Ross waited for Maria to answer. In the short time since meeting the girl, only once had she touched him, the morning after Ross consumed the sunset rum. Ever since then he’d felt restless and unsatisfied. Ross had blamed Sowden’s horrible concoction and the endless rain. Now he was not so convinced. Connor’s reminder that Maria would eventually leave had not sat well with him and the reasons had very little to do with cooking and cleaning. He wanted her.
This was a different need to the kissing and fumbling of youth. To the girl at Burra he’d cared for and may well have married if she hadn’t told him how embarrassed she was to be outing with a man who wasn’t going to war. Ross would never forget 1915. Alastair sailing away. His return to Burra. The questions and queries from older sheepmen of why he wasn’t joining up as well. That single white feather.
‘I want you to stay, Maria,’ he said, despite being aware of the risk of repeating the question. The hard reality of being told no. The chance remained that she wasn’t interested, that she didn’t feel the same way. But what if she did? What if this girl, who was so different, also recognised the separateness in him and understood how alike they were?
She came to stand with him in the narrow doorway, a hand on the frame. He kept his gaze on the rain as she stared up at him, still giving no reply. Ross didn’t want to ask her again. Not a third time.
‘This blasted rain. I need to get mail out and supplies in,’ he said. Above them sections of the bluff protruded from vertical rivers. ‘And a bottle of whisky wouldn’t go astray either.’
‘You don’t need it, Ross. It wouldn’t help,’ she said.
Ross could count the number of times she’d spoken his name.
‘What about your family?’ she asked. ‘You and Connor talk about them. About your businesses in South Australia and your brother Alastair. The one that’s missing.’
‘He never came back from the war, Maria,’ said Ross. ‘I’m an only child.’
‘One day it will all be yours. Everything here and there? You have to go back if you own so much.’ Maria fingered his sleeve where it was rolled and bunched at the elbow. He was distracted by the intimacy of such an unexpected action, and it took him a second to reply.
‘There is nothing for me there. Nothing except bad memories and an unforgiving family. They took what they wanted. Now it’s my turn.’
‘People are like that,’ replied Maria.
The girl’s hand was a light pressure on his arm as her fingers plied the material, crescent-shaped moons sitting at the base of each curved nail. He wanted to touch her, to feel the softness of her skin. Her dark hair was parted and plaited into a single thick rope that hung down the centre of her back. He ran his fingers down her long neck to the bony depression at the base of her throat, feeling the angle of collarbone and shoulder, his exploration stopping where the curve of her breast began to swell. Her heart thudded beneath his hand.
‘Are you still going to tell me that you only sleep on the cot next to mine because of the storms?’ he asked gently. He leant towards her.
Maria’s eyebrows drew together as if she was sorting through the pieces of a puzzle. He kissed her, lingering over a sensation he’d long forgotten, feeling the fullness of her lips against his.
Then she was pulling away, and he worried that he’d rushed her. She scooped up a handful of mud, placing the sludge in his palm.
‘Forget what your family took,’ she told him.
The mass ran through Ross’s fingers. He found it difficult to draw himself from the place he’d just been back to the reality of what Maria spoke of.
‘Remember what was given. People don’t live forever.’
She was right. One day his family would be gone, claimed by time. He simply needed to outlive them all.
Maria reached out into the rain and began rubbing her palms together to rid her skin of the mud. Ross stepped behind her and took her hands between his and washed them clean, continuing to hold her long after the water ran clear. The length of her back pressed against his torso, the scent of her hair in his nostrils.
‘Are you ever going to tell me about yourself?’ he asked.
‘Maybe, yes.’ She looked directly at him and then, as if suddenly coy, turned away. ‘No.’
Ross didn’t want that. He didn’t want her to be like everyone else, manipulative and evasive. ‘Why do you sleep next to me?’ He needed the words to be said aloud.
She gave a thin laugh. ‘I really don’t like thunder.’
‘Maria?’
