Felicity, Matilda, this young man sitting so quietly beside her. ‘You couldn’t understand. You or Carol or any one of you privileged “voluntary poverty” idealists, with your nice, loving middle-class parents to support you. I’d been raped, I’d been pregnant, I’d broken out of juvenile detention, and I lost my baby. I’d survived by washing dishes and a little shoplifting, mostly sleeping rough. I was starving. I came here hoping Tommy Thompson was my great-grandfather, or that I could con him into thinking I was, just long enough for him to pay my way through the HSC.

  ‘And I met Nicholas. Both of us were ghosts, drifting through the world, belonging nowhere, with no one else to understand. He’d been through hell and so had I, and we carried some of that hell within us . . .’

  Another platypus erupted from the water, only a metre away. Sam was right, she thought again. Human voices didn’t matter to platypuses . . .

  ‘And you still carry a bit of that hell with you now?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And maybe my life hasn’t been quite as easy as you think.’ His voice was quiet in the darkness. ‘Did you know my dad is an alcoholic?’

  ‘What? No!’ Impossible. She had known Dr McAlpine for four years. ‘I’ve never seen him drunk. Or even with a drink.’

  ‘He hasn’t drunk alcohol for nearly ten years. But he had a bad eight years that just happened to take up most of my childhood. He went through rough stuff in the war. Kept it all inside him for a while, then screaming nightmares. Jane and I would run into the bush to escape his rages. Or stay with Aunt Flinty. I tried to stop him bashing Mum once.’

  ‘What happened?’ Jed couldn’t imagine Blue McAlpine bowed under a man’s fists.

  ‘Dad broke my arm and Mum’s collarbone. It brought him to his senses. He took us to hospital and booked himself into rehab the next day. It’s all good now,’ Sam added. ‘But if I don’t drink even a beer, you know why. Oh, and we’re not rich either.’

  ‘Your mum owns the biscuit factory. And doctors make lots of money.’

  ‘The biscuit factory only just breaks even. Mum had family money, a boot factory, but there’s not much money in Australian boots these days either. Dad didn’t charge for his work at River View. Didn’t charge half his patients either. He used to say a doctor who accepted money from more than sixty per cent of his patients had no right to take the Hippocratic oath.’ A small smile in the darkness. ‘If he were still practising, he’d make more money under Medibank, not less.’

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry.’ When you were unhappy, it seemed your own problems filled the world, she thought.

  ‘Carol and Leafsong haven’t lived in a bed of roses either. Their mum, well, let’s put it this way: she had her little toes removed so her feet would look slimmer. The world exists only for her, and for everyone else to admire her and to do exactly what she wants.’

  ‘You’re joking. Had her toes removed?’

  ‘Yep. Carol’s gran helped out when Carol was a baby. She died when Carol was five, a year before Leafsong was born. I don’t think Carol’s mum changed a dozen nappies in her life. And having a daughter who looks like Leafsong and won’t talk — well, she couldn’t cope with that. Nor with a daughter as beautiful as she is, but younger. Carol says she doesn’t know which one of them her mother hates most, Leafsong because she is ugly or Carol with her gorgeous hair.’

  And Jed had thought only her own mother was unable to love her child. She had been wrong. ‘What about their father?’

  ‘He loves his work. His daughters were fed, clothed, went to good schools. I doubt he thought anything else was needed. Carol looked after her sister when she was a baby and she still does now. Carol said they lived on Vegemite toast and chops and boiled vegetables on the nights the cleaning lady didn’t leave them dinner, because that was all she could make. But when Leafsong was about ten she learned to cook. And loved it.

  ‘Carol was in a bad scene when I met her at uni. LSD and . . . well, just a bad scene generally. She was living in a pretty dodgy squat, didn’t even go home to see Leafsong — said she’d spent her life looking after her younger sister, and she’d earned some fun. She pulled herself together quick enough — she’s not much of a wallower. And then two years after she graduated and had a well-paying job and her own flat, her dad got a professorship at Yale, and suddenly Leafsong didn’t even have a home — their parents rented theirs out. They just assumed that Carol would take in her sister.’

  ‘They abandoned her?’

  ‘There’s a cheque deposited in the bank once a fortnight. But Carol was only just coping with a job she hated, and looking after Leafsong too.’

  Which meant not quite coping, thought Jed.


  ‘So I encouraged them to come here. And it worked,’ he added softly.

  ‘I . . . see.’ It didn’t make her like Carol. But the story did nudge her towards compassion.

  ‘I guessed bad stuff had happened to you,’ said Sam quietly. ‘That first time I ever saw you, down by the river, that New Year’s Day. I’ll never forget your eyes. You can keep bad memories off your face, but not out of your eyes. Saw you about town with Nicholas too. Jed . . .’

  He bent towards her, slowly. The kiss tasted of pikelets with jam and cream from that evening’s bring-a-plate. His beard tickled slightly. It was gentle, almost brotherly, but on the lips.

  Jed drew back, then put out her hand to stop him kissing her again.

  He looked guilty, almost stricken. ‘I’m sorry . . .’ he began. ‘Are you . . . scared . . . ?’

  ‘Of men kissing me? No.’ She couldn’t let him assume the rape had turned her off sex. But for her, sex could never be the casual affair it was for so many of her uni friends. Free love? Love was the most expensive commodity on the planet. And there remained the one thing she had not told Sam — that glimpse of Nicholas and love. ‘Just . . . not ready to be kissed tonight.’

  Sam sat back on the tussocks. ‘May I kiss you another day then?’ he asked lightly.

  She smiled. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Then I’ll keep hoping.’ Silence crept about them again. Three platypuses floated in the pool now, ducking over and under. Sam reached for her hand, kissed it, then placed it back in her lap as neatly as if it were one of the tools he kept hung on the wall under the eaves of his cottage. He put his arm around her tentatively, then more firmly as she leaned into his warmth.

  The river sang, and the moon dropped light onto the water, and the platypuses dived, nosing into the sandy mud, as their ancestors had done for a hundred thousand years.

  Chapter 14

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, October 1972

  It’s Time to Save Our Country, by Jed Kelly

  There is a lake in Tasmania called Lake Pedder. Some say it is the most beautiful in the world. The Tasmanian government intends to flood it, to turn it into a vast dam to generate electricity.