The House on the Hill

by Susan Duncan

  On the way back to our table, I grabbed a bourbon and cola from the fridge, my mineral water, a couple of menus. ‘Here you go. The fresh prawns are good. The pasta is terrific. Have a look. Tell me what you want and I’ll go and order.’

  She studied the menu intently. ‘Of course, I’m still seeing double.’

  ‘No, you aren’t.’

  She snapped: ‘How would you know?’

  ‘So, prawns, is it?’

  ‘No. I’ll have the seafood pizza.’

  ‘The one with or without chilli?’

  She picked up the menu: ‘The Waterfront Special.’

  ‘Your eyes are better than mine,’ I muttered.

  After a short while, the southerly picked up. Umbrellas flapped. The young women giggled and hugged themselves. The flamboyant Italian waiter fetched coloured wraps to tuck around their shoulders, making a huge fuss. My mother watched with envy in her eyes.

  ‘Are you cold?’ she asked me.

  ‘Nope.’

  She gave a shiver, the kind she once would have said meant someone had walked over your grave. Unkindly, I let her wait another thirty seconds.

  ‘Would you like a blanket?’ She brightened. ‘Not sure how you can be cold when you’re practically sitting on top of that heater, but … I’ll get you one.’ I went to stand up.

  ‘Why don’t you ask the waiter? It’s his job.’

  ‘He’s busy.’ Her face fell into loose folds of disappointment. I felt spiteful, silly, petty, so I dropped back into my seat.

  ‘A blanket, Mauro, please, for my mother,’ I called when he whizzed past.

  ‘Si, si, bella, bella mama. I get one right now. Black for you. Is your colour, no? Not the red. Is too bright for such beautiful skin.’ I could almost hear her purring.

  Our food appeared via Mauro. ‘Mario, like the singer,’ my mother said, trying to hold his attention.

  ‘Mauro, Mauro,’ he responded emphatically.

  ‘Yes, Mario, Mario Lanza – but you’re much too young to know about him.’

  ‘Mauro!’ he said, throwing up his hands. ‘But for you, I am Mario. Bella mama.’

  When lunch was over, I drove her back to the Village and dropped her at reception with relief. Duty done for another week. I’d once thought her daily 7 am phone calls, which went on well into my forties, were wearing, even outrageous. Our meals together, though, were even more excruciating as we danced around the past, unwilling to give it weight. We had nothing at all to say to each other. I’m not sure we ever did. I searched through memory. We’d once laughed a lot. But everything my mother tried to teach me – her advice for life – was based on fear. If you kiss a boy, he will think you’re easy. If you’re late for work, you’ll be fired. If you aim low, you will live low. If you get run over by a bus, be sure you’re wearing clean underwear. Almost certainly unfairly, I remembered little else.

  On another car picnic, I asked her, ‘Did your sisters ever guess anything was … strange about the way you were given special privileges?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Dad never took risks.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, you know. You were a child. He was evil. Skilled paedophiles groom children. You didn’t stand a chance.’

  She closed her eyes, rested her head on the back of the car seat. ‘All so long ago. But you never forget.’

  ‘No.’ I cleared the car of rubbish. ‘We’re heading back to Benbulla tomorrow. Be gone a couple of weeks at least.’

  ‘You needn’t worry about me. I’m well looked after.’

  ‘Does it ever haunt you, what happened?’ I asked, curious but no longer angry.

  ‘Not really. What he did to you, that’s hard to accept.’

  ‘If I know anything about you at all, Esther, you will learn to live with it,’ I said, unkindly.

  ‘’Course I will,’ she replied firmly. ‘You can’t let tragedies bring you down. You’ve got to get on with life.’ And her casual dismissal turned my new, very fragile feelings of compassion and forgiveness to dust. Here she was, bent over, sinking, and still unable to look beyond her own best interests. Our bond is always going to be like quicksand, I thought.

  I drove her back to the Village in bitter silence. I couldn’t wait to return to Benbulla. To be well away from her.

  As construction continued, we lived almost permanently at the farm. Some days, progress sped along. But then weeks would go by without seeing much change. ‘The devil is in the detail,’ one architect friend told me when I grumbled. ‘God is in the detail,’ another said. Whatever deity ruled, it added up to more expense.

