‘So what are you going to do, then? Tie your niece up and force-feed her your side of the story?’ He held his hand up. ‘No, I’ve got it. You’re going to hold Meg here against her will, deprive her mother of her only child as she deprived you of your loved ones. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s as simple and as sad as that.’
‘You’re being unfair,’ Cora retaliated.
James shook his head. ‘Actually, I’m just plain annoyed at both of us. I didn’t realise I was barking up the wrong tree. I guess it’s one thing to have a bit of a fling and quite another to commit; especially when you’re obsessed with righting the past.’
‘James –’
‘Well, I wouldn’t hold your breath. After all, she’s city bred and her husband’s a no-hoper.’
‘Meg’s smart, everything’s going like clockwork and she deserves the opportunity to –’
He laughed and shoved his hat firmly on his head. ‘You’re not doing it for Meg. You’re doing it for yourself and probably him, his memory.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘Sometimes I wonder if he’s not the reason you can’t commit to me.’
He always was one for riling her, reason enough to keep him at arm’s length. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Is it?’
‘Why shouldn’t she know the truth?’
‘Because you’re not doing it for your niece, Cora. The only thing you’re doing is wrecking your own life and buggering up hers.’
‘You mean I’m wrecking your life, James Campbell.’
James opened the door leading out onto the veranda. Outside a rooster raced past, wings flapping, squawking in terror. Harold was only a few feet behind, rifle in hand. ‘Good to see things are running like clockwork.’ Hot in pursuit came the twins, squealing with excitement, and finally Meg, dark hair flying as she called after her daughters.
‘So that’s Meg,’ James commented. ‘Well, she’s a bit of a looker.’
As the rifle shot sounded and the twins cried out in unison, James slammed the door. Cora clenched her fists and expelled a hot burst of breath. She stalked the bedroom, glancing at the great tree as if it could provide answers, then she began to rummage through her dresser drawer. Eventually she found the wooden-handled mirror stuffed in her sock drawer. The glass steamed up under her breath. Satisfied, Cora tucked the mirror safely away. Outside the twins were crying. Meg’s words of comfort floated in the garden, softening the angst both outside and within the homestead.
Cora lifted the stone paperweight. It was reassuring to know James was nearby, even if no one could help her. If only she wasn’t so mindful of her past, so protective of her person. All her life she’d felt as if her heart were a captured bird within a wooden cage. So many times the cage door had been left tantalisingly open only to be slammed shut when least expected. James was right. It was her past that stopped their relationship from being all that it could be, and she couldn’t escape it.
Chapter 18
The North West Slopes, 1965
The place was laid out in his mind like a map. The dray-wide track Scrubber remembered was overgrown, the collection of buildings on the slight hill resembling a skeleton. On approach the bones became wind-blown bits of walls and roof. Timber and corrugated iron stretched across the area, caught in fences and trees, lying on the ground between thick stands of saplings. Scrubber knew by location whose house each pile of rubble once was, and he mumbled the name of each owner, visualising the inhabitants.
Matt Hamilton’s old cottage was roofless, the narrow veranda rippled. Scrubber gave the horses their freedom and stepped into a world lost some forty years ago. Now he was here, part-way through the journey, Scrubber wondered how a mere slip of a girl could have enticed him to take this one last ride. The boards crumbled under his step: soft wood consumed by white ants, bleached by the wind and sun, ruined by time.
He tripped and fell, his hands managing to shield his face. Dog was there immediately, licking him, cajoling him, willing him to life. His old dog knew he was tired, knew that his every move was gradually becoming eroded by pain. Scrubber heaved himself from the hole in the floor and retreated to the rear of the house to sit in the sun. The view was limited to a stand of old trees, a flattened dunny and a sapling-invaded paddock. Scrubber untied the pouch at his waist and sat it on a weathered log. He faced the cracked leather square-on, and rubbed at a scabby lip.
He had been on the road some weeks now. It was time to have a bit of a yarn to his old mate. Although he wasn’t one for believing in spooks it seemed a mite silly to be picking a fight in an isolated spot, even if the six-foot-tall bloke he conversed with was packed in an old tobacco pouch. He’d start real slow, he decided.
