June Meyers followed so closely behind Mary that Jacqueline suspected a conspiracy, further enhanced by her described complaint of loneliness. June prattled on about no matter how many interests and activities she undertook, she always had that twang of loneliness hanging over her, like she was waiting for her Ted to come back from the war when deep down she knew he never would.
Jacqueline smiled inwardly as she marvelled at the lack of ingenuity between the two women’s stories followed by an enquiry into her life. The only difference between them was that June’s questions focused on finding out about her parents and where she’d grown up.
With each of the women Jacqueline was politely evasive, all the time mindful of what she was disclosing and quickly processing what it would mean for the whole town to know such things. Which they would just as soon as June and Mary spread their seeds of knowledge, like pollen in the wind, from the butcher’s to the post office. No, she was not married. No, she’d never been married. She didn’t currently have a boyfriend, although yes, she did one day hope to marry and have children. No, she didn’t have any siblings. Her father ran a very busy veterinary practice on the outskirts of Adelaide and her mother was a stay-at-home wife. She had grown up in Hyde Park, Adelaide, where her family still lived. She was contracted to work in Wattle Creek for twelve months and she’d decide after that whether to stay on or not. Previously she had worked in Adelaide’s Yatala Prison and yes, she’d had to deal with some pretty rough individuals. Yes, so far, Wattle Creek was treating her very well.
So this is what country life is really about, she mused, as she closed the door behind June after acknowledging the, ‘Drop in for a cuppa anytime, you’ve got my address’. Oh well, better get used to it, she thought, gathering up her handbag to escape for some fresh air.
Approaching the hardware store, she knew the town’s tongues were wagging with June’s and Mary’s gems of information. Unlike the day before, when most people had eyed her suspiciously and the occasional older man had dipped his Akubra in greeting, everyone she passed now stopped to welcome her or offer invitations to join clubs or to have her over for dinner one evening. Jacqueline felt chuffed, but at the same time a little embarrassed – she was used to enjoying relative anonymity.
Jacqueline was walking back down the central aisle towards the cash register, clutching an armful of paint brochures, when she noticed Damien McAllister walking slowly towards her in his long loping stride, head down and eyes focused on the worn, grey-painted concrete floor. As he passed she brightly called, ‘Hello, Damien.’
He mumbled a hasty reply without breaking stride or looking up.
‘See you next week,’ she called to his back, and noticed him stiffen and break stride before continuing on. The response was so subtle she wondered if she’d imagined it. She really hoped he’d turn up for his next appointment.
Jacqueline was still staring after him and only realised how perplexed her expression must have appeared when the plump, jolly-looking women behind the counter spoke.
‘Don’t worry luv, that’s just him. After a while you stop taking it personally. Eh, you must be the new shrink?’
‘Psychologist, actually. There’s a big difference,’ Jacqueline corrected.
The woman puckered her lips then shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’m Doris and pleased to meet you,’ she said, thrusting a hand over the counter. Loose folds of skin and flab rippled under her floral nylon shirt that was stretched tight trying to cover everything. Her eyes were bright and her smile large and warm. Jacqueline returned the handshake with a smile.
‘Jacqueline Havelock,’ she said brightly.
‘I see you’re thinking of doing a bit of painting,’ Doris said, nodding at the bundle of pamphlets under Jacqueline’s arm. Jacqueline blushed slightly, suddenly unsure if she was meant to be taking all the brochures.
‘Have to decide on a colour scheme yet, then apparently apply to the Council for approval. All a little way off, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah don’t you worry about the Council, luv,’ Doris said knowingly. ‘My Donald’s the mayor. I’ll have a quiet word,’ she said, tapping her nose and grinning conspiringly.
‘That’d be great, thanks,’ Jacqueline said, but at the same time wondered if she ought to be making such deals. For all she knew, this wasn’t how things were done in the country.
‘Might even manage to get a couple of free cans of paint out of the cheapskate that runs this place – my cousin. Leave it to me,’ Doris said.
‘So,’ Doris began again, suddenly speaking in a low, serious tone, ‘I know it’s confidential and all that but I’m assuming you’ve had Damien in?’
Jacqueline raised her eyebrows in surprise.
‘Just that you seemed to know him, that’s all,’ Doris said quickly. ‘As I said, don’t take it personally,’ she continued. ‘Such a shame,’ she added absently. ‘Now, where was I? Oh yes. You know, we might be able to rope in the Apex to provide some labour for your little project, too.’
‘Mm,’ Jacqueline responded absently. ‘Doris, why did you say it was a shame about Damien? Not that I want to pry,’ she added quickly.
Doris waved a dismissive arm, the loose skin taking a moment to catch up. ‘Everything’s common knowledge around here. Gives you the shits sometimes, but what can you do? Anyway, must be coming up nine years now,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Poor sod, lost his father, just when a boy needs his dad the most. And his mother, well she was too busy being, I don’t know, stoic. That’s it, stoic. Not that you can hold that against her. We all handle things in our own way.’
