Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  “I did see it,” she told Suzanna. “And a fine machine it is too. You certainly don’t get many motorized vehicles in our part of the world.”

  She raised an eyebrow at Thomas, who didn’t appreciate the joke. Suzanna said, “Can we get one, Mummy? Can I ride in it . . . please?”

  “A horse is quicker,” Thomas grumbled.

  “I’m sure your father is already planning it. Not too late now, you hear?”

  “Yes, Mrs. McBride,” the nanny said, a little curtsy and dip of the head. She had come on the boat from England, apparently, where she’d worked in some fine old country house; Lord only knew what she was doing out here. Katherine walked over and kissed both children on their heads, Thomas twisting like he’d been poked. She left the room. Pulled the door closed behind her, made her way to the landing balustrades, the crowd below revealing itself, the hats and beehive hairstyles, a constellation of shining bald heads. Happily they milled around the atrium and into the adjoining reception rooms, waiters circulating with canapés and drinks trays, the string quartet tucked under the stairs; later, when the full band played, the atrium was to become a dance floor. There were fresh flowers everywhere, tinsel hung from the chandelier, the house dolled up like Christmas—what was Billy trying to prove?

  Of course, she already knew the answer. That much never changed.

  One man stood out among the revelers: loitering alone by the wall, clutching his champagne flute in a fist, dressed in plain scruffy clothing and a khaki-colored jacket, he looked more like one of their stockmen in truth. Katherine thought she might have recognized him. Maybe he’d been to the house before. Light brown hair and a thick mustache, hooded eyes restlessly roving the crowd. Whenever a tray came by he snaffled as much food as he could carry, and always took a refill of champagne, throwing it back greedily, eating openmouthed. She wondered if Billy knew him. Or if somebody’s coach driver had managed to sneak in unchecked.

  She drifted around the balcony landing, her hand trailing the banister, and here and there heads began to turn. A fluttering in her stomach, heat rising in her cheeks; a part of her hated being the reason for all this excess.

  Glasses began tinkling, rings tapping champagne flutes, as guests filtered through from the other rooms. The strings fell silent. A hush enveloped the house. Katherine paused at the turn partway down the stairs, every face now toward her, mostly strangers; a room of rich, grinning fools. And there was Billy, in the center, moving forward, the biggest fool of them all, buttoned up in his dinner suit, the waistcoat pulling at his gut. His face was flushed, his eyes wide, looked like he might already be drunk. He gazed at her warmly and hollered, “Here she is, ladies and gentlemen: my beautiful wife, the birthday girl!”

  Applause and cheering. Glasses were raised. Katherine came another few steps down then halted when Billy began talking again.

  “Now, you all know, I’m sure, that this party wasn’t Katherine’s idea. She doesn’t like being the centerpiece, ridiculous as that may seem—if you have a Turner why not hang it in the middle of the wall?” Laughter. Billy paused. “But no, this evening was my idea, because I wanted to mark her birthday with the kind of occasion she deserves. A celebration in her honor, a celebration of her. We didn’t have a lavish wedding. Hell, I could barely afford a suit. Sixteen years ago that was, down in Bewley’s little chapel, none of you lot would have been there, I know that much. But life’s been kind since then, to both of us. Not that it hasn’t been bloody hard work.” There was sniggering. Billy caught the implication and scolded: “I meant the station, you cheeky bastards—the station’s been bloody hard work!”

  As the laughter died out, Billy’s expression changed. He was staring up at Katherine with an almost boyish zeal. If she didn’t know him better, she might have thought him ready to cry.

  “I love you,” he told her earnestly, in front of all those people, those hardened cattlemen. “I’m sorry for not being around more—and for everything else. I don’t know where I’d be without you. So here’s to you, my Katie. Happy birthday!”

  There was a momentary pause, an inhalation in the room, followed by an audible sigh. Billy raised his glass and the others joined him, to cries of Happy Birthday! and To Katherine! and Hear Hear! The strings began playing again while, bewildered, suspended on the staircase, Katherine could only stare. Billy had never spoken to her that way before, not in public anyway. Despite herself, despite everything, she felt a rush of warmth and gratitude that shamed her a little too. She knew what he was, what he’d done, but he was also her husband. She had stuck with him, for better or worse, and for once here was a rare better—what was she to make of it? Was it so wrong to be moved?

  She descended the stairs, smiling bashfully, accepting well-wishes, seeking out Billy over their heads. Here he came toward her, the bodies parting, people slapping his back and shaking his hand. He was giddy in a way he hadn’t been for many years. She didn’t trust it. Something was very wrong.

  “Do you like it?” he asked her. “It’s not too much?”