  Wherever possible we chose frugality over excess, simplifying trickily designed cupboards, opting for melamine in the dressing room instead of timber. ‘Could save a few hundred bucks on the interior doors,’ Terry said at one stage. ‘Use hollow instead of solid ones.’ We checked the stock at Bunnings. Too flimsy. Too light. You’d hear a whisper through them. The extra dollars might hurt in the immediate moment, but this detail out of kilter would irritate forever. And this house was meant to be where we played out the endgame. Do it right, do it once.

  There were big moments: The day Jarrod and his team installed the massive double-glazed windows and doors. The timber so heavy even the sliding screens took the strength of four men to raise into place. The day the bathroom was completed. We slid open every panel and stood fully clothed in the shower to test the effect. Inside or outside? It gave a wondrous feeling of both. The day Bob’s painstakingly designed, two-way fireplace was installed. While it would warm the house in winter, it would also heat water for household use and the underfloor heating. The day the scaffolding came down. We wandered up and down hills to judge the impact of those lean, sharp lines on a rolling landscape. Strong but not bulky, we decided. We’d trusted the right people. The day the builders cleaned the site of debris. It was the clearest indication of all that at any moment the team we had come to know, whose company we’d enjoyed and whose skills and talent we respected, would move on to a new job. Finally, the day Terry stomped over to the shed, battered straw hat on his head, heavy work boots caked with dust, his face weary and relieved, and said, ‘It’s done, mate. I’m off.’

  His rackety white van made its way down the hill. Stopped. ‘He’s cutting grass for his rabbits,’ I explained to Bob. Once, when he’d pulled up for no obvious reason, I’d guessed a flat tyre and driven off to help out. Found him on his knees with a cane knife. ‘All good. But thanks for checkin’,’ he’d said at the time. The van rolled on and we watched it out of sight. He stopped again to close the entrance gates. Meticulous, scrupulous, painstaking. He wasn’t nicknamed Millimetre Terry for nothing.

  After he’d gone, we stood alone on the Home Hill, hands entwined. Shed. House. Us. The new triumvirate. We’d either make a go of this effort at sustainability, this daring life, or it would be our downfall. But our generation had been one of enormous and far-reaching privilege. There was nobility, I believed, in trying to repay the debt.

  We carried our camp chairs from the shed across the dust and dirt to the house. Set them in front of the fireplace in the breezeway and plonked our tired backsides down. Blue wrens with their harems of Jennies hopped about the bare earth, scavenging for insects. In the distance, a magpie warbled sweet notes. Way beyond, the high piping of bellbirds floated, echoing like pings on crystal. Neither of us spoke for a long time.

  ‘Need to clear the rubbish in front of the solar panels,’ Bob said eventually. A fallen tree, burnt logs, a squillion rocks, large and small – was he kidding?

  ‘Big job,’ I replied. ‘Tractor work?’

  ‘Manual labour, mostly. You wear it away.’

  ‘Yeah.’ But, oh god, surely we’re too old to be lifting rocks.

  The sun, a blinding orange ball, dipped behind the hills. Shadows fell across the landscape. Purple sky, hills, paddocks. A kookaburra gave a half-hearted cackle and for a moment the peace was shattered. Then a still quietness resumed, growing deeper as darkness, sof
t and innocent, crept across the valleys. Nights were respite. Days would become the hard, grubbing reality.

  Then the rain, temperamental and flighty in the past, turned flat-out recalcitrant again. One dry week turned into a dry month, followed by a parched spring, summer and autumn. Winter wasn’t much better. Bob tried to stay upbeat, but there were sixty steers now and the paddocks were lean.

  ‘Keep ’em alive, that’s all you can do,’ Foggy told us. ‘Gotta take the good with the bad. That’s farming. But yeah, it’s depressing. Not normal for around here.’ Further south, we heard of farmers abandoning paddock management and opening their gates to give stock a free run, hoping they’d scrape enough pickings to survive until the next big wet.

  Then, for three days straight, a wicked wind bent trees double. Sent dust skittering under our beautiful new doors. It crept across the bright, glossy floorboards like an incoming tide, piling in corners and crevices. The huge glass windows pulsed and whooped like a wobble board. It was unnerving. Outside, the precious, lean layer of topsoil, raked free of rocks and stones over hot and weary days so it felt as though every body joint had seized forever, swirled high on a gust and was carried off. A luscious, cooling lawn felt like a fool’s dream. Depressing didn’t begin to describe it.

