by Paul Howarth
“Arthur.”
Immediately he straightened. His spine unknotted, the skin slid over the ribs. He was wearing a pair of cutoff trousers tied with rope at the waist, the hardened sole of a foot poking under his leg. His only movement was breathing. The rise and fall of his chest.
Tommy took off his hat and held it. “Arthur, it’s me.”
Now the head turned, but slowly, little increments, his shoulders twisting around. He looked at Tommy and his eyes closed briefly; Tommy thought he heard him exhale.
Arthur stood. Dropped the fishing pole and uncoiled his legs and rose lightly and nimbly to his feet. He walked toward Tommy in an unhurried lope, a full smile spreading across his face. All the ride down here Tommy had been figuring what to say, and now that Arthur was in front of him he couldn’t speak. But Christ it was good to see him again. For a long time he’d not known if he would.
They embraced and held each other so tightly Tommy could feel the warmth of Arthur’s skin through his shirt. There wasn’t much left of him. A body down to its bones. They parted and stood assessing each other, Arthur shaking his head.
“Well, look at you, Tommy. You’re all growed up.”
“And you’re even older. You shrunk?”
“Nah, you’re taller, I reckon. Shit, you’re properly a man.”
Tommy smiled bashfully. “How you been, Arthur?”
“Better now. They let you in then?”
“Asked me for a bloody password. Tougher than a bank vault, this place.”
“They have this idea folks’ll come and try to take us back to whatever shithole we came from. Maybe they’re right. How was your journey down?”
“Long. I got made by that fucker Alan Ames.”
The name meant nothing to Arthur. “And how long you stopping for?”
“A few days, maybe. Look, Arthur—”
“Only a few days?”
The hurt was obvious. Tommy raised a hand. “I need to say this. I know it was a long time ago but I’m sorry for what happened between us in Marree. I was being an idiot back then. I know that. I didn’t mean to run you off.”
“You never ran me off anything. Fact is, we both needed it. Maybe I shouldn’t have up and left you like I did, but I figured you’d be right on your own. Hell, there ain’t no hard feelings, how can there be between us? Not unless you’re really only stopping here a couple of days?”
“Well, that’s another thing we need to talk about. I’ve a plan, you see.”
“A plan?” Arthur repeated, laughing. “’Course you bloody do.”
“For where we’re headed. Together. Unless you’d rather stick it here?”
“Mate, I’d rather stick a burning poker up my hole. I’ve had about as much of their praying as I can stomach. It’s not through choice I’m still living here. Tell me where we’re headed and I’m gone.”
“South,” Tommy said, smiling. “Same as we always were.”
* * *
On thin wooden chairs they sat in the land office waiting room with two other men, and a receptionist who every few seconds shot a suspicious glare at Arthur as if surprised to find him still there. Arthur’s leg bounced constantly, his gaze was pinned to the floor. He was already spooked by the city: the scale and opulence of Marvellous Melbourne was like nothing he had seen before. Thousands of people, the bicycles, buggies, and tram cars, rooftops touching the sky. Smoke belched from the factories and wharves west of the city and the river sat gray and low in the smog, while in the east it curved through swathes of manicured parkland, past the bowl of the famous cricket ground and out into the suburbs beyond. For this was where the money drained, from all that land, livestock, gold, all that labor put in by men like them, the wealth running off the pastures and scrubland in the north and flowing down here like a sewer.
“I’ll wait outside,” Arthur said, standing, but Tommy gripped his arm.
“We’re doing this together, partners, fifty-fifty like we agreed.”
Awkwardly Arthur retook his seat. The other men were watching him, nervous-looking characters wearing their very best suits, twisting their hats in their hands. Most likely their futures were on the line also, might have been waiting for this day their whole lives. Or maybe they owed the land man money, another month when they couldn’t pay, and had now come to haggle their fate.
The office door opened and a skinny Italian with a crestfallen face skulked out with his eyes down. He walked past Tommy and Arthur—they slid in their boots—and out of the front door without a word.