  “It’s way too much, Billy. What the hell’s going on?”

  “What? It’s your birthday—we’re allowed to celebrate.”

  “All this. That speech. Why are you acting so strange?”

  They were talking in whispers, smiling and nodding at the people nearby. Billy led her aside, to the wall, pausing to fetch them each a drink from a passing tray. He pressed the champagne upon her and Katherine caught a glimpse of that interloper again, watching them keenly across the room.

  “That man, who is he? Over there, in the corner.”

  Carelessly Billy glanced over. “Don’t worry about him. Listen—”

  “Do you know him? Did you know he was here?”

  “Yes, it’s not important. Look, there’s something I need to say.”

  She steadied herself and stared at him, at his earnest bloodshot eyes; he was, she realized, even more drunk than she’d supposed.

  “We’re fine now,” Billy told her. “The station, there’s no chance it could ever fail. We’ve ridden out the depression and we’re drought-proof just about, there’s enough good land to spread the load. Nobody out there can touch us. Kidman’s not coming this far east. Everything’s set for the future, Kat. For you, the children—”

  Oh shit, he’s dying, Katherine thought. Or he’s fallen for somebody else.

  “—us McBrides are made for life. Well, the rest of them are, it’s you and me aren’t doing so good. All the money in the world but you still can’t hardly stand to look at me, and I know which I’d rather have. But it’s all right, see, I’ve a plan to fix that too. I’m going to make things right between us, I can’t tell you how yet, but I need to go away for a while. When I’m back and everything’s in place you can say I’m an idiot but by then it’ll be too late. Least, I hope it will be anyway. I’ll explain then, and maybe you’ll see I’m not that boy anymore—I love you, I just told you in front of everyone, what more’s it going to take?”

  “You’re drunk. Have you heard yourself, Billy McBride?”

  “Aye, maybe. But I mean it.”

  “Just like that? After all these years?”

  “I’ve always loved you, Katie.”

  “I don’t doubt it, in your own way. That’s not what I’m talking about: How do you intend fixing everything in one fell swoop?”

  Billy glanced in the direction of the stranger, but he was gone. “You’re just going to have to trust me, like you once did.” He raised his champagne flute and grinned at her. “Now come on, enjoy the party. It’s your birthday, for Christ’s sake!”

  * * *

  “Sir, there’s a Mr. Wainwright here to see you.”

  Billy had been in the yard, talking to the staff about the night’s arrangements, Katherine’s birthday party, another grand gesture of atonement, another attempt at making things right. Not everything, maybe, but at the very least he could put on a good show for her, and for all their guests. He had quite a crowd coming.
Squatters, lawmen, councilors, the great and the good from far and wide. Some had traveled days to get here. The house would be full to the brim. Now he turned at the sound of Hardy’s voice, and that name he’d used: Wainwright, after all this time. Billy had presumed him the latest in a long line of frauds. A whole year had passed nearly, and not a single bloody word.

  “Where is he?”

  “Waiting in the atrium. Shall I show him the door?”

  “No, I’ll speak with him. Put him in the office. Stay till I get there. Make sure he doesn’t touch anything.”

  Hardy nodded, went back inside. Billy finished his instructions and followed, found Hardy standing stiffly in the office doorway while Wainwright paced the room. He stopped when Billy entered. Hardy pulled the door closed. Billy walked around the desk and dropped into the leather chair with an irritated sigh. He pointed to the wingbacks and Wainwright took a seat.

  “If it’s more money you’re after, forget it. Wasting my bloody time, the lot of you. There isn’t a man out there capable of doing the job he claims.”

  Wainwright didn’t answer. He sat with the hunched and brooding posture of most in his trade, his heavy hands together, picking the filthy nails. Light brown hair and mustache, a face that had taken a few blows. When he spoke, his voice was low and husky, like he’d breathed in too much dust.

  “I’m only after what’s owed. Nothing more than that.”

  “Owed? You thieving bastard. I’ve paid you too much as it is.”

  “The other half, I mean.”

  A stillness came over Billy. His anger immediately drained; he looked suddenly ill. Neither man moving. Staring each other down. Billy’s mouth opened, reaching for words that wouldn’t come. Finally, he managed: “You found him?”

  “I did.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “He is.”

  “Where?”

  “Gippsland, Victoria. Going by the name of Robert Thompson: Bobby’s what he gets. Has a small selection on a hillside out of town. It’s good land. Grazing country. He seems to be getting by.”

  “Alone?”

  Wainwright shrugged. “He’s got a darkie with him, old fella, must be some kind of boy. I never saw no woman. Seems quite fond of his dog.”

