WATTLE CREEK
Fiona
McCallum
www.harlequinbooks.com.au
About the Author
FIONA McCALLUM spent her childhood years on the family cereal and wool farm outside a small town on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. An avid reader and writer, she decided at the age of nine that she wanted to be the next Enid Blyton! She completed her final years of schooling at a private boarding school in Adelaide.
Having returned to her home town to work in the local council office, Fiona maintained her literary interests by writing poetry and short stories, and studying at TAFE via correspondence. Her ability to put into words her observations of country life saw a number of her feature articles published in the now defunct newspaper SA Statewide.
When her marriage ended, Fiona moved to Adelaide, eventually found romance, and followed it to Melbourne. She returned to full-time study at the age of twenty-six, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Professional Writing) from Deakin University. While studying, she found herself drawn to writing fiction where her keen observation of the human condition and everyday situations could be combined with her love of storytelling.
After brief stints in administration, marketing and recruitment, Fiona started Content Solutions, a consultancy providing professional writing and editing services to the corporate sector. Living with a sales and marketing executive and working on high-level business proposals and tenders has given Fiona great insight into vastly different ways of life.
Fiona continued to develop her creative writing skills by reading widely and voraciously, and attending short courses. In 2001 she realised her true passion lay in writing full-length fiction, and in 2002 completed her first manuscript.
In early 2004 Fiona made the difficult decision to return to Adelaide alone in order to achieve a balanced lifestyle and develop a career as a novelist. She successfully re-established her consultancy, and now enjoys the sharp contrast between her corporate work and creative writing.
Wattle Creek is Fiona’s third novel.
Also by Fiona McCallum
The Button Jar series
Watch out for Fiona McCallum's latest novel, Standing Strong, coming early 2016!
To all those who have suffered depression and who will suffer depression in the future: A problem shared is a problem halved.
Prologue
Damien had suicide in his sights. His finger was on the trigger but it was the slow, even beat of his heart that scared him more than the rifle. Bob and Cara, his two farm dogs, had stopped snooping about and were lying obediently at his feet. He couldn’t help thinking about the irony of them being so well behaved. Two pairs of eyes looked up at him, heads laid on outstretched paws. He didn’t want them to watch but couldn’t tell them to piss off – his throat was too dry. He willed them to look away, his trigger finger poised, but still they stared, their expressions confused. Damien squeezed his finger slightly and, as if on cue, Cara got up and moved closer. She put a chocolate brown paw on his knee and whimpered quietly. A couple of tears pushed from between his swollen eyes and rolled down his dust-caked cheeks. He hadn’t cried since his father’s funeral nine years ago – real men don’t cry. But now, as he laid the gun among the discarded half-finished projects on the oil-stained concrete floor, Damien couldn’t imagine the tears ever stopping.
Chapter One
Damien felt like he might have been heading in for a police interrogation, he was so nervous. With sweaty, quivering hands he thrust the heavy glass door open in front of him. He moved with a shuffling, self-conscious gait. Cecile and Louise, the girls on the reception desk, stared and he found himself looking away and down at his feet. His boots were a mess – all cracked and caked with last winter’s mud.
He could tell the girls were just dying to know what he was there for, since he only ever saw the doctor when he really had to – for the gory accidental stuff like broken bones and gaping wounds. They knew it was no farming mishap today because he was not wincing in agony. Nor was there a bloodied rag in sight.
The hairs on Damien’s chest prickled as the first drops of sweat rolled down under his arms.
Cecile told him Doctor Squire was running twenty minutes late and Damien could come back then if he liked. But he knew that if he walked out the door he wouldn’t be back – getting this far was hard enough.
Damien ambled over to the waiting area thinking about the ‘incident’ last week. He wished he could just forget it but couldn’t; it was why he was there. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to palm it off as just another bad day. Scared the shit out of myself quite frankly, he thought.
Rifling through a pile of old women’s magazines, Damien selected a Woman’s Day and pretended to become engrossed. But he couldn’t concentrate – he could feel everyone staring. A glance around the room and sure enough, heads returned quickly to magazines. Cecile and Louise were staring; their heads bobbed down behind the desk in a hurry.
Damien’s thick, almost-new khaki work shirt stuck to his damp back and his neck burned as the blush crept up to his ears. It was like everyone knew why he was there – that he’d howled uncontrollably for a whole day last week, despite being a thirty-year-old bloke. He found himself wondering if you could die from embarrassment.
Flicking through the creased pages of the magazine he wondered, for about the thousandth time, if he really had the guts to go through with it. He’d thought about it on and off for years, mainly just imagining how he would do it, with the voice in his head challenging him over and over again, telling him he was a useless fuck.
Damien looked again at the magazine on his lap then coughed loudly into his hand and willed a nice loud sneeze to erupt from his nose to put everyone off the scent. He checked his watch. His fingers started to tap impatiently on his knees. He didn’t have the time to be sitting around here; there were field bins to clean out and put away, sheds to sweep and a busted water pipe to fix. The biggest was the mob of sheep that had to be got in and drenched. Fuck I hate sheep – pains in the arse, all of them, he thought.