“Mr. Thompson,” the secretary said, nodding. “You’re next.”
Tommy stood, collected his holdall, waited while reluctantly Arthur rose to his feet. They walked past the reception desk and in through the still-open office door; Arthur closed it behind him, the letters running backward on the stenciled glass. “Sit down, sit down,” the land man barked from behind a cluttered desk, not even a shake of hands. They sat, the land man frowning at Arthur and no doubt their attire: they were in their normal work clothes, they didn’t have anything else. He was small and brown-haired and had about him a fussy, officious air. His name was Richardson, he told them, and he understood they were here about acquiring some land.
“Aye,” Tommy said. “A selection. Somewhere that gets the rain.”
“We get plenty of rain in Victoria, Mr. . . . ?”
“Thompson,” Tommy reminded him.
“Mr. Thompson. So I’m afraid you’ll have to be a little more specific than that.”
“Somewhere hilly, then. Rain and hills, that’s what we’re after.”
Richardson glanced at Arthur—that curious mention of “we”—and folded his hands on the desk. “You will need funds to set down by way of a deposit, of course. Which you have, I’m assuming, the pair of you? A letter of credit perhaps?”
He was taking the piss, Tommy realized. “I don’t trust shinplasters,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
Tommy stood and opened his holdall and shook out the contents onto the desk: bundles of banknotes, his entire life savings, plus the little Arthur had insisted on putting in. “That do you?” Tommy asked, and the land man flushed. Curtly, he nodded and reached behind him to a bureau, ran his finger over the handwritten labels and slid out one of the drawers to reveal a mound of tightly rolled plans. He shuffled through them until he found what he was looking for, fetched it out and went to put it on the desk but the money was still piled there. Tommy stuffed it back into his bag; Richardson unfurled the map and weighted it down.
“Now then,” he said, snapping on a pair of fold-out reading spectacles, his finger tracing the map, tapping each location as he spoke. “Let me see. Here we are in Melbourne. Gippsland is less than a week’s ride east. Or there is the train line, which might prove useful to you, if it’s livestock you’re looking to graze. There’s plenty of land still available, at a very reasonable rate, and there are areas that are hilly, like you asked for. It also gets the rain. These crosses are the plots, I have another plan with more detail, a smaller scale, showing the topography and suchlike, let’s see if there are any that interest you. If so, I can have my agent meet you out there and you can take a look in person for yourselves, how does all that sound?”
Tommy and Arthur glanced at each other.
“That works,” Tommy said.
* * *
They stood at the top of the hillside, their backs to the gully below, looking over a plateau of rolling pasture that with a signature could be theirs. Behind them the land agent waited idly on the east-west track that bisected the gully they would also own. There was a creek at the bottom, he had told them, flowing all the way into town, while up here the ground was moist and rich, a sponge for the rainwater that fell in the faraway hills and trickled down to the creek through these fields. It was as perfect a spot for grazing as Tommy had ever seen. The cattle wouldn’t know itself. They could build the first house right here where they stood, then later a second one out back somewhere so
they wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves. Half an hour into town, Melbourne far enough away, Queensland even farther—hell, they were about as far south as the land went here, almost at the sea. Tommy could even picture the fence lines, the hedgerows and trees that would serve as natural breaking points, though he mostly planned on letting the cattle roam. No more droving: they could take them to market on the trains. And he’d really never seen grass like it. Sink a well into this hillside, water would spout like an oil field. He had a very good feeling. By the look of him, Arthur had the same.
“Well? What do you reckon?” Tommy asked.
“I reckon she’ll do us just fine.”
“I was thinking one house here and another—”
“Over there by them trees.”
“Exactly.”
Arthur was pointing. “Paddocks, yards, stables.”
“It’ll take a bit of work, mind. Getting it all built.”
He shook his head. “Mate, it won’t feel nothing like work if it’s ours.”
