Absolution Creek

by Nicole Alexander

  Squib gathered saliva in her mouth and spat loudly in the grass.

  It was meant to be a celebratory dinner, however rabbit stew and dirt-smeared damper wasn’t exactly what Olive expected. She didn’t know what she had expected on arriving in this deserted place but it had been more than this. For the hundredth time that evening she gathered her skirt tight against her legs and clamped her body rigid. She was sitting on a log in the middle of a paddock where any number of creepy-crawlies could accost her, and no one seemed to care. Picking as daintily as she could at the gristle between her teeth she accepted the swig of rum Adams poured into a pannikin. The liquid was firey hot.

  ‘Steady old girl,’ Thomas cautioned.

  ‘Liquor isn’t just for the satisfaction of menfolk,’ Olive retorted. She needed the hot reassurance of the drink.

  ‘Last time I was in Sydney women didn’t smoke or drink in public.’ Jack tapped out his pipe.

  ‘And you didn’t smoke a pipe, Jack,’ Thomas replied.

  ‘Everyone smokes a pipe out here, lad,’ Adams answered. ‘Your brother here only sees me once a month. There’s no regular store for papers and such like.’ Adams corked the bottle. ‘Shut-eye time.’

  When they eventually retired for the night, Olive stripped down to her underwear, slipping between the scratchy blankets in the lean-to. There were jersey silk pyjamas and cakes of Pears soap stacked under a tree with the rest of the too-few luxuries she’d carried from Sydney, however she was beyond exhaustion. Besides, what did it matter any more? Especially in these conditions. She placed the slush lamp, with Jack’s dreadfully smelly concoction of rendered animal fat, carefully outside so that a soft light illuminated the small space. Then she waited. Outside, Adams and Thomas settled by the camp fire, the silences in their conversation increasing. Above her the bark roof hung stiflingly low. Having promised not to think of her old life, Olive pictured her snug bedroom with its calming yellow walls and comforting scents of hearth and home. She wondered what her family were doing. What were they thinking? After her lie regarding visiting the Gees was discovered, Olive felt sure that Henrietta would press elopement as the reason for Olive’s disappearance. If that was the case, her family would try to avoid the slightest whiff of scandal, until her disappearance lengthened and they received no word from her. Eventually they would believe that the worst had occurred. Olive knew the time had come to write to them. At the very least she could allay their worst fears even if she chose not to reveal the details of her new home.

  ‘You all right, Olive?’ Jack squatted at the entrance to the lean-to. ‘Thomas said this is only your third night sleeping outdoors.’

  She sat upright. ‘Are you coming to bed?’ she whispered, patting the blanket with her hand.

  ‘Umm, well, no. I’ve spoken to Adams about a minister and he says we’d have to travel to town in six weeks or so to be wed.’

  ‘But are you coming to bed?’ Olive tried to keep any sense of urgency from her voice.

  ‘Well, no. It’s just not right.’

  ‘Right for whom?’

  Jack cocked his head. ‘We’re not married.’

  Olive let the blanket fall from her shoulders. ‘We’ve been apart for months, Jack.’

  ‘But you’ve not been well, and you still look a bit peaky.’

  With shaking fingers Olive slipped the strap of the white silk camisole low over her shoulder. She was sure she heard Jack swallow. ‘Now you want to wait another month?’ She smiled, hoping it appeared more natural than it felt. ‘I’ve been so lonely for you.’

  Jack cleared his throat. ‘We should be married, Olive.’

  ‘What does it matter out here?’ She gave a weak laugh.

  ‘God lives here too.’

  In the yellowing lamplight, Jack’s eyes looked dark as he stared at her. Olive lowered the other camisole strap. If she didn’t sleep with Jack now she was sure her resolve would weaken. ‘I never took you for such a religious man.’ Having visualised their coming together on the long trek north, Olive knew the future lay in her female attributes, though her mind was disgusted at the thought of what lay ahead. Olive was well aware of what a man could do to a woman, and such a relationship – even if love did exist – was no longer palatable.

  ‘You know I was brought up with the good book.’ Jack’s voice never wavered.

  Olive’s fingers plucked at the flimsy material, the strap slipped free and she wriggled a little, baring white skin and petite breasts. Jack’s eyes no longer met hers. They focused on her body, roaming her skin unashamedly, which was rarely exposed to light. In the strained silence Olive sensed him hesitate, and then, abruptly, he was gone. Outside someone belched. Olive buried her face in the coarse blanket and wept.