Damien felt as though he’d been waiting among the sniffling, flu-ridden people for hours. One by one they’d gone through the dark veneer door then come out minutes later clutching a wad of tissues and a folded yellow prescription. Looking around the room he realised none of the people he had originally been sitting with were still there. Surely he was next? He coughed again for the benefit of the newcomers and blew his nose in the hope it would assist his charade. It didn’t; instead of a nice snotty blast there was a pathetic dry, trumpeting squawk. Why not cancel and walk right out of there? Did he really need to see a doctor?
Just stop whining and get on with it; the world will be a better place …
Damien decided he’d wait; it really couldn’t hurt to speak to the doctor. It wasn’t like it would cost anything; Medicare was picking up the tab.
Returning to his magazine, he finally found an article that looked complete and began reading. After attempting to read a few stories only to find the crucial final page missing, he’d learnt to check before starting out on a new one.
Nearby a throat was cleared quietly and Damien looked up to see a young woman he didn’t recognise dabbing delicately at her nose. Wow, a new face. Mm, cute and far too delicate to be from around here, he mused, and was instantly intrigued.
The woman seated on Damien’s left, Beryl Smith, the baker’s wife, nudged him and he looked up. His name was being called. His legs were unsteady when he stood and his nose began to run. He reached for the crumpled, stained handkerchief in his pocket and blew noisily. ‘Take that,’ he silently told the inquisitive audience as his nose gave an impressive wet gurgle and he ambled towards the doctor’s open door.
Th
e door clicked behind him. Trapped; too late to back out now. Grey-haired and slightly stooped, Doctor Squire indicated a chair as Damien felt the room’s walls closing in on him. He sat down carefully as beads of sweat broke out on his already scarlet forehead.
‘What can I do for you today, Damien?’ Doctor Squire asked, taking his seat on the other side of the desk.
‘Well … um … I,’ Damien stammered awkwardly. He realised he had no idea what he was going to say. ‘I’m having trouble sleeping,’ he blurted in a tone that suggested pride in remembering why he was there. He knew he should tell the truth, and it wasn’t because he was having trouble sleeping.
‘And how long have you been having trouble sleeping?’ the doctor asked.
Damien looked down at the desk where Doctor Squire was making notes and wondered if he could possibly be that interesting. He hadn’t even said that much – maybe the doctor wasn’t listening and was instead on a mission of his own. Then the pen poised as if waiting for more to add and Doctor Squire looked up: he was listening after all.
‘Um … I’m not sure.’
‘Is there something in particular that’s worrying you?’ Doctor Squire asked, again scrawling on the lined pad.
An image of the rifle in his hand with its cold, sharp muzzle buried in his chin flashed into Damien’s mind. He tried to push it aside: with so much work to do on the farm the last thing he needed was to be packed off to the loony bin. But the doctor looked expectantly at him over his glasses.
‘Nah, not really.’
‘Is it more general then, like feeling that you’re not in control of your life, or that nobody understands you, or perhaps that you don’t even understand yourself – that sort of thing?’
‘I suppose so, something like that.’ Damien could feel his head swimming and the blood beating in his temples. He wasn’t really sure how he felt, so there was no way he could explain things to the doctor. Why was he even bothering? He was just a pathetic whinger – his mother would be furious if she knew he was here.
‘Perhaps you’re feeling depressed?’
‘Well … I … sometimes I feel a bit down … you know … I suppose kind of depressed, maybe.’ The feeling of shame descended on him like a heavy squall.
He tried to focus his attention on what the doctor was saying. For no apparent reason it dawned on him that the two girls behind the reception desk would more than likely have to type up the doctor’s handwritten notes and then it would be official, and eventually common knowledge, that he was pathetic. Oh shit, I knew this was a mistake, he silently moaned.
Told you, you should just get on with it and stop wasting everyone’s time.
‘And can you think of a specific reason why you might be depressed?’ Doctor Squire asked patiently, his glasses now lying on the desk, his bony hands linked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining things. I mean, maybe I’m mistaken,’ Damien blundered. He wondered if he actually knew what ‘depressed’ meant.
‘Perhaps everything just seems a waste of time – no matter how much effort you put in?’
Damien nodded slowly, about to tell him how close to the mark he was when Doctor Squire looked up at the large round clock above the door. He followed the doctor’s gaze – he’d been with the doctor for fifteen minutes but it felt like only seconds.
He accepted a prescription marked with scrawled, indecipherable handwriting and rose from his chair hoping to hell the word Valium was nowhere near his sweaty palm. It was bad enough he could be just like all those manic-depressive women he’d heard about on the telly without having the local pharmacist thinking so as well. Gotta love small country towns, he mused, as he stretched his long, lean frame.
‘I’m giving you a prescription for an antidepressant – it’ll help you sleep. I want you to take one tablet a day, at the same time each day, for six weeks. An explanatory brochure will be enclosed with the medication, but if you have any questions ask the staff at the chemist or make another appointment to see me. Also, we’ve got a psychologist joining the team on Monday – I strongly suggest you book an appointment on your way out.’
