The wood pile was dwindling again and the eggs needed to be collected. Then there was the vegetable plot. She looked at the oblong square, some twenty feet in length and width, and it seemed to glare back at her. After pegging it out a week ago, Jack had handed her a hoe and declared the job women’s work. Ever since, Olive had fought the baked earth on a daily basis. So far she had an eighth of the area turned. The ground was so hard the hoe bounced when struck and it had taken a week to get the tilth to any depth. However, Olive persevered. Although broad beans, cabbage and carrots were of major importance, her desire to prove her worth was far stronger.
With a sigh she bound strips of cloth around her cracked hands and recommenced her prodding of the earth’s crust. As usual her mind turned to Sydney and her family. With great determination she brought it back to the hoe, and concentrated on tilling the earth. Within minutes her lower back was paining. Sweat ran down her thighs. A gust of wind whipped up a flurry of dust, depositing her straw hat in a nearby stand of needlewood trees. She couldn’t run after it, not this morning. An appropriate profanity was slow coming to her lips. The best of Thomas’s complaints were Holy Ghost, while Jack and Squib were particularly fond of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The pair used the phrase so frequently Olive feared the trilogy might pay them a visitation in complaint. She tucked a stray lock of hair into the bun she’d taken to wearing on the nape of her neck, and marvelled at city women with the time to have their hair styled.
‘How are you going with it, Olive?’
She could have cried at the sound of his voice. Instead Olive pasted a smile on her face and turned to greet Thomas.
‘You work too hard.’ He dusted off her runaway hat and sat it carefully on her head. ‘I’ll do it.’ His fingers closed around the hoe’s wooden handles, brushing hers. ‘Look at your hands.’ The rough bandaging showed traces of blood. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this.’
Olive took a firmer hold of the hoe. ‘Everyone has enough to do without carrying me. I’ll manage.’
‘But –’
‘Leave off please, Thomas. You just have to let me muddle on in my own silly way.’
Thomas watched as she struggled with the unyielding ground. ‘But I could help, Olive. You don’t have to do this.’
‘I do if we want some vegetables by August.’ She was crying again. All she ever seemed to do these days was water the ground with her tears. Tightening her grip on the hoe, Olive struck forcefully at the dirt, each thudding contact with the ground jarring her arms and neck, burning her shoulder blades, tearing at her cracked palms. ‘I can’t eat salted mutton and damper forever. I’m dying for fresh fruit and trifle with cream, and crumbed cutlets with spaghetti.’
Thomas knew what he wanted to say, however the right words failed him. Some days he wished he were older. Some days he wished he could take Olive away from all of this. ‘Have you . . . Have you spoken to Jack?’ Thomas began awkwardly. ‘Maybe . . .’
Olive continued striking at the plot. ‘No. No, I haven’t. It’s not easy for me.’
His hand stayed her movements. ‘It’s not right keeping it from him. It’ll eat you up inside.’
‘He spent months up here alone waiting for me to arrive. He’s been carving a place for us in this . . . this patch of nothing so that we, we can have something.’
‘Olive, I know I gave you my word back at Mrs Bennett’s boarding house, but –’
‘Stop it, Thomas.’ She pointed a broken nail at his chest. ‘I will tell him. I’ve just been trying to find the right time. He’s never here and when he is, he’s either exhausted or with you, or –’ Olive glanced towards the house ‘– her.’ She steadied her breathing. Thomas thought her violated, not burdened with a criminal’s child. There was more than one man who would be shocked.
‘Jack’s my brother, Olive. But . . .’ Thomas swallowed. The words rushed from his mouth. ‘If you want to leave I’ll take you back to Sydney.’ He looked at the ground and scratched his neck.
Olive touched Thomas’s cheek, her heart softening. In another time she may well have been his woman, for Thomas was the kinder, gentler man Jack used to be. He leant towards her, awkward, tentative. She closed her eyes, totally willing to suffer for companionship, for human touch. Oh God, she whispered as Thomas’s lips brushed hers. How far could a woman fall?