  Chapter 30

  Absolution Creek, 1965

  Meg finished sweeping the veranda and gathered the fallen leaves in a dustpan. Willie wagtails and soldier birds hopped across the lawn in search of insects. Meg could hear the twin poddy lambs bleating beyond the garden, their tone suggesting starvation. Harold had arrived with them yesterday. The rest of the ewes weren’t due to lamb for another few weeks, however somehow the mother of these two managed to get herself in trouble and then promptly die. The men were now feeding out corn every second day instead of twice weekly as had been Cora’s stipulation. Sam explained that although the ewes looked as sleek as race horses not all the lambs were likely to survive. Lambs. While the twins were beyond excitement at their arrival, Meg mentally added them to her to-do list. Apparently they had to be fed three times a day!

  She knocked on her aunt’s bedroom door. Cora had spent a day shuffling about the homestead until her maimed leg forced her to bed. The self-diagnosis was one of arthritis and the pain had kept her normally active aunt bedridden for two days. Meg wasn’t really surprised. A cold front had hung over Absolution Creek for a week and even Sam was complaining of aches in his past fighting injuries. She poked her head in the door. There were two mice running about the floor and a furry, bulbous spider had taken up position on the far wall. Meg looked at the gaping ceiling and the monstrous tree and wondered what other nasties lurked in her aunt’s room.

  ‘How’s everything this morning?’ Cora asked. ‘It doesn’t feel so cold.’

  ‘It isn’t. It’s meant to be a few degrees warmer today.’

  Cora leant back in the chair at her desk. ‘Thank heavens.’ She rubbed her leg. ‘And the men?’

  ‘They’re replacing the tin on the woolshed.’ Meg decided against mentioning the proposed work to the hayshed and the changed sheep-feeding routine. According to Sam these were unapproved jobs undertaken at Harold’s instruction. Instead she retrieved a crumpled blouse and brown jumper from the floor. ‘You look better in the face. Not so strained.’ Meg dangled the items, a letter falling from the clothes to the floor.

  ‘Yes, I am feeling better.’ Cora held out her hand and took the letter quickly.

  Meg draped the dirty clothes over her shoulder. Cora wasn’t the type of woman to ever look pale, thanks to her olive skin. In some respects Meg was pleased that her aunt’s leg was the cause of her illness. Initially she worried that she may have been partly responsible for her aunt’s ill-health. Cora was more than obliging in answering Meg’s questions regarding her family, specifically the problem between her aunt and mother and the differing accounts of her father’s passing during the war. However, this led to Cora telling the story of a little girl named Squib. For some inexplicable reason Meg believed the story of this long-lost child had somehow affected her aunt. Quite frankly she’d been remote and melancholy ever since. Just how the girl Squib fitted into Meg’s world bewildered her, however she was prepared to humour Cora in the hope that eventually she would learn something a little more pertinent. ‘Can I get you anything else, Cora?’

  ‘Yes, spring.’

  Meg agreed. The cold ocean winds that swirled up from the bay, were nothing compared to the cold of the bush. Here it worked its way into you, burning your
fingers and noses. The men complained of chill blains and Sam’s ears and nose were on their third set of skin.

  Dirty clothes in hand, Meg left her aunt staring at a trail of sugar ants on one of the bedroom walls. The letter sat in the middle of her desk.

  The twins were sitting at the kitchen table. They too were feeling the cold. So far their morning highlight was limited to an early feeding of the two poddy lambs, and the expression on their faces suggested boredom was about to set in.

  ‘Is Aunt Cora still sick, Mummy?’

  ‘She’s feeling better, Penny. I’m sure she’ll be up and around very soon.’

  ‘I like it when she’s in her room.’

  ‘Jill, don’t say that about your aunty. We’re lucky to be here.’

  ‘Yeah, lucky to be here,’ Penny mimicked, returning to her crayons.

  Meg drew the curtains above the sink and removed biscuits from the oven. The smell was tempting and she ate the flaky mixture in two bites, setting down a biscuit apiece for the girls.