  On the second day of the big wind, Bob shouted across the yard, his voice raspy with dust: ‘Get your boots on. A steer’s jumped the fence.’

  ‘Can’t it wait till the wind drops?’ I yelled. But he’d gone off towards the shed to get a bucket of grain. Already a ghostly wraith in a fog of red dirt, one shoulder tilted crookedly.

  At the bottom of the hill, Lucca, a half-grown Limousin, cropped innocently, his toffee-coloured coat set off by gyrating yellow, daisy-like flowers that I knew to be fireweed. Killed cattle if they ate it. Along with thistles, stinging nettles, castor oil plants, lantana, Parramatta grass, fleabane, Stinking Roger, crofton weed and too many more to list, they were a rural pestilence.

  ‘Some retirement,’ I muttered, slipping out of flip-flops and pulling on the work boots that I’d learned to place handily at the kitchen door. I set off. Dust rampaged up my nose till it hurt to breathe. Rain would be good, I thought with a physical longing so strong it was an ache. As far into the future as the weather bureau dared to predict, though, there was nothing but blue skies and temperatures ranging from five to ten degrees above normal, making sense, I thought in small consolation, of our solar panels and rainwater tanks.

  I headed down the steep slope of the Home Hill sideways, like a crab. Thirty degrees in early August. I tried to work out the Fahrenheit equivalent so I could judge it against the weather of my childhood. Mentally file the day under freak caused by the profligacy of mankind or a previously recorded aberration – uncommon but not unknown. I failed, as usual, to make the calculation. It was bloody hot, though – I knew that for a fact. Bordering on a heatwave in what was supposed to be the coldest month of winter, so probably closer to freak than aberration. Not much consolation there, though.

  Bob pointed, indicating we’d creep in from the sides in a pincer movement, but if the steer decided to turn nasty, there was a clear run right up to our front door – and sweet bugger-all we could do to stop him. But Lucca was one of Benny’s Boys. They all had sweet, accommodating natures – not like some of the schizo liquorice allsorts we’d bought at the bawling Monday morning Taree cattle sales. We might get lucky.

  Lucca raised his head. Saw Bob. And six hundred kilos of prime beef did an immediate bolt in my direction. Swallowing hard, I spread my arms wide, like I’d been taught, and walked slowly and at a slight angle towards him. Lucca skidded to a stop. Bob slipped behind him and opened the gate. Under Lucca’s watchful eyes, he walked into the paddock and tipped fattening grain on the ground. A bribe. Slowly, slowly, we closed in. Lucca sussed his options. The grain won. He made his move. Bob grinned.

  ‘It’s amazing how fast cattle can go,’ I said, almost shouting against the whoosh of the wind, trying to stretch the gate wire so Bob could strain a loop over the fence post. Lucca, unfazed, gave up on the grain and ambled towards the herd like he was on a Sunday stroll. The rolling gait catwalk smooth. Then one of the allsorts, an Angus-Shorthorn cross, spooked and they were all off at a hysterical gallop down the hill into a densely forested gully. Herd mentality took on new meaning.

  ‘How’d he get through?’ I asked.

  ‘Fencing wire needs tightening.’

  And another job was added to a list that already ran off two pages and into three. I pushed harder on the gate. The loop was still an inch short. ‘What now?’ I asked, frustrated, defeated. Bob winked, took a coil of rope from his shoulder, tied a fancy knot like a hangman’s noose, threaded the straight end between gate and post, slipped it through the noose end and pulled. The wire slid over the old mahogany post with room to spare. His face was dirty, hands scabby from scratches, burns and cuts; he looked dead on his feet. But it was another win. He grinned. I returned the smile and slapped his back. We headed up the hill to the house, heads bent into the wind.

  We kicked off our boots at the kitchen door. ‘Cuppa?’ I asked, going inside and filling the kettle. The massive windows continued to wobble against the gale. I hoped like hell they held.

  ‘If it cools down and the wind drops by tomorrow,’ Bob said hoarsely, ‘we’ll light a few fires and clear some rubbishy paddocks.’

  ‘Oh. Terrific.’

  27

  ON A COLD DAY TOWARDS DUSK at the end of winter, Richard, our neighbour who’d cleared the landslip, turned his truck into the gateway. Bob and Eric had walked twelve steers, blissfully unaware of their fate, into the cattle yard without incident. From the sitting room window, I watched Richard back his truck hard up against the race. Then turned away.