‘You know why.’
‘Say it,’ said Ross.
‘I can’t. It wouldn’t be right. I can’t be the person you want me to be, Ross,’ she replied. ‘I’m different to you. My life is different and it shouldn’t be altered for anything.’ She looked at him. ‘Or anyone.’
‘You’re not different. We’re the same. Can’t you see that? Anyway, I’m only offering you a job. Or do you want to go to this Marcus Holder? Would you rather be there?’
‘Things have been decided for me. It’s better to leave things as they are. Safer.’
‘I’d never do anything to hurt you, Maria,’ said Ross, touching her face.
She brought his palm to her lips. ‘Yes you will,’ she answered. ‘Eventually we will both hurt each other.’
Chapter 24
Four weeks later the clouds dispersed. Ross woke to swifts chasing insects and sunlight glinting onto dewy webs. He rode through tall grasses and clusters of darting gold-brown dragonflies, across sodden country where the scents of flowering bushes and rank undergrowth drifted in the growing heat. Violent southeasterly storms had flattened the vast stands of spear grass, and he listened to the whoosh of falling foliage as trees dropped their heavy wet season growth. At night he, Connor and Maria feasted, laughing with the freedom that came with the end of the wet. Their conversations were filled with details of the extraordinary abundance of animal and birdlife and what they might achieve, now that the dry had edged in.
Tracing the wet track marked on Sowden’s map, Ross and Connor rode through the tangled bush across grasslands and towards a clump of blue-green foliage, searching for timber for the planned homestead improvements. The horses wound through the cool woodlands as the men peered at the crowns of arching cyprus branches, calculating that the pine was seventy feet high or more. Wordlessly they turned back to the edge of the stand of trees, where fire and past foragers had left hacked stumps and burnt wood. It was no small task that lay before them and Connor was quick to suggest recruiting some of the Aboriginal people from the camp to help. Ross dismissed this, telling his friend they would manage, somehow.
They returned to the same place a few weeks later when the track was dry, and cut and loaded lengths of timber into the creaking dray, which had not seen service since before their arrival nearly five months earlier. After a week camping out, the men left the cyprus stand at daybreak. They halted their homeward journey when the sun was at midpoint and explored late into the afternoon, as the light slanted from the west.
The two men untethered their horses from the rear of the cart and, leaving the wagon in the shade, rode out to where the woodlands merged into flat marshy plains of grass. Large flocks of squawking magpie geese flapped upwards on their approach, forming a bridge of white between the lush green of the earth and the azure of the sky.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ remarked Ross.
‘Aye. It’s a fine stretch of land,’ Connor agreed.
‘Space, Connor. Space and grass and fresh air and not a soul to bother a person. A man can breathe out here. All I see is endless potential and nothing I think about seems impossible anymore.’ He clapped Connor on the back, and thought of Maria.
‘Aye, well, while I dinnae quite share your enthusiasm for living in the middle of a lake for part of the year, I admit the place does worm its way into a man.’
It did indeed. In the weeks since their initial embrace in the kitchen shed, Ross had been making quiet inroads with Mar
ia when opportunity allowed, and her acceptance of his attentions was beginning to erode the bitterness of his previous relationships. He was not brazen enough to rush her, satisfying his growing ardour with the closeness of a brief embrace, or the touch of her skin.
He drew hard on the reins, and held up a hand to stop Connor from further movement. ‘See them?’ he asked.
His friend, who had been busy watching long-legged grey plumed birds, took a moment to focus.
There were eight buffalo a half-mile away, moving slowly towards them.
‘Aye,’ replied Connor. ‘I see them all right. Where did they come from?’
A light breeze carried across from the direction of the animals. ‘They haven’t smelt us,’ Ross observed. He touched his horse’s flanks, and walked her forwards.
‘Temperamental, they are.’ Connor scratched at his beard. ‘Charge a man without thought.’