Not since Glendale—and even then, only barely—had Tommy been able to call anywhere his own. Arthur was no different. Probably he was worse. All their lives they’d run and hid and grafted for someone else’s gain, now finally here was a chance to plant their feet in the soil and say this, right here, this is mine, I have earned it, I am home.
Chapter 29
Reverend Bean
Through the dust-blown desert they ambled, one man armed with a rifle, the other a knife and spear. Hunters, though with nothing to show for it yet, chatting while they walked, laughing now and then, until one spotted the carrion birds squabbling over a carcass part-buried in the dirt. He tapped his friend on the arm, pointed with the rifle-end. Warily they approached. At the last minute the birds hopped clear and a thick blanket of flies rose into the air. The men stepped nearer and stood looking at the body lying facedown in the earth. A man, naked, chunks of him missing where he’d been gorged and pecked and gnawed. Whitefella, by the look of him, though the skin was blackened by sun and rot. The spear-carrier crouched and poked the belly with the spear tip, then between them using their weapons they rolled the body onto its back. Arms limp and heavy. The legs twisted one over the next. The head flopped toward them and they saw what was left of the face. Empty eye sockets, a swollen tongueless mouth, raw slabs of rotting flesh where the ears should have been. Ruefully they looked at him a moment until one cracked a joke and they both laughed. They moved on. The birds hopped back over and went on eating, and the flies descended again.
Part III
1906
Nine years later
Chapter 30
Katherine and Billy McBride
From her bedroom window Katherine watched the guests arriving, trundling up the track in their carriages and buggies, the Monteiths in their new motorcar, black-and-chrome, glinting in the evening sun. Bradley Monteith brought it spluttering to a halt at the bottom of the steps and waved to the gathering crowd. Off came his goggles. A cheeky honk of the horn. He leaped from the car and began parading it to the onlookers, while in the passenger seat his wife, Evelyn, sat motionless, as if dumbstruck by the drive. She too was wearing goggles, and a shawl to protect her dress, but when she removed them it was clear neither had worked: her pearl-white gown now stained with a dusty bib, a white patch from the goggles slapped across her face. She looked like a startled possum, sitting wide-eyed in the car, and when finally her husband remembered and helped her down, she swayed like a drunk on her feet. Not that Bradley noticed, turning quickly and shouting, “Isn’t she a beauty!” while lovingly stroking the hood of the car.
Katherine returned to her dressing table, sat down and took up her brushes and continued powdering her eyelids and cheeks. Downstairs, a string quartet was playing; later, there would be a full band, led by someone called Frankie, goodness knows where Billy had found him. In fact she had no idea about any of this, all these people, this expense, and all on her behalf. Tomorrow she would turn forty, and for that Billy had decided a grand party must be thrown, not bothering to consult her, much as she doubted Evelyn Monteith had been consulted about that new motorcar. And yet here they were, the two of them, along with every other woman down there, caked in dust or disappointment or whatever other burden they bore, smiling prettily for their husbands, for appearances, for the bloody photographer Billy had hired. They were always expected to be somebody else’s something: wife, mother, sister, widow. They were never just allowed to be themselves.
Still, it would be nice to see people, she so rarely left the station these days. Where could she go? Another trip to Bewley, the same shops, the same faces, the same smiles when she was with them, the whispered gossip once she was gone? Last year she had traveled to Melbourne for her father’s funeral (only herself and the children, Billy had stayed behind), and though it had been a welcome adventure she’d felt utterly out of place. So many buildings and people, so little space. The manicured parkland of the Domain Gardens had seemed laughable, fake, people strolling with their parasols like actors on a stage. She belonged here, she’d accepted finally. The station, the bush, the nothingness—this was truly now her home.