‘Well, it’s not the same, mate.’ He gave a noise that was once a laugh. ‘It’s all fallen down, dilapidated, buggered.’ He glanced up at the sky. ‘If you were here you’d be shocked by the waste of it, by the barrenness, by . . .’ He looked at the pouch. ‘How you travelling then? Me, I’m not so good.’
He prised a tick from Dog’s ear, squeezing the blood out of it between his fingers, then turned his attention once again to the pouch. ‘I’ve took my time and all, I realise that. The thing is, you dying left me in a spot.’ Scrubber found a lump of chewing tobacco in his pocket and crammed it into his mouth. ‘I never was the smartest one in the mob.’ It was difficult, this chewing and talking when a man had a hole in his neck.
The horses roamed past the flattened dunny and whinnied into the rising wind. ‘I couldn’t look after the girl after you and Jack Manning were gone. I had to do a runner. Anyways, in the end the kid looked after herself. So, I just wanted to say that if you were alive now I’d hope we’d still be mates. Even after everything I did to you and yours, I hope we’d still be cobbers, cause you were real good to me. And I’m real sorry that you ended up . . . well, like you are.’ He spat tobacco juice into the dirt. ‘But I’ll be a goner myself soon, if it’s any consolation, and I’d like to think that my bringing you back to your daughter like she wanted all those years ago, helps to make amends.’
Dog gave a bark. A clatter of something on iron mingled with a shifting wind that roamed the old buildings. Scrubber almost believed he could see sheep, hear voices, smell the old days. The doc said it would happen; that the pain would eventually cause him to hallucinate. Digging his fingers into a trouser pocket, he placed the shilling in the palm of his hand. With a bit of a clean the image of the ram on the 1923 coin would come up good as new. Just as well he still had it, Scrubber decided, clutching the metal in his fingers. A man needed something tangible to remind him that the old days existed.
Scrubber replaced the coin in his pocket and patted Dog on the head. ‘I’m going to have myself a bit of shut-eye, Dog. Just twenty winks and then we’ll be off.’ Dog sat by his side, watchful, patient. Scrubber stretched his back against the wall of the cottage, as his innards complained. He too was being white-anted.
Waverly Station’s great ram had appeared from behind a box tree the first week of Scrubber’s arrival on the property, the week before Christmas, 1923. With the experienced stockmen away for a few days mustering in a mob of ewes, Scrubber was left in Dobbs’s control. The old cook and bottle-washer gave him the guided tour of the outbuildings and sheds. Halfway between the woolshed and the ram shed, Dobbs started talking about the Gordon family of Wangallon Station. It seemed that Luke Gordon wanted some of Purcell’s merino bloodline, and Purcell refused to sell him any rams.
Why?’ Scrubber asked.
On account of the Gordons having everything else, including the biggest spread in these here parts. What they don’t have though, lad, is a ram on a shiny coin.’
When Scrubber laid eyes on Waverly No. 4 he understood why Luke Gordon wanted one of Purcell’s rams. He was a huge animal – broad of back with a proud, disdainful gaze, a roll of wool falling to the ground from his throat and scrolling horns. He was running with thirty of Purcell’s top females in a specially fenced paddock and he clearly disliked
having his territory invaded.
This is him. Beautiful, ain’t he?’ Dobbs sounded love struck. ‘Evans looks after him, although I don’t think Waverly likes him – always snorting and striking the ground with his hoof. He doesn’t mind Matt’s kid though, Squib. Anyway, better Evans than me. If the ram dies on Evans’s watch, well, it’ll be . . .’ He ran his thumb in a cutting motion across his neck.
Scrubber was dumbfounded. ‘For a sheep?’
This sheep’s the national champion, lad. He’s legendary and he’s made Mr Purcell very high and mighty in the sheep industry, and very rich.’ He tapped Scrubber on the shoulder. ‘This will be about as close as you and I will ever get to something famous. Now, let’s get you on that gelding and see how your riding’s progressing.’
It wasn’t. Firstly, it was an effort to mount and dismount thanks to his damaged ribs. Secondly, the gelding clearly didn’t take to young try-hards trotting around a yard. Scrubber landed in the dirt, clutching his wrist and yelping at his jarred ribs before squeezing through the timber railings, intent on escaping from Dobbs’s offer of medical ministrations. He wasn’t sure how a pocketknife could help a busted bone.