The buffalo splashed on through the swamp. With the drying of the land, the floodplain was returning to mud as the water drained. The ground grew softer, the dense pasture concealing the unstable earth beneath.
‘I think we’ve followed them far enough,’ said Connor, when sludge replaced dry soil and the horses began to struggle.
‘That bull must be close to ten feet long and nearly seven feet high.’ The horses lifted their hooves nervously. Ross drew his rifle. ‘Those horns are five feet wide if they’re an inch. I wouldn’t mind them hanging above the dining-room table in the homestead.’ Sensing the intrusion, a mud-plastered bull came closer. ‘He’s seen us.’ The animal dropped its head.
‘Aye, and he doesn’t look happy about it,’ replied Connor.
Reluctantly, Ross turned away from the beasts. Were the earth drier he would have pursued them. There was money in buffalo, based on the number of hunters they’d seen in Darwin, and they roamed his land ripe for the taking.
‘I see that look, Ross Grant. Dinnae go telling me you’ve a fancy to become a hunter of hides and bone.’ Connor glanced over his shoulder as they retreated.
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? You’ve yet to progress from sheep to cattle. I’d rather thought the answer was pretty obvious.’
‘Well, unlike sheep and cattle we don’t have to yard them,’ said Ross, feeling the prickle of Connor’s insinuation. ‘We only have to shoot them and skin them.’
‘It’s your use of the word only that’s got me concerned.’
As Ross and Connor arrived back at the homestead with the loaded dray, members of Sowden’s camp began gathering at the edge of the billabong. Finally the group was joined by the cane chair and its occupant, the familiar sight of the umbrella aloft above his head.
‘That’d be right. Come to gloat at our efforts they have,’ said Connor. ‘Now, if we’d been friendlier, they might have given us a hand.’
The pine was long and cumbersome, and the pair struggled to pull the logs from the rear of the dray.
‘Have you noticed,’ replied Ross as he wiped sweat from his eyes, ‘there’s more of them? A good forty or so.’
With the onset of the fine weather the camp was beginning to swell with young men. They’d been arriving in small groups over the past few weeks and today they lingered at the edge of the billabong observing Ross and Connor’s work with interest, until the crowd grew tired of their efforts and the audience dwindled to a handful of children who shyly approached the two men. Ross lowered the log onto the ground as Connor dropped his end, adding to the growing stack.
‘You building big house?’ one of the children asked. The boy wore trousers cut off at the knees and carried a stick, which he poked continuously in the ground, flicking dirt in the air. Behind him the other children laughed and pointed. Compared to the rest of the young ones, this boy was not quite as dark-skinned.
‘Hoping to,’ replied Ross.
‘You bigfella Boss.’ The child grinned. ‘I’m Little Bill.’
‘Sowden’s been busy,’ Connor said to Ross with a smirk. ‘And who are all the other men that have arrived, Little Bill?’
‘They come for the cattle round-up.’
‘Do you think some of them might give us a hand?’ asked Connor.
‘Maybe,’ the boy replied, walking back towards the camp.
‘We can manage without their help,’ reprimanded Ross.
Connor glanced briefly towards the encampment before resuming the unloading of the timber.
‘Think of it this way, Connor,’ said Ross with a smile. ‘It could be worse. We’re only cutting enough for a dining-room floor, not tackling the whole building. We’ll leave that to the experts.’
‘If we can find one out here.’ Connor paused in his efforts of dragging a length of timber across to the growing pile. ‘Let me ask you this, Ross. Have you ever done any building?’
‘Fence posts,’ he admitted. ‘And you?’
‘A pigsty.’ Connor shrugged. ‘I helped my father when I was a wee lad.’
‘Well then, we’re reasonably qualified,’ said Ross.
‘You sheep men have a funny sense of humour.’
Toby and JJ arrived with four other stockmen. Without being asked, they carried the rest of the timber to the stack of wood, and then Toby offered them further help, which wasn’t refused. The bushmen spent half the day digging out a narrow sawpit and then took it in turns to cut the wood. Ross learnt from them that soon the wet season waterholes would begin to dry and when the cattle moved to the permanent watering spots, that’s when the gathering-up of the cattle would begin.
