Galloway looked relieved. Not surprising; he’d probably never had to deal with a woman before.
She had thought she might be nervous, but was not. Far from it; she relished the challenge. Perhaps Garth is not the only one to have underestimated me, she thought.
‘If it’s all right with you, Doug, I thought we could have a chat while we’re waiting? If that’s agreeable? To establish the guidelines?’
‘We can always talk.’ A Hibernian smile. ‘Talk’s free, ye ken.’
‘So it is,’ Bella said. ‘I was wondering what you felt would be a realistic price for the equipment?’
‘Ye’ll find the value set out in the latest balance sheet. If you’re no’ familiar with accounts, perhaps I can explain the figures –’
Bella chuckled: all mates together. ‘Those are tax figures, are they not? I was thinking of their true value.’
‘That is their true value to me,’ he said.
‘But not to us,’ Bella said.
‘Which is?’
Such an apologetic smile! She named a price. Diffidently.
‘Ridiculous!’ he said.
‘Well, of course,’ she said. ‘Naturally, if he thinks my price is too low, my husband may over-rule me.’
‘Nae doot,’ Galloway said.
‘Or if he thinks it’s too high.’
‘Too high?’ A stuck pig could not have screamed more shrilly.
‘The market value depends on the market, does it not? And for the moment we are your only market.’
‘I could never accept such a figure,’ Doug said.
‘What figure might you accept? Theoretically speaking?’
‘The figures are in the balance sheet.’
‘Oh dear.’ Bella stood up. ‘If I hurry, I may be able to catch Garth before he leaves the vet, save him having to traipse up here.’
‘Or mebbe a little lower,’ Doug Galloway said.
‘I suppose we might be able to squeeze another thousand,’ Bella said. ‘Though I don’t know what Garth will say. He’s not that keen, you see.’
‘Make it fifteen hundred.’
Such an apologetic smile! ‘I daren’t go one penny over twelve fifty. My husband, you see…’
‘Then there’s the goodwill,’ Galloway said.
‘I was thinking perhaps an annuity?’
By the time Garth arrived, twenty minutes later, there was nothing for him to do except say yes. Naturally he would not do that.
‘It’s a matter of principle, you see,’ he told Doug Galloway. ‘Mate, I think you’ll have to shave your price on the equipment. By say two fifty?’
Bella congratulated him all the way home.
‘I’m feeling pretty smug about it myself,’ he confessed.
Such an admiring smile! ‘A masterstroke! Two fifty off the price? I would never have dared suggest it,’ she said.
‘It takes a man,’ Garth said.
In October, a month after they had finalised the deal on the meatworks Garth came into the house one morning and found Bella standing stark-naked in the bedroom and examining herself in the mirror.
‘What the hell you playin’ at?’
She grabbed her shirt and put it on.
‘Just looking.’
Garth had become philosophical about his wife’s crazy ways. He put his hands on her shoulders.
‘Take it off, then. Let’s all have a look.’
‘In the middle of the day? Oh no, Garth, I couldn’t do that.’
‘You weren’t so particular once.’
He tried to remove the shirt but she resisted him, protesting loudly until at last he gave up. He stared at her as she buttoned the shirt, hiding her nakedness.
‘I’ve never known you prudish before,’ he said.
‘I’m not! Truly I’m not!’
‘Could’ve fooled me,’ said Garth.
‘It’s just that –’
‘What?’
‘I suppose I’m just not in the mood,’ she said lamely.
‘And my mood has nothing to do with it?’
But smiled as he said it, so Bella saw that it was all right. Emboldened, she laughed, too.
‘Nothing to do with it at all!’ she said.
‘I am too easily bullied,’ he said sadly.
She laughed again, in part at the idea of anyone bullying her husband, but also because inside she was overflowing with joy.
She decided not to tell him yet. He might be the sort to expect her to sit around all day doing nothing, and she couldn’t bear the thought of that. But there was another and more important reason. Events after Colin’s death had brought home to her the reality of her love for her husband, but it was too soon for her to have grown into full acceptance of it. She wondered sometimes whether his feelings for her were as strong. With Garth, not a man to parade his emotions, it was hard to tell. How would he react to his wife waddling round, blowing out like a barrage balloon, for the best part of a year?
Plenty wouldn’t like it, she thought. And Garth, praise be, was a lusty man. Perhaps he would think the baby an intrusion, so soon after Colin’s death. Or welcome it, for the same reason.
No, she thought, I’ll not tell him. Not yet. But supposed she ought to think of some excuse to get into Wyndham, to see the doctor.
That night, as though to make up for her reluctance that morning, she sent the unspoken signals common where there is true affection between wife and husband and he responded, taking off her clothes with a queer, stilted gallantry so unlike his normal ways, while she waited unmoving, closed eyes and thundering heart, until at last the final garment fell to the floor and she embraced him with a ferocity that he had not known in her for several months.
The war in Europe ended in May 1945. Bella was delighted – who wouldn’t be? – but had more immediate concerns. Her baby was due on the ninth of June, or so said Doctor Page at the Wyndham hospital. Garth had acquired a second-hand truck and their petrol ration would just about get them there so, on the first of the month, Bella found herself bouncing along the deeply rutted track into town where she would stay until the baby was born.