She finished with her makeup and considered her reflection, better than when she’d started though never quite good enough. Thin lines at her eyes and mouth, the obvious signs of tiredness, the pigmentation and other marks each pregnancy had left behind. She was still considered attractive, she knew; heads still turned when she walked into a room, though how much of that was down to her status, her fine clothing, she wasn’t sure. Maybe her limp drew their eyes also. Barely there anymore but she felt how it aged her, and the effort it took to keep it from her stride. Four years ago she’d been out riding and had fallen, lucky she never left the house without her shotgun or she might not have been found. The horse had spooked at something, she wasn’t sure what, and she’d landed on a rock, not even a very big one, it was the angle more than anything else. A bolt of searing pain tore through her; the hip was broken, she’d later learn. Lying on the ground in agony, watching the birds cross the sky, she’d wondered if this was really it for her, if her time had come. Such an ignominy, to die like this, alone. Thoughts of the children, of Suzanna especially, she was only three years old. Then she’d remembered the shotgun. The horse now standing calmly not fifteen yards away—screaming, foaming, she had dragged herself over that hardscrabble ground and hauled on the stirrup and managed to reach the saddle holster. She lay on her back, exhausted. Fired, reloaded, fired again, kept firing until she hadn’t the strength. Next thing she knew she was in bed, the doctor over her, dosed up on laudanum drops.
Billy had shot the horse right there where he found it. Took the saddle off, the bit and bridle, put a bullet straight through its head.
She went to the wardrobe, reached for the bodice of her new ballgown, held it against herself in the long mirror over her camisole. Billy had brought a dressmaker out from Brisbane for the occasion; then back again, the poor man, for a fitting once the gown was made. And it was beautiful, she had to admit. White lace with blue ruffles, silk almost too fine to touch, goodness knows how much it had cost. Heads would turn tonight, she was sure of it, then later after a few drinks there’d be hands touching her back or stroking the bare skin of her arm, the rush of their too-close breath. Repulsive, most of them, though there was a small secret part of her that enjoyed being desired. Of course, Billy still wanted her, pined for her, often painfully so, but things were more complicated there. They had reached an accommodation, was how she thought of it, a tolerance of each other, an acceptance of their shared but separate lives. She did give in to him sometimes (hence Suzanna); they were still a married couple after all. And he was trying, God love him. In his own clumsy way, and for a long time now, with both her and the children, Billy had tried his best.
Julie was waiting outside the bedroom. Katherine called her in, and together they began the rigmarole of getting her dressed. Corset, petticoat, bustle, skirt . . . on an
d on, pulling and tying and fastening at every stage. Her hair was pinned in a nest and finished with a thin golden tiara. She stood in the long mirror inspecting the outcome. “You look beautiful, Mrs. McBride,” Julie said. And even now, sixteen years later, the name still took her a little by surprise.
Out through the door and along the corridor, her short train whispering behind. Past Billy’s bedroom, then William’s and Isobel’s, both away at boarding school and hardly ever home. The noise from downstairs building the closer to the atrium she came: the music and the talking, the clink of glasses, raucous laughter now and then. She thought she could hear Billy somewhere, louder than anyone, making himself heard.
At Suzanna’s door she stopped and listened, heard the excited little voices inside. She turned the handle and entered, found Suzanna, Thomas, and the nanny huddled around the window, ogling the late arrivals and no doubt Bradley Monteith’s car. The nanny stiffened when she noticed Katherine, tried to suppress her smile; Katherine waved that it was fine.
“Mummy, Mummy, did you see it? Did you see the motorized car?”
“It’s motorcar, not motorized,” Thomas corrected, eleven years old and already assuming he knew it all. By now they should probably have been thinking about school for him too, but Billy was keen to keep him at home as long as he could. He had come round, belatedly, in this new century of opportunity, to the benefits a good education could bring, but Thomas was the son he’d always wanted—a horse-riding, cattle-droving replica—and although he claimed it was good for the boy to be home-tutored a while longer, to properly embed him in station life, she knew it was for Billy’s benefit too. He’d be miserable without his favorite to teach and mold and tease. None of the others got a look in. Pathetic though it sounded, the boy was about as close as Billy had to a friend.