  ‘Wait till they’ve cooled,’ she warned, humming as she stirred the remaining mixture. She greased another baking tray and began to dollop piles of batter onto the tray with a tablespoon. She was dying for a cup of tea, but there was still a load of washing to be hung on the line, the house water supply to be checked and kindling to be collected for the fires before lunch. There would be time enough for tea when the sun was at its zenith. Sliding the tray into the gas oven she checked the temperature. The flame was a yellowish colour and an accompanying whiff of gas meant the cylinder was low. ‘That’s all I need.’ She looked at the wood-burning Aga next to the ‘new-fangled’ gas oven, as her aunt called it, and frowned at the thought of having to use it for baking cakes. The gauges on the front of the Aga’s door verged on the unreliable. Meg found it impossible to keep the fire burning at a constant temperature. It was either too hot or too cold.

  With the girls nibbling cautiously on the warm biscuits, Meg braced the chilly morning and loaded the Hills hoist with an assortment of clothes before sitting the basket on the wooden table in the laundry block. Outside the back gate she turned left at the fruit tin, which had been secured on a post and formed their rain gauge. Meg walked the quarter mile down the dirt road to the house dam, Curly and Tripod close on her heels. The lambs quickly followed, chasing her as if she carried a bag of liquorice allsorts.

  ‘Whoa, you little terrors.’ Rocky and Dillon were runty little animals. Meg patted their soft fluffy heads as they butted her legs.

  By the time they reached the dam only Rocky remained. He ambled up behind Meg and the dogs, until all four of them stood on the top of the bank to peer down at their dwindling water supply. There was a dark ring of wetness from the dropping level. The dam needed topping up. The only way was to pump water from the creek to the dam near the woolshed and then on to this dam. ‘Well, we’ll have to do something about this,’ she said aloud, squatting to pat Rocky as Curly barked.

  A white utility appeared at the paddock gate. A willy-willy of dust tailed the vehicle briefly as it stopped near the dam a couple of hundred feet from Meg. The driver lowered the window and she made out the outline of a man. He raised his hand in a momentary greeting. Meg raised her own haltingly, embarrassingly aware that she resembled Dr Doolittle. Her indecisiveness about whether she should walk down the dam’s embankment and introduce herself was solved when the vehicle drove away, leaving an empty road and a silence she doubted she would ever become accustomed to.

  Squinting against the morning light, Meg hugged her arms. The landscape was cold and barren this morning. It spanned out from the dam in a blur of wintry browns: coffee, tan, russet and auburn, each colour fed by rain, bronzed dry by the sun and then finally seared by the bite of daily frosts. Meg longed for spring. She visualised the greening of the butts, of the long grasses, and imagined a carpeting of the cold ground with fresh tender shoots. As she scraped at the dirt beneath her heel, an image of the glistening harbour of her old home came to her. She recalled her aunt’s words on their arrival – how the loneliness could drive the weak to drink. For her the great void of humanity that was her new home had created a different vice: reflection.

  The bush gave a person too much time to think, too much time to wonder about what might have been. Recently Meg found herself daydreaming about being single again, about finding a man who loved her. Of course, when she thought of her girls, reminding herself that she had chosen this life, guilt dissolved her thoughts – at least for a little while. Although it was impossible to clear her mind completely of her concerns, Meg was managing to concentrate on the daily tasks that filled the long hours.

  Why on earth would her mother blame Cora for the loss of her husband when they’d never met? And why lie about his death? Maybe Sam was right. Meg was in the middle of a sibling argument and it was a nasty, blame-apportioning mess.

  ‘Come on, dogs. You too, Rocky.’

  They were almost back at the homestead when a piercing whistle bit through the air. Horse appeared at a trot from between the avenue of trees, the strapping on his rug tugging at his hind legs. A few minutes later Cora was limping to Horse’s side, a bridle over her shoulder. Curly and Tripod were speedy defectors, racing to their mistress’s side to watch impatiently as she threw the rug across the back fence, and slipped the bridle over twitching ears and into an open mouth. Cora swung up onto Horse’s bare back.

  Meg watched the older woman with admiration. It was disconcerting to admit that her aunt probably had more staying power than the rest of them. Meg figured Cora would keep breathing just to prove a point, even if the rest of her body packed it in. ‘Is everything okay?’