‘Are you going to collect the eggs, Olive? They start breaking ’em up if you don’t get ’em early.’ Squib was standing at the corner of the house, her face flushed. Both Thomas and Olive dropped their hands and moved apart too quickly.
‘We’ve nearly three dozen ready for sale. We’re hoping to get some seedlings for this monstrosity,’ Olive said too brightly as she nodded at the plot. ‘Run and get the basket, will you, Squib?’
Squib remained rooted to the spot. ‘I’m churning the butter.’
‘You get the eggs,’ Thomas directed Olive. ‘Well, go on with you then, Squib. Jack will be expecting butter on his bread today.’
When Olive returned the vegetable plot was partially completed. The soil was dark and cloddy and Thomas was using the back of a shovel to bash the clumps up. Olive could have hugged him were it not for the eggs balanced precariously in her straw hat. ‘Thank you.’ The way he looked at her, the depth within his eyes; Jack’s younger brother was growing up quickly. Slowly Olive backed away.
Chapter 40
Absolution Creek, 1965
Sam cut a piece of meat from his mutton chop, and mashed cauliflower and cheese sauce onto his fork. They were sitting in the dining room, their conversation polite but limited. It had been tense since yesterday’s fiasco. Firstly, the owner of the dozer wanted payment for a day’s lost work and transport costs when Cora cancelled Harold’s job. The timber was unable to be returned, having been cut to specification, which meant there was little point sending the corrugated iron back to the rural merchandise shop. It appeared Harold was the only winner out of the whole debacle. Sam knew when to keep his head down, and tonight was one of those times. Cora was brief in her lecture regarding the unexpected costs, pointedly explaining that the yearly wool proceeds were the property’s main income.
‘It’s a tight ship here,’ Cora concluded, ‘it has to be. There are certain challenges to running a property.’
‘Yes, well, talking about challenges,’ Meg began, ‘I had a bit of a problem myself today.’
Cora and Sam stopped talking and eating respectively.
‘I was teaching myself to drive the station wagon and the brakes went and I hit the boundary gate.’
The room was silent. Cora interlaced her fingers beneath her chin.
‘Anyway, it’s broken. Sorry.’
Cora stared at her.
‘Broken quite badly,’ Meg emphasised, attempting to fill the silence.
Sam’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He looked from his wife to Cora.
‘Sorry about that.’ Meg knew she sounded quite lame. ‘I figured that if I could drive I could get out and do a few things.’
‘Like what?’ Sam asked.
Cora began to chuckle.
Confused, Meg looked from Cora to her husband. ‘Like have a life.’
Her aunt laughed. ‘Good for you, girl. I was starting to believe you didn’t have any get up and go.’
Meg was stunned. ‘So you don’t mind? You’re not annoyed?’
‘Why should I be? Gates are fixable.’
Sam didn’t look too pleased. ‘You already have a life.’
‘Have a more fulfilling life, then,’ Cora said in a placating tone, turning to Sam. ‘A happy wife means a happy life.’
Meg grinned and cut a portion of meat. It was delicious.
‘So, when’s this rain coming?’ Sam looked unimpressed.
‘The full moon’s tomorrow,’ Cora began. ‘There will be a northerly change tonight, I imagine, and if you go outside later you’ll notice that there’s a ring around the moon.’
Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Another sign, I gather.’
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‘Actually yes, the old timers said it was moisture in the atmosphere.’
‘Which old timers?’ With the gate disaster a non-issue and a day’s silent treatment her allotted punishment after Cora found Horse entangled in the tree limb, Meg figured she’d served her penance. ‘Jack Manning?’
‘Who’s Jack Manning?’ Sam splattered flecks of half-chewed peas onto the table.
Cora winced. ‘The previous owner of Absoluton Creek,’ she answered.
‘How’d you get it, then?’
‘Luck, fate. Either way I was very fortunate.’
‘I’ll say,’ Sam agreed. ‘Got out on the right side of the bed that day.’
‘I saw Ellen this afternoon. She wants Harold to see a doctor.’ Meg took a sip of water. For someone thought to have only suffered a bit of light concussion Harold’s convalescence was taking a while.