‘What happened?’ Jacqueline asked quietly. But just as she spoke a couple of people came up to the counter next to her, their carry baskets brimming. Suddenly Doris was the model of efficiency, ringing up bolts, screws and various other items of hardware. Jacqueline, realising the opportunity had passed, quietly said goodbye and hurried out.
Back in her office, she put the brochures on the top of the filing cabinet and slumped into her chair. ‘Damn,’ she muttered, ‘so close and yet so far.’
She decided to see if Louise or Cecile knew anything more about Damien’s family history, but when she poked her head out the door and saw three patients waiting for service at the counter and a full waiting room, she returned to her desk. Reminding herself to ask them later, she retrieved her paint brochures and spread them across the entire surface of the desk.
Chapter Five
Damien breathed a big sigh of relief once he’d left the hardware store. Thank God the shrink hadn’t asked him how he was going with the ‘homework’. He’d chucked her bits of paper on the stack of bills and other crap at the end of the dining-room table when he’d got home yesterday and hadn’t looked at them again. He’d spent the twenty-five minute drive after the appointment wondering how it could have possibly done him any good and getting over being pissed off with himself for being so gutless and agreeing to another appointment. After that, he hadn’t given her another thought. Until now.
Loaded up with hardware he wandered across the street to the ute, all the time looking about pretending to check for cars but in reality making sure the shrink wasn’t following him. Damien thought that he probably looked pretty dopey throwing his head left and right, because everyone in the place knew a car passed down the main street on average about every twenty seconds, which was pretty poor odds for getting run over in anyone’s book. Even the fly situation wasn’t enough to warrant such furious head throwing. But, mission accomplished, there was no sign of the woman.
He passed the ‘Farewell, call again’ sign at the end of town and felt dread, a kind of a dull ache deep down in his stomach. He’d never sussed out what it was about, but it had got worse and more frequent in the past few years. Damien thought it could have a hundred causes; there was nothing particularly good about his life. It was like that. Living and working alone allowed too much time for thinking.
Jesus, Damien thought, imagine if you were homosexual and were stupid e
nough to ‘come out’, or whatever they called it, in a town like Wattle Creek. You’d be better off ‘staying in’, because you’d probably be run out of town. Even with everything being so called ‘politically correct’ there were ways and means – like shopkeepers refusing to serve you, for one. He’d seen that happen before.
He remembered the story about a young bloke who got so legless drunk he climbed into another bloke’s swag. The next night he was taken out into the bush, stripped and left starkers to find his own way home. Suddenly, after being almost bottom of his class throughout school, the kid’s grades had improved enough for him to go off to uni in the city, never to be seen in town again.
Damien thought the fear of homosexuality probably said a lot about the high rate of drink driving, since driving home pissed was always a damn sight more manly than curling up somewhere you’d be vulnerable to all sorts of pranks. Anyway, there was always something that had to be done in the morning on the farm, regardless of how crap you felt. Stock to feed, dogs to let out, water pipes to fix, rocks and stumps to pick. One thing city people and pollies didn’t think about was how else would people out bush get home? There were no cabs or public transport. People spread over hundreds of miles. Now if they’d invent an autopilot system for cars we’d be set. Food for thought, he silently concluded.
Damien pulled the ute into the carport and went inside to get changed, ready for the exhausting task of moving over four hundred bales of hay from the paddock and stacking them in the shed. Nothing but backbreaking lifting and thighs looking like pincushions from endless pricks from wheat stalks.
He thought hay carting was maybe one of the shittiest jobs in farming, a thousand times worse when you didn’t have any help. He knew he could probably get his mum out but didn’t like to since all she’d do was nag him and tell him he was doing it all wrong. And anyway, she had enough to deal with looking after her husband, Geoff, an almost has-been professional shearer. She always seemed to be busy washing greasy clothes and cooking his food while he sat around sharpening combs and cutters and oiling his handpiece.
The only good thing Damien could see with being a shearer were the regular hours and weekends off, when you were lucky enough to be working in your home district. To him the drawbacks far outweighed any luxury of keeping regular hours, like being crippled with a stuffed back at sixty and dealing with dumb sheep every day of your life. The pay was pretty ordinary too, at around two hundred and fifty dollars for a hundred sheep. It was a known fact that farmers wanted gun shearers to get the sheep through quickly because shearing was a pain in the arse for everyone.
Damien had never been able to see what his mum saw in Geoff. He’d seen her treated like shit on a regular basis. There’d been heaps of times he’d nearly got up and snotted Geoff for being a prick to her. But since she never complained there was nothing he could really do. Violence would just upset her more.
The temperature was around thirty-five degrees and Damien was faced with spending all afternoon heaving hay bales onto and then off the ute and trailer. After unloading and re-stacking the first load in the shed, he was heading back to the paddock to start the whole process over again, lost in his thoughts.
He returned to find a mob of sheep filing through the gate and into the paddock, the first few ewes pulling at his perfect bales like they’d been starved for a month. The munching beasts looked up and dared him to stop them. It was like they knew he was powerless with the trailer attached and Bob and Cara back at the house.