  I lost track of time. Cooked dinner. Lamb. Out of respect for our boys. Looked up when Bob appeared at the door. ‘Can you come down and help?’ he asked, sounding stressed. ‘We’re having a few problems.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ I turned off the curry. Bob went in search of torches. Outside, the night was now pitch-black. The cold, biting. There’d be a frost dusting the valleys in the morning. ‘What sort of problems?’ I asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

  ‘First lot went off ok. Sweet as a nut. These bastards won’t go near the truck. The more we push and yell, the more stubborn they get.’

  ‘Right.’

  Down at the cattle yard, Richard, in shorts and a windcheater, gumboots to his knees, shouted at his dogs: ‘Get behind, Bron! Get behind, Ben!’ But they were overexcited, yipping, nipping and stirring up the cattle. One beast got the heebie-jeebies and, like a rabid infection, the others quickly caught a dose of panic. Frustrated, Richard locked his dogs in the truck. Strode back to the pens, urging with shouts and whacks on the rumps from a piece of rubber piping. Bob yelled and pushed a golden rear-end. Then a black one. Careful of the hooves.

  I stood uselessly beside the ute, without a clue what to do. Then one beast, two beasts, lumbered unwillingly up the ramp. Richard raced to slide shut the partition between the front and rear gate. Returned to the yard. The gate slid open. The steers backed out. Spooked the animals coming behind. More panic. More bellowing. Begin again.

  Richard resorted to a low-voltage, battery-driven cattle prod. The batteries were flat. ‘Never had to use the bloody thing,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Get up to the house. Get new ones,’ Bob told me, sounding desperate. ‘And call Eric. We need help.’

  By the time I returned to the yard, Eric and his wife, Robyn, were pulling up. Bob changed the batteries but the prod refused to work. Eric jumped in the pen with Richard. Bob joined them. ‘Get on, you dozy bastards. Get on,’ Eric yelled, but in a way that sounded controlled. Pushing. Shoving. And who knows why – the power of three or tired of revolt or Eric’s persuasive voice – within minutes the cattle marched up the ramp like obedient pets. Richard slammed a gate shut behind the first three steers and then closed the rear of the tru
ck, locking in the last three. Easy as pie when it all goes to plan.

  ‘Cuppa before you head off?’ I asked.

  Richard shuffled his feet and shook his head. ‘Nah. Get this lot delivered and head home for tea. Jenny’ll be waiting.’

  ‘You got a date with the Rabbitohs?’ Eric asked, aware of Richard’s devotion to his footy team.

  Richard waggled his head, grinning. ‘On to me, are ya?’

  Eric, Robyn, Bob and I stayed around the cattle yard until he swung onto the road. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a glass of something restorative,’ I said with feeling.

  ‘Right on!’

  Back in a cosy house, warm from the day’s heat trapped by double glazing, with a fire blazing hot and strong, I poured wine for Robyn and me, handed Eric a beer, and sloshed a serious amount of whisky into a glass for Bob. He looked shattered. Then the phone rang. It was Richard’s wife. Yes, Richard had arrived safely at the abattoir. But the lock hadn’t caught. Three steers were missing. Fallen out of the back. Richard was already out looking for them. Dead or alive, there was no way to tell.

  We put down our drinks and headed off.

  ‘Looks like he’ll miss the big game,’ Bob said, climbing into the ute.

  ‘He’ll have told Jenny to record it. Stake my life on it,’ Eric said, grinning and heading for his ute.

  Out on the road, my easy job was to flag down oncoming traffic. Warn of cattle on the loose. The others set off on foot, searching for one red, one white-faced and one black beast on a black night. Bloody, bloody hell. Headlights approached. I stepped forward, waving my arms. The ute slowed, pulled up. The passenger window rolled down, a head leaned across from the driver’s side. I explained: ‘Lost a couple of cattle. Well, three. They’re somewhere on the road. Fell out of the back of the truck. Take it slowly, ok?’

  The driver, a young fella with an open face, wearing the kind of wide-brimmed hat young men on the land favour, smiled. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said in a long drawl, ‘happens like that sometimes.’ And in a moment, his words took the sting out of the whole shambolic operation. Shit happens, I thought. It’s not entirely the result of our inexperience. ‘Give me a minute to pull over,’ he added, even more laconically, ‘and I’ll give you a hand.’