Sam swallowed his last mouthful. ‘How did you end up with the property? Was this Manning bloke a relation?’
‘Harold’s feeling better.’ Cora tapped out a cigarette from the silver case. ‘Although his headache hasn’t eased so Ellen’s taking him in to town to see the doctor. They’ll stay in there for a few days. There’s little point getting lumbered out here. Our black soil road turns to glue after a decent fall of rain.’ She blew an impressive smoke ring into the air and watched it spiral upwards to the pressed metal ceiling. She gave Sam a rare smile. ‘So, how’s your leg?’
‘Good.’
‘Hmm . . . said with conviction. No swelling, no redness, no infection?’
‘Nope.’
After a dessert of apple pie and ice cream Sam did the unimaginable and cleared the plates.
‘The lad’s almost ready to join the wait staff at the Australia Hotel,’ Cora observed tartly. ‘I’d say he has an agenda, however I actually think he’s beginning to enjoy his new life.’
Sam’s evening habit was to listen to the radio after dinner and enjoy more than a splash of rum in his black tea prior to bed, but not tonight. The rum was pooling out in the rubble pit after he’d poured it down the sink; the radio he’d knocked over was irreparable and then there was that out-of-character kiss in the kitchen. Meg thought of James. She wasn’t in a rush to join Sam, and when Cora relaxed into a plush brocade chair near the open fire, beckoning Meg to join her, she quickly accepted.
The fire was warming and Meg closed her eyes briefly. She could hear her aunt pick up her reading glasses from the side table, and the pages of her latest novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, rustling under her fingers.
She opened her eyes again. ‘Good book?’ Meg hadn’t read any Hemingway. She was still ploughing through Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country, her end-of-day exhaustion invariably leading to the re-reading of pages from the night before.
‘War, honour, revenge, love.’ Cora lifted horn-rimmed glasses. ‘You should read it one day. You might learn something.’
‘I don’t know where you find the energy to read in the evening.’
Cora removed her glasses. ‘Next year when the girls go away to school you’ll have more time.’
‘Go away to school?’
‘Why, yes. There are no decent primary schools around here. I suggest one in Brisbane. Absolution Creek can contribute a little.’
A shower of sparks sprayed out on the tiled hearth as Meg poked the burning log. Her aunt might be in control of their work life but the twins’ futures were not under her jurisdiction. She sat cross-legged before the fire.
Cora closed her book, fingering the tasselled bookmark. ‘I’m sure you would have appreciated a better education, and obviously you want the best for your girls.’
‘There was nothing wrong with my education.’
‘No, of course there wasn’t.’
Meg knew she was being handled, placated. What worried her was that her aunt spoke as if Meg’s future was here on Absolution Creek. It was true she’d been excited when Ellen insinuated the property would be left to her, but Meg hadn’t yet thought beyond that point. Her thoughts flitted back to their Sydney apartment, her regulated yet strangely comforting existence there and the life she now led. . .
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Primrose Park.’ Meg cleared her mind of images of a blue-green sea merging with a narrow strip of sand and parkland. ‘You can see it from a side window in our flat. It’s so beautiful with its expanse of green lawn and wavering trees.’
‘I’m sure it is.’
Meg rested her chin on her knees. ‘When I was a child I played along the foreshore. I even have a little hidey-hole filled with oddments from my childhood. It’s on the side of a hill that leads to the water’s edge. I used to wander down to the park every day. When you sit close to the little harbour, which spills up to the park’s edge, you feel like you’re nestled in a frill of trees ringed by plants and water and energy.’
Cora placed her novel on the side table. ‘It’s very different to here, then.’
‘Oh yes. When there’s a full moon in Sydney you don’t feel as if you’re at the beck and call of the elements. Out here the moon, the sun, the weather controls everything, from the length of the days the men work to the vegetables we grow, to the feed the stock eat. We don’t seem to matter. People don’t seem to matter. The men go out every day and still they are never done, never finished. I feel that the bush is encroaching on us. That we’re in a continual battle with it.’