He escaped to a stringybark tree, guessing he’d be run off the place within days. A one-handed man was no good to anyone. Sympathy wasn’t strong in his family. Having been raised on a lifted hand and the expectation that a child could earn coin at the age of six, it was a shock to discover that now, in his early twenties, he felt a bit sorry for himself. At the rate he was going he would end up a homeless cripple.
Are you awake?’
Scrubber blinked and opened a drowsy eye. Flies plastered the kid’s face. A girl was sitting beside him, sharing the shade of the same tree. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, instantly awake. He looked around. There’d be a parent nearby – someone to snatch her up and holler at him to stay away. The girl poked at his busted hand. ‘Get away with you.’
Dobbs said you gone hurt yourself. That you fell off Mr Purcell’s gelding.’ The calico bag by the kid’s side was upended; strips of cloth, two stout splints and a flask of brandy spilled onto the dirt. He eyed the spirit hungrily. Purcell ran a dry camp.
The girl pointed at his hand. ‘I can fix it.’
He grabbed at the flask and took a satisfying swig. ‘Get away with yer. Yer not big enough to fix anything.’
She snatched back the brandy. ‘Can so.’ She replaced the stopper. ‘Youse want it fixed or not?’
He guessed he did. ‘You’re Matt’s kid, ain’t you?’ Gingerly he held out his hand to her and she returned the flask.
She nodded. ‘My name’s Squib. And you’re called Scrubber on account of the fact you appeared out of the scrub. Near death, my father says.’
‘Saved me life, he did. And he put in a good word for me so I’d get a job here.’
‘Yeah, he’s real good, my father. Now, wrap your good arm around the tree and hang on.’ She pointed at the flask. ‘Normally I wouldn’t be saying this but you better drink that down.’
‘Doctor’s orders, eh?’ He gulped the spirit down, his empty stomach lapping up the fiery drink. As he swallowed the last of it the girl pulled on his hand. Two definite clicks sounded. The pain was shocking. ‘God’s holy trousers, girl. You’re frightening.’
She laughed then as if it was the most normal thing for a kid to do. Squib splinted his wrist up good and tight, binding it with strips of material. Her knots were firm and clean, the material torn with the aide of her teeth, her dark hair brushing his forearm. He hadn’t been that close to a woman who didn’t want something, ever.
‘How’d you learn doctoring then?’
Squib gathered her things together. ‘My stepmother, Abigail. Her father was an animal doctor, excepting he was self-taught, and when he killed a nob’s racehorse, well, that was when he went to Come-By-Chance to be a publican. Anyway, he had real doctoring books with pictures and everything.’
‘Of animals?’
‘No silly, people. That’s how come I can do some doctoring, like my father. We got it out of Abigail’s father’s books. My father can stitch. Once he put thirty stitches in a man when an axe head flew off and hit him in the leg.’
‘What would your father say about this, then?’ Scrubber extended his neatly bandaged wrist.
The girl put her slight hand on his shoulder, gave a crooked smile, eyes as clear as rain water. ‘He’ll say I’ve done good.’
‘I owe you.’
The noise of men talking and the clip-clop of hoofs stopped their conversation.
‘The men are back,’ Squib announced. ‘You better go.’
Scrubber watched the flurry of dust the kid left behind as she skirted the trees and ran back in the direction of her cottage.
Reluctantly he walked the half-mile to the stables. He was only a week into his new job and with a buggered wrist Scrubber worried he’d be kicked off Waverly Station. The only thing in his favour was that Matt Hamilton had recently been promoted to overseer. Dobbs reckoned Evans would have it in for Matt. The two men were pretty even when it came to ability, however Matt was the fairer of them and he had the type of personality that made a man keen to please him. A fact Evans hated. The previous overseer, a gruff southerner named Martin, had hanged himself in the woolshed after downing a quart of kerosene. Dobbs, always full of knowledge, reckoned Martin had a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock. It wasn’t until the older man tapped his head that Scrubber realised what he meant. Of course the end result of the woolshed hanging was that now Matt Hamilton was the boss man.