But Damien chased them with the ute anyway, and while his roaring around dodging the remaining three hundred or so bales didn’t get rid of them it sure as hell made him feel better. After digging four-wheel drifties into the sandy stubbled ground, he finally got back to his hay carting. He ignored the thick, dry heat and dust sticking to the beads of sweat on his face as he quickly tried to get as many bales moved as possible before they were shredded. Through the haze of exhaustion and dehydration, all he could think was how much he hated sheep.
It was just on dark when he finally got inside after restacking the last load. He’d shut the sheep in the paddock empty of the hay they’d lusted over. He was pleased to have finally put one over them. Plonking his baked beans and toast on the table he caught sight of the shrink woman’s journal pages glaring up at him like a beacon from the untidy pile of papers.
In Tuesday afternoon’s section, in the column marked ‘How do you feel?’, he found himself scrawling REALLY FUCKING ANGRY in thick, angry blue biro. One word went in the ‘Reasons’ column: SHEEP. Damien was still so pissed off he thought he could go out and blow a couple away with the shotgun if he wasn’t so damn rooted.
Sitting down to his Weet-Bix breakfast he again found the journal staring up at him. He added ‘tired and grumpy’ and ‘dogs howling all night’. There must have been a fox or feral cat lurking about. He shoved the pages roughly into the middle of the pile out of sight.
Bleary-eyed he stared unfocused out the window while he shovelled his soggy-cardboard breakfast. Jesus bloody Christ, he thought, as he noticed the marker on the tank on the hill showing the water level was low. He needed this like a fucking hole in the head. The temperature was going to be over thirty-five by midday so he knew he had to sort it out fast. As painful as the sheep were, they were still an asset.
He pushed his bowl aside. Four kilometres of pipe would have to be checked, and because the leak was so recent there wouldn’t be any telltale signs of growth. Either there was water pissing out somewhere like a fountain or he was looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Damien sighed. His experience with luck suggested the latter, which meant he had an eight-kilometre walk ahead of him – four one way and four back to collect the ute. The task was yet another thing made harder with being alone, and for the umpteenth time he wished he had someone to help.
An hour and a half later he found it. Just his luck; the small leak was right at the end of the line. If only he’d started that end instead. ‘Jeez I hate Murphy and his bloody laws,’ he groaned. Damien put a large rock next to the pipe as a marker and started the trek back to the ute. It seemed to take twice as long. Along the way he realised he’d forgotten his water bottle and felt a complete idiot.
Knowing how long it would be before he could have a drink made the walk a thousand times worse. The sun was magnified by the ice blue of the surrounding sky and reflected back into Damien’s face from the sandy track he trudged along. There wasn’t even the slightest breeze to tease his sodden back. Why the fuck did he bother with all this?
But what else would he do? Anyway, it was what the sons of farmers did.
The dogs were off roaring across the paddock chasing a fox or rabbit or something, barking and yelping in gulps of excitement. Watching them made his throat ache so desperately for liquid he looked back to the wheel track he followed and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
To take his mind off his overwhelming thirst he began trying to name as many of the chemicals that had become such an important tool in farming as he could. He wondered if it was all a conspiracy; whether weeds were introduced onto properties by chemical companies so they could sell expensive products to deal with the problem. And of course the people at the Department of Ag were all in on it, too. Their part was to convince the dumb farmers that the weeds were unquestionably detrimental to their livelihood and must be eradicated.
Finally Damien reached the ute and was desperately slurping at the weak lemon cordial from his battered polystyrene-covered water bottle. He couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough to leave it on the seat where it had been baking in the sun streaming through the windscreen. It was almost beyond lukewarm but was still wet so he was grateful. He felt completely stuffed, but there was still the matter of a leaky pipe to fix.
Unloading the tools from the back of the ute, Damien found himself feeling almost thankful for the run-down state the farm was in when he took over. If his dad could have afforded PVC instead of poly, he woul
dn’t be so efficient at fixing leaks. It was an exercise in positive thinking, which his mum was always telling him to do, but he knew it did little to no good. And it was a crock coming from her. She was the one who always added ‘but’ to any sentence threatening to be too positive.
Janelle, his only ever long-term girlfriend – if six months could be called long-term – had first pointed it out. She had really long hair that smelt like sweet fresh apples. They were both eighteen and Damien was ashamed to admit now he was only really interested in putting a few notches in his headboard. At the time he thought she felt the same.
They went to the footy, had tea at the pub, played a few games of pool, got drunk together and would go park in the Lion’s Memorial Gardens to sober up. And always in her car, because it had a bench seat in front where his had buckets. Damien remembered how she used to hang her head out the window staring at the stars and raving about travelling the world for a year before going off to uni. He never thought she was that serious about it until the day she came out to the farm to say goodbye. She asked him to go with her, but he thought she was joking. After she left Damien realised what an idiot he’d been, but had been too gutless to track her down and tell her so.
Janelle and his dad had got on like a house on fire. He thought it was probably because they could both sort of talk to animals. He didn’t think she really liked his mum that much. Janelle said it was just that she didn’t like the way his mum was so negative all the time. ‘Like how?’ Damien had asked, not having a clue what Janelle was on about. ‘By saying something positive and then adding a bit of negativity at the end,’ she’d explained. ‘Qualifying everything.’
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