‘Well, this house does sit in the middle of a paddock.’
Meg turned to her. ‘It’s more than that. I always feel as if the bush is the stronger of us, with its secrets and its long history and its ability to –’
‘Survive?’
‘Yes,’ Meg agreed. ‘Survive. In the city, at least where we live, you’re never alone. It feels like a living, breathing entity, yet I’m not competing with the city to exist like we seem to out here. The place is a fairyland at night with its hillside dwellings, tiny boats on the water and the people and places, the things you can do. Why, I could fill up every evening from now to Christmas telling you about the grocer’s shop where I work, my favourite shops and cafés . . .’
Cora lit another cigarette then snapped the lid of the lighter shut. ‘And I wouldn’t be interested in hearing about it, Meg. Distance makes people romanticise about the past, a place, and we both know that your beloved city didn’t hold you enough to stop you from coming here.’
Meg wondered what circumstances moulded a person’s character; whether her aunt’s matter-of-fact attitude was an inherent part of her or a characteristic formed by life experience. She took the hearth brush from its stand and swept up ash and dirt, gathering it into a neat pile. There was still the kitchen table to be set for breakfast, the dough for their bread to be mixed and the dinner plates to wash, which would be sitting in the sink untouched.
‘The way you feel about the city is how I feel about the bush, although I don’t understand your love for such a manmade environment, and I’m sure that beyond your fond descriptions there are many people living in the city who don’t feel like you do. There would be those who feel adrift amongst a sea of strangers, bereft and alone; those that look beyond the brick square feet that contain their lives and wish for something better, greater.’
‘And have you found that something, Cora?’ In the flickering light her aunt’s profile was determined, youthful.
Cora lit another cigarette. She was in the habit of using a porcelain ashtray with a perforated edge, which was decorated with an interweaving narrow velvet ribbon. ‘How are you and Sam getting on?’
‘Good,’ Meg answered carefully. ‘Although James Campbell suggested you think otherwise.’ The words came out in a rush.
Cora frowned. ‘Did he now? James can be overly enthusiastic when it comes to women. He took it upon himself to make a couple of well-placed telephone calls regarding your husband.’ Cora lowered her voice and glanced towards the door. ‘Sam’s been involved in some nasty altercations in Sydney and it’s
all around town he’s a drinker.’
‘I see,’ Meg said flatly. ‘Small-town gossiping. Life must be boring out here.’
Cora tapped her finger on the arm of her chair. ‘You’re the new blood in the district. People talk.’
‘But we’re family.’
‘You are,’ Cora reminded her, ‘and you should have told me Sam’s predicament was a good part of the reason for you coming here. I never wanted another male on the place. I’ve enough problems trying to keep Harold under control.’
‘Well, maybe you should be paying a bit more attention to him. Sam seems to think he has some good ideas. And it sounds to me like it’s just as well he organised all that work stuff without your knowing about it. The property needs it.’
Cora’s mouth tightened. She took a long puff of her cigarette before stabbing it out in the ashtray. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ Meg continued, ‘and I also think Kendal would be a lot happier if he were paid for the work he did.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you seem to have developed some strong opinions for someone whose life barely takes her twenty feet beyond the back gate. I didn’t realise you were so knowledgeable on the workings of the property or understood the set of circumstances that sees Absolution lumbered with the likes of Harold’s nephew and constrained by costs. I don’t want to know who’s been feeding you such tripe, but someone has been rolling the bullets and you most obligingly are firing them.’ Cora lit another cigarette. ‘Now that we’ve covered that topic let’s move on to what I wanted to discuss with you.’
Meg tried to calm her breathing.
‘I’ve noticed a change in both you and Sam. For the better,’ Cora explained. ‘You’re both more settled, happy – especially Sam – which is to be expected, I guess, a couple of months down the track.’
‘I sense there’s a but coming.’
‘I just want you to be sure about the direction your life is taking. Let me put it this way: I can put up with Sam if you can.’
Her aunt certainly didn’t believe in prevaricating.
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