  Cora backed Horse up a few steps and flashed a grin from beneath her hat. ‘Everything’s perfect once I’m on Horse.’ She slapped her weak leg. ‘By the way,’ she called over her shoulder as Horse broke into a trot, ‘your biscuits are burnt and the dam will be filled by week’s end.’

  Meg ran alongside her. ‘Great, thanks. I was wondering –’

  ‘It was the vet.’ Cora nodded briefly in the direction of the dust and trotted away.

  Meg gazed into the distance, wishing they’d met.

  The auger spat the corn into a peak. Using his hands Kendal spread the kernels across the top of the feeder. He indicated to Sam that the two-tonne feeder was almost full.

  ‘Here’s trouble,’ Harold commented dryly, nodding towards Cora, who was riding across the paddock towards them. Together he and Sam took hold of the auger’s frame and pushed it clear of the grain hopper. Sam blocked off the corn’s flow before Harold switched off the engine.

  ‘I thought she was crook.’ Kendal jumped from the back of the truck, checking the chains that held the feeder to the truck’s frame.

  ‘Arthritis,’ Harold explained. ‘The cold weather comes and she’s bedridden for a day or two.’

  ‘My pa had a bad back,’ Sam revealed. ‘Once it went on him he’d be useless for a fortnight.’

  Kendal rolled his eyes.

  ‘Have you asked her yet how she hurt her leg?’ Harold asked Sam.

  Sam shook his head. ‘Nope. Meg said it was an accident.’

  ‘She fell off a dray and got trodden on real good by a horse when she was a kid,’ Kendal explained. ‘Damaged her eye too.’ He turned to his uncle. ‘She’s only got partial sight in that eye, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Harold admitted. ‘I don’t know all the details. Anyway, she’s going to go off about increasing the ewes feed too soon. I’m worried about keeping the old girls and their lambs alive and she’s worried about a break in the fleece come shearing next year.’

  ‘And?’ Sam queried. Meg’s aunt was all flying hair and hat from a distance.

  ‘A break in the staple will mean a decrease in the price offered,’ Kendal explained. ‘Sheep need good constant fodder for consistency in their wool and the girls have had a rough trot this year.’

  Cora crossed the paddock and came t
owards where the men stood.

  ‘Good to see you up and about,’ Harold greeted her.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Miss Hamilton, I know what you’re going to say,’ Harold began, ‘and I’d like to point out –’

  ‘How are we going for corn?’

  Sam took a step forward. ‘We’ve got three silos left, Cora. About twenty-nine tonne.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Harold agreed.

  ‘Well, feed everything today and then I want the silos tarped.’

  ‘What for?’ Feeding sheep wasn’t exactly something Kendal lived for. ‘Half of them were fed yesterday.’

  Curly arrived in a screech of dirt and promptly weed on the work-truck tyre. Tripod’s arrival was quieter as he joined Curly to sit squarely by Cora, panting. Kendal took a step back from the pooling urine and grimaced.

  ‘It’s going to rain in a day or so,’ Cora replied, ignoring the looks on their faces.

  Sam gazed up into the cloudless sky. ‘A bit cold for it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve seen the signs.’ There were ants crawling up the wall in her bedroom and another trail marching through Meg’s biscuit mix. There were also telltale mounds of ants’ nests, which had risen a couple of inches in height in readiness for water that would soon lie on the ground.

  ‘Right then.’ Harold tugged his jeans, and readjusted them about his waist. ‘We better get to it.’ He scratched at the scab on his forehead where the ram’s horn recently struck him.

  ‘Wait on,’ Kendal argued. ‘What signs? There’s no rain predicted.’

  Cora flicked the reins. ‘Good to see you’re familiarising yourself with things, Sam.’

  ‘What are you grinning about?’ Kendal asked Sam as Cora rode away, her two dogs following in tandem. ‘And what’s the go with this sign thingy?’

  Harold selected a pre-rolled cigarette from his hat-band and lit it. When he puffed out the smoke he crouched in the dirt. Sam and Kendal followed suit. ‘Out here everyone’s got their own methods for predicting rain. The standard ones are: ants building up their nests, particularly those little sugar ants you see about the place; then there’s those slater beetles – bugger me if they don’t always head towards higher ground; and black cockatoos are a sure thing. Miss Hamilton always worked on three, preferably in a belah tree, but my own father said a pair was enough. Sign of a good season. Couple that with a full moon . . .’