Damien suddenly found himself standing outside Doctor Squire’s door. Everyone in the waiting area was watching him over the tops of their battered magazines.
He felt like turning around and shouting, ‘How can you do that – suggest what’s wrong then just palm me off with some pills?’ But instead he lowered his gaze to the speckled brown carpet squares that his mum would describe as serviceable, and hurried to the reception desk.
Damien’s voice was a nervous mumble as he told Cecile that Doctor Squire wanted him to make an appointment with the new psychologist. He didn’t have a clue what purpose it would serve, seeing some kind of shrink that screwed with your head. Plus it wasn’t really necessary, Doctor Squire had done a pretty good job of that all by himself in his allotted fifteen minutes.
Damien tried to shake off his frustration as he handed over his little green card. He was glad Medicare was picking up the tab because he had no idea what had just gone on and whether it had helped or not.
Chapter Two
After stopping a few times to consult the hand-drawn map, Jacqueline finally turned into the narrow driveway, leaving the car idling while she looked at her new home. The cottage seemed completely different from the day, just over a month ago, when Doctor Squire had shown her around and then enquired if it was to her liking. Was it ever, she’d wanted to squeal with delight, but had restrained herself sufficiently to politely murmur, ‘It looks great, thanks.’
Back then it had just looked like a humble double-fronted cottage. But now that it really was hers – well, only as a tenant – she noticed how the white gloss weatherboard glowed in the fading light and how beautifully the deep shade of grey-mauve highlighted the fretwork, door and window frames. Jacqueline sighed as she scanned the small, immaculate front garden, as if seeing it for the first time. Rosebushes with masses of flowers at varying stages of display, and in a variety of colours, lined the wall under the large lounge room window and another row under the main bedroom window. A small silver birch grew from a circular concrete border in the centre of the freshly mown lawn. Bright annuals lined both sides of the picket fence that was painted in a hue somewhere between the colour of the walls and timberwork. She sighed again contentedly; it was obvious she would have to develop a green thumb.
With these thoughts she inched the car into the open carport, applied the handbrake and turned off the engine. At the boot she turned to take a sweeping view of her new neighbours’ houses and front gardens. What she saw reminded her of fairy story illustrations of pristine pockets of oasis among barren expanses of nothing earth; such a contrast to the vast stretches of bluish grey-green saltbush and then paddock after paddock of pale yellow stalks left over from harvested crops.
Each house’s manicured lawn stretched out to the kerb and was neatly edged along a concrete driveway. Jacqueline smiled as she thought about how right and homely the street felt as she leant in to pull the box of ‘necessities’ her mother had insisted she take, accompanied with the words, ‘You’ll thank me when you find shops out there aren’t open on weekends’. After trying to politely decline the generous offer – she couldn’t explain why she didn’t want the box containing many of her favourite treats – she’d finally given in. It was easier than wasting her breath batting for a town she didn’t even know.
Her legs were stiff after five-plus hours on the road. The drive had been a lot longer than she’d anticipated when consulting the map, thrown somewhat by the fact it was only a fifty-minute flight by light aircraft. Despite its length and her inexperience with driving such distances, it hadn’t been all that bad.
She’d spent the first hour or so thinking about how different she was from her parents. Just because they wanted to live in the same house for forty years didn’t mean she would settle for the same. Changing working environments regularly meant there was less chance of becoming a worka
holic old bore like her father. Yes, she’d boldly told herself, taking a risk definitely showed more spine than becoming too settled.
After thinking about her new office – very drab from what she could remember – and picturing where she would arrange her meagre possessions, Jacqueline pondered what problems and personalities her first patients would have. She’d shuddered involuntarily, thinking about Jacob and how she hadn’t had the heart to tell her parents the truth about why she was moving so far away. She wondered if he’d ever cause them trouble. Hopefully there were too many Havelocks in the phone book, and he didn’t know her father was a vet. She tried to slow her pounding heart by telling herself how far away from him she’d be living. Scanning both AM and FM radio frequencies, she’d settled on a station playing hits from the eighties and, ignoring the increasing static, had turned the volume up.
The saltbush plains stretched for miles all around and without another car in sight, Jacqueline had begun to feel isolated and melancholy. She’d read that the rate of suicide was highest in young men living in rural and remote areas. No wonder, she’d thought wistfully; the environment was so grey, brown and stunted. Refusing to accept any internal suggestion that she was having second thoughts, she’d put on a CD and sang loudly while her eyes focused on the endless white lines dividing the dark bitumen road.
Now that she’d finally arrived she felt better – excited and eager to get stuck into making herself at home. She smiled as she saw a bunch of red, white, yellow and lilac roses poking out of a large wicker basket sitting on the front step. Sticky-taped to the handle was a violet envelope with her name written in large flowing script.
She put the box of her mother’s goodies down, opened the envelope and scanned the small sheet of thick, matching notepaper. At the top was the date and time of six-thirty. She checked her watch – damn, she’d only missed Doctor and Mrs Squire by half an hour. When she’d told them she’d meet them to collect the keys, she’d assumed she would arrive hours earlier.
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