They had considered alternatives.
Doctor Page, an enthusiast for new techniques, had mentioned induction, a new and so far seldom-tried procedure. Garth had vetoed it; no one was going to use his wife as a guinea pig to check
out untested theories.
Bella favoured having the baby at home.
Garth stared. ‘You crazy?’
‘Old Maisie will take care of me.’
‘She’s not a midwife!’
‘She’s had nine of her own. She knows what to do.’
‘She might not be willing.’
‘She is. She told me so.’
During the years since her arrival at Miranda Downs Bella, step by cautious step, had grown close to Maisie and several of the other women. In that time they had travelled from a state of mutual suspicion through a period of appraisal to the final stage, the acceptance of the good faith of each other.
‘First time any white woman want to study our ways,’ Maisie had said.
‘You are of the land,’ Bella had told her. ‘As one day I hope I shall be also. I am glad to be taught what I am permitted to know.’
When acceptance came it did so with a rush. She sat with them as they laughed with her and joked. She often did not understand the detail of what they were saying but the sense of welcome and of being a part of the whole was unmistakable and suffused her spirit with light.
The high point came when Maisie invited Bella to observe the ceremonial greeting of the ochre-painted young men, the marlulu, when they returned from their travels during the first and public stage of their initiation process.
‘It is permitted?’
‘The greeting stage, yes. The boys have been to gather a mob to help in the initiation. Now they come back to say farewell to the grieving families, the karnku. This all can see. But afterwards boys go away to private place to learn secrets.
No woman permitted there.’
So Bella watched as the young men returned, ochre-painted, each with a wooden club in hand. She saw how the initiates sat briefly in the laps of those to whom they were saying farewell and what might have been ridiculous became a moment of reverence and mutual respect. With every moment Bella felt more and more strongly that she was indeed standing with one foot in the unknown. This was mystery and at the same time awareness. Awareness of the earth, the sacred earth, and of the people of the earth. It was a privilege to be there and to be instructed in a way of living that had been old when the Pharaohs ruled in Egypt.
It was an experience that united Bella not only with the people of the ceremony but with the land itself, and she knew she had been changed thereby. She bent and gathered dust that she rubbed into the palm of her hand. This she had come to late but it was part of her now as she was part of it. She and the land had become one. Maisie was watching her and Bella saw that she understood how the ceremony had affirmed her place in Miranda Downs, that this country was no longer merely the place where Bella lived but had become, now and forever, her home.
‘Of course Maisie can handle it,’ Bella said.
But Garth was not persuaded. ‘And if anything goes wrong?’
‘There’s the Flying Doctor Service.’
Garth would not hear of it. He was not going to hazard the lives of his wife and unborn child to flatter the ego of an old Aboriginal woman, no matter how many kids she claimed to have had. The hospital it was. For once Bella let him over-rule her.
‘Now we’ve got the road, it’s a pity not to use it,’ Garth said. ‘I’ll tell you something else. Once petrol rationing ends, we’ll be trucking the cattle to the meatworks instead of driving them. Think of the time that’ll save.’
Even with Bella ready to pop, work and cattle were never far from Garth’s mind.
Bella was feeling like a load of cattle herself by the time they reached town. Granted the state of the track, it was a mercy they had gone in when they did.
‘Any later,’ Bella said, ‘I’d probably have dropped it on your feet.’
As it was, she had to wait. And wait.
The ninth came. The tenth. The eleventh.
Garth, back at Miranda Downs, was on the wireless and getting more frantic by the minute.
‘What’s going on?’
His voice was barely audible through the static.
‘Not a lot,’ Bella told him.
‘How’re you feeling, Duchess?’
‘Like an elephant.’
‘I’m beginning to think that Doc Page don’t know what he’s on about.’
Bella smiled apologetically at the doctor, who was listening from the other side of the table.
‘He knows exactly what he’s on about.’
‘And when she’s had it,’ said the doctor, just to show Garth he had overheard his last remark, ‘I’ll patch her up as good as new, no worries.’
‘Make sure you do. And you,’ Garth said, presumably to Bella, ‘look after my boy, you hear?’
The static took over.
It began that night.
To start with it was nothing but the hours passed and the pain grew worse.
You will not cry out, Bella told herself. You will not make a fuss. But in time she couldn’t manage it.
There was a nurse, and the doctor. And the pain, circling her and periodically…
‘Oh,’ Bella gasped. ‘Oh dear God…’
‘There’s my brave girl,’ said the nurse.
Bella did not feel in the least brave. She felt helpless, a prisoner of a body whose endless contractions she should somehow control but could not. ‘Is this going on forever?’ she cried.
‘There’s my brave girl,’ said the nurse.
The nurse’s round, red face came and went, came and went. The pain savaged Bella, eased, only to savage her again. Each spasm was worse than the last. Excruciating pain owned a world in which Bella was alone.
The nurse’s face peered down at her. She was smiling, caring, concerned. Yet could not know what I am feeling, Bella thought.
She was crying out now, no longer caring if the birth killed her as long as it was over. As long as there could be an end to pain.