Armed with the knowledge of action fast approaching, Ross and Connor spent the next few days concentrating on the construction of the dining-room floor. They made a framework for the new surface before resting the lengths of sawn wood across the scaffolding, chocking the ends with smaller pieces of timber, trying to ensure the surface was reasonably level. With the help of the men from Sowden’s camp, there were now enough cut lengths to attempt to line the walls as well. Ross spent hours in the house on his knees with hammer and nails, only rising for food or for Maria.
‘Ross?’ she asked, appearing in front of him one afternoon with a bucket full of water.
He placed the hammer on the table and accepted the ladle of water, his hands brushing the handle where her own fingers grasped the dipper. He drank thirstily, watching her over the rim of the spoon, aware of Connor at the other end of the room, his back turned towards them. Although she’d not said yes to his offer of staying on as their cook, neither had she turned it down. If she wondered why he wanted her to have an official capacity on the property, she never questioned his reasoning. For the moment, Ross needed Maria’s presence on Waybell to continue without query, although there was only one person on the station Ross worried would speak his mind when it came to their burgeoning relationship, and that was Connor. Ross released the dipper, and moved to the sleep-out, gesturing for Maria to follow.
Once alone, he pressed her against the wall, feeling her body fitting to his. He kissed her frantically, aware of their breathlessness, of the wanton sighs that surged between them. The drinking water she carried spilt to the floor. Ross placed a hand on her breast, vaguely aware of having abandoned all propriety, of finally having given into his desire. ‘I want you, Maria. It’s impossible being so close to you and –’
She placed a finger to his mouth. They could hear Connor in the adjoining room, continuing to saw the timber.
Ross shook his head. ‘Don’t worry about him.’
‘And what about Mr Holder? Once it dries up he’ll come for me and I’ll have to go.’
‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,’ replied Ross.
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Then explain it to me, Maria.’
‘Ross?’ called Connor from the dining room. ‘I dinnae know what we’re going to do about this hole in the wall. We’ll need extra boards for it.’
‘Coming!’ he yelled.
In the seconds it took for him to a
nswer Connor, Maria was gone. He leant against the boards, balling his hand into a fist.
Each day was the same. It was difficult to find time to be with Maria. They were always busy working and, if not, someone invariably interrupted them. She was kept occupied preparing the game they shot for food, cooking endless dampers and tending the vegetable garden. The children from Sowden’s camp visited the homestead daily now and Maria quickly gained a shadow in Little Bill, who followed her everywhere, helping with any chores he could.
In the dining room Ross surveyed the area where the replacement boards were needed. The floor was nearly completed, and with its finishing the evenings of sitting with their chairs resting precariously on the unfinished surface would soon be at an end.
‘Two more boards, Connor, and then we’ll be done.’
‘Aye,’ said Connor, reaching for the planks Ross passed to him.
Finally, the last nail was driven into the boards and the table dragged back to the room’s centre, where the two men gathered to admire their handiwork. The floor and walls, made of streaky gold-and-brown heartwood, with its knotty malformed whirls, were greatly improved, and the men spent an hour sipping tea and alternating between staring at the boards and complimenting each other on their achievement.
‘It’s a good job done.’ Ross took another gulp of the tea and examined the lost branches and diseases that formed the grainy markings in the timber. ‘We could build the extensions, you and I.’
‘Aye, right. I’ll not be coerced into that,’ answered Connor. ‘You mightn’t recall the swearing and the arguments while we measured and fitted these boards but I do. Besides, if I was to drop a ball on this here floor it’d be at the other end in a skip and a jump.’
‘Well I can’t see us doing any more building for a while. I want to get the Darwin abattoir constructed so we can begin using it this season,’ said Ross. ‘There’s a lot to work out after that.’
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