Scrubber found his new place right at the bottom of the feed chain, although with the benefit of the dead man’s boots. Even Dobbs, when dishing up his food last night, somewhat affectionately called him the scum feeder in reference to the slimy yard troughs it was now his job to clean.
At the stable entrance Scrubber met Dobbs.
‘Hand’s fixed, I see.’ He gave a nod of approval. He turned to the five stockmen unsaddling their horses in the cavernous stables. ‘Got ourselves a right quick learner we have.’
Evans undid the girth strap on his mare. ‘What’s a city kid doing out here, anyway?’ he asked, walking past him with a saddle.
‘Trying to work like the rest of youse,’ Scrubber countered.
Dobbs gave a rattling cough. ‘Lay off him, Evans. He’s young, but keen. You were that way once.’
Evans sniffed.
‘Have I told you about tonight’s feed? I’ve enough damper to bind up a fancy city fruit-eater, and kerosene-strength billy tea.’ Dobbs removed his hat and brushed his wiry hair flat with the currycomb. ‘Salted mutton, fresh eggs –’
‘Potatoes and damper,’ Evans interrupted, making a show of inspecting his mare’s shoes.
Dobbs gave his own horse a swipe with the currycomb, and with a firm pat on the rump sent the animal trotting into the paddock.
‘Afternoon, Mr Purcell, sir.’
The stables went quiet.
Having not laid eyes on the man before, Scrubber stood stock still. Tall and stringy looking, with a pencil moustache and army-shine boots, Mr Purcell’s three-piece suit clung to him as if it had been specially made. Purcell spoke briefly to Evans before running a well-trained eye across the gathered men. Scrubber knew immediately what it meant to be a ram poised on the brink of being culled. The squatter’s eyes fell on him, a riding crop pointed in his direction. Scrubber sensed the other stockmen backing away into the shadowy recesses of the stables.
‘Hamilton recommended him,’ Evans volunteered.
Scrubber waited anxiously as the squatter gleaned his life story from his appearance.
‘I don’t take to fighting, womanising or the bottle out here. The men tell you that?’
Everyone nodded, including Scrubber.
‘Good.’ Purcell’s gaze fell on a basket of eggs sitting atop a chaff bin. ‘Bring those eggs to the main homestead, boy.’
There was a chuckle from the recesses of the stable. P
urcell narrowed his eyes and then turned and walked away.
Scrubber trudged the two miles to the main homestead, his sight fixed on the shimmering corrugated-iron roof and the blindingly white walls. Purcell’s homestead was set within a paling fence. Large trees bordered the raked dirt path, which led directly to a bull-nosed veranda of polished timber and curving corrugated iron overhead. There were long casement windows, curtained on the inside, a solid front door with a blackened horseshoe-shaped knocker, and chairs scattered the length of the veranda. Books were perched on one of the tables, along with a jug of something that was obviously real drinkable, for flies buzzed around a cloth protecting the contents.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ A young woman appeared from around the corner of the house, a basket over her arm. She plucked at it with her fingers, swayed slowly from side to side; her bare feet were tanned gold by the sun.
‘I’ve got these.’ Scrubber held out the basket of eggs.
The girl inspected them, pursing her lips. She had a pair of dusty lace-up shoes strung over one shoulder.
‘I mean Purcell – Mr Purcell – said I should bring them.’
She was a plain girl, Scrubber thought, and largish, but her teeth were good.
Extending her free hand she took the basket from him. ‘You’re new.’
Scrubber nodded. ‘Started a month or so back.’
‘What do you think about the place then?’ She swung the egg basket to and fro.
What Scrubber wanted to say probably wouldn’t have any credit with her: that it was a disappointment to discover that even out here, in the back of beyond, he remained a have-not. Worse, he was at the bottom of twenty have-nots all vying for food and coin and a trip to town. ‘Good.’
‘You’re a bad liar.’
Scrubber thought her canny. He liked that. ‘I used to be pretty good.’
‘Veronica, is there a need for you to be conversing with that stockman at the front of the homestead?’
‘Mrs Purcell,’ Veronica hissed before calling out, ‘He dropped off some eggs, Missus.’
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