Until at last the nurse began to move with greater purpose, grasping Bella’s sweating hands, and Bella, panting, knew things must be coming to a head. Jaw set, teeth locked, every atom of her being combined to expel this thing that was waiting, poised. Because everything was flowing at last, and with a supreme effort she felt herself victorious, overcoming both pain and herself as the child slipped away from her.
Look after my boy. You hear?
That had been Garth’s last message. Well, Bella thought some hours later, cradling the new arrival with wonder and apprehension, you can’t win them all. Because the baby was a girl.
She had a round face, wispy brown hair and her unfocused eyes were the palest blue. She looked like no one Bella knew; no doubt that would change as she grew older.
She named her Peace. It seemed appropriate, with the war over at last. Who could say what real peace she would know in her life? Not too much, Bella hoped. She wanted no more fighting and killing – who did? – but there would be challenges in the baby’s life, as there were in everyone’s, and she must be up to handling them. Bella’s hope was that Peace would have the guts to fight for what she wanted. To fight and win, as Bella had done. As she planned to do all her life.
‘Life is a great adventure,’ Bella told her daughter, ‘and we have a lot of living to do.’
Her body was still sore but she felt exhilaration as she looked down at the baby’s head peeping out from the shawl in which the nurse had swathed her. She was sure there would be many problems ahead but did not care; she welcomed them with open arms.
‘We shall fight them together,’ she told Peace. ‘We shall fight and we shall win. Because life is fighting.’
Yes, she thought, to fight and win… How could it be anything else, if fulfilment were to be found?
The baby’s full name was Peace Jenny Miranda, after her two grand mothers. Peace Jenny Miranda Tucker.
‘A big name for such a little creature,’ Bella said.
But it was clear the baby would not be little for long; already she was growing: sideways as well as upwards.
‘A bit older, she’ll be quite sturdy,’ Garth said.
‘Not too sturdy, let’s hope,’ Bella said.
Peace had the voice to go with it, too: piercing, endlessly demanding. The voice of a fighter, Bella thought. One who would never know she was beaten. She told herself she was pleased although there were nights when, sleepless, she could barely endure the aggressive way the brat tugged at her already sore nipples.
Fortunately that time soon passed; Bella hoped she had her share of maternal fondness but, anxious to get out and about once more, had no desire to continue the messy and uncomfortable business of breastfeeding a moment longer than she must. Uncomfortable and restricting: because, let’s face it, the baby was a tie: although she was careful to keep such thoughts to herself, for fear of upsetting her husband.
Garth treated the child with a sense of wonder that touched Bella’s heart, but – like most men – didn’t know how to handle her.
‘It’s easy,’ Bella told him. ‘You hold her like this. See?’
Yet somehow Peace always ended up hanging upside down in Garth’s awkward arms.
‘You’re hopeless,’ she told him, but spoke affectionately; at least he’d been willing to have a go.
Certainly he was fond of the child, which was what mattered. If he was disappointed that Peace was a girl he showed no sign of it. In any case, he soon had cause for renewed hope.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Bella said. ‘Nothing for five years, then two, one right behind the other.’
Because, sure enough, she was pregnant again. She was pleased, of course she was, but exasperated, too.
‘It is so restricting,’ she
told Mitch the bull terrier. ‘No sooner over it than the wretched business starts all over again.’
Mitch was a handy confidant; she could say nothing to Garth, who was over the moon and assumed she was, too.
‘This time I shall have my baby at home,’ she decided.
A week later Garth went for a ride.
‘Where are you going?’ Bella asked him.
‘Nowhere in particular.’
‘Don’t be late. I’ve got barramundi for tea.’
She had been into Wyndham that morning. One of the blessings of the new road was this ability to drive into town when she had enough petrol and bring back fresh food, even saltwater fish, which would have been an unimaginable luxury in the old days.
She watched him spur away past the creek and into the scrub. He was riding faster than was safe in that country but he was the best rider Bella had ever known so his speed didn’t worry her. Other considerations did. He had told her he was getting old. He was forty-five, hardly ancient in physical terms, but she knew that age was as much in the mind as anywhere else. Garth’s father had died young and she thought he was capable of doing something crazy, just to prove he could still do it. Like riding off at sunset, knowing he would have to come home in the dark.
‘Men,’ she told the advancing shadows. ‘Why do they always have to prove how tough they are?’
She heard a full-throated bellow from the bedroom. Peace was awake: hungry as always; demanding attention as always. At six months she was the spitting image of Garth, in attitude if not in
looks.
‘Two tyrants in one house,’ Bella said. ‘Heaven help me.’
Her nipples throbbed. They knew all about it.
An hour later Garth was still not back.
Bugs were banging against the outside of the windows as Bella went to the screen door and looked out. It was pitch dark, the bush rowdy with the sawing of cicadas. A half moon shone intermittently between the breeze-shivered leaves but under the trees its light would be almost non-existent. What was keeping him?
She went back into the kitchen. The fish was ready, the stove at just the right temperature, but the barramundi was delicate; cook it too soon and it would be like leather.
Dust of the Land Page 22