  Billy flopped back in his chair, his gaze sliding from Wainwright and across a thousand miles to where his brother now lived on a hillside, with a blackboy and a dog, tending his cattle and mostly alone. He could see him. He could see Tommy so clearly in his mind. He’d be mid-thirties now and healthy, Billy reckoned, handsome with that dusty fair hair.

  “You saw him? Speak to him?”

  “I never spoke to him, no. Didn’t want to cause alarm. But I saw him plenty, from a distance, he wouldn’t have known I was there.”

  “And how did he seem? Is he happy?”

  “He was working mostly. Or sitting with his dog.”

  “Lonely?”

  “Might be, aye.”

  Billy shook his head. “I need a fucking drink.”

  He rose and poured himself a tall whiskey, nothing for Wainwright, and sat back down behind the desk. Billy’s hand was shaking. Tommy, after all this time. Wincing, he took a long pull of the whiskey, thought fuck it and tipped the whole thing down. He came up gasping. Eyes pinched, sucking in through his teeth. He set down the glass and waited while the burn subsided and the liquor swam nicely in his belly and head, then focused on Wainwright again.

  “So how’d you find him?”

  A shrug. “Followed the trail. He wasn’t an easy man to run down.”

  “Could others? The police?”

  “Find anyone if you look hard enough. It’d have to be worth their while.”

  “You bring proof?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything—you could be spinning me a line.”

  Wainwright shifted a little in the chair, flexing his thick shoulders and neck. “I did, it would cost my reputation. And you ain’t paying enough to risk that.”

  “But you’re sure it’s Tommy?”

  “Now that I’ll stake my name on. It’s him all right.”

  “You know what I can do if you’re lying to me?”

  “I’ve an idea, aye.”

  “And you’re sticking with your story?”

  “It ain’t a story. It’s the way things is.”

  “Fine.”

  Billy leaned to the safe, opened it, counted out a stack of bills. He handed them to Wainwright, who counted them also, slowly, then folded them and slipped them into the pocket of his jacket. They sat a moment in silence until Wainwright remembered something, dipped into another of his pockets and came up with a handwritten note. “There it is all wrote down for you. His name. Directions from the town.” He leaned forward and sent it fluttering across the desk. Billy picked it up and read. He wondered where Bobby had come from. There weren’t any Robert Thompsons he knew. It was a common enough name though. Must have been thousands out there.

  “We’re having a party tonight. Stay for a drink and a feed.”

  “I don’t really go to parties.”

  “And I’m not really asking. I want you here while I make a few enquiries.”

  “What enquiries?”

  “I have a man in the Melbourne land office. I’ll send an urgent telegram. Won’t take long.”

  Wainwright sniffed dismissively. “I told you. It’s him all right.”

  “Then you won’t mind staying. Fill your boots with my champagne.”

  Billy dismissed him. Wainwright skulked from the room. Hardy came in soon afterward and Billy told him to watch their guest: he wasn’t to leave the station until Billy said he could. Billy picked up the piece of paper and reread it. The words seemed magical on the page. A few simple ink scrawls and within them a whole world. Tommy. It had been twenty-one years. Apart longer than they were together—the thought stopped Billy cold. It seemed only weeks ago they had embraced and said their final goodbye. But now here he was: a grazier, in the green hills of Victoria, where they got the rain. Billy shook his head, and smiled.

  “If either of you talks, if Billy leaves, or Tommy returns, if there’s so much as a letter in the mail, I will kill the both of you and your families and anyone else you hold dear. There will be no warning. One day you will simply look upon my face and know what the other has done.”

  Noone. Well, fuck him. Billy wasn’t scared of that cunt now. He’d been a boy, sixteen years old, when out there in the atrium Noone had laid down those terms; sixteen and trembling like a beat dog. Now Billy owned the atrium, and the house around it, the entire district, while Noone was some pencil-pushing civil servant, commissioner of police for whatever that was worth, sitting around in dusty guildhalls, wearing wigs and smoking cigars. And he was old, the fucker, he was an old man these days—Billy had done some digging too. Big house on the river, a wife and two grown-up girls, moving in all the right society circles and with far too much to lose. What did Noone care about Billy and Tommy now? About threats made two decades ago? Billy was not some young pup he could frighten anymore—he would wager his own influence stretched just as far as Noone’s, you only had to look at who was coming tonight. The real power in Queensland lay not in the city but in those who owned the land. The people Billy had in his pocket, the favors he could call in. Christ, he could only imagine what it would feel like to ruin him, to bring that bastard down. Let him feel powerless for a change; your life on another man’s whim. And he could do it, he was suddenly realizing; he’d always had the means. But he hadn’t been strong enough. He hadn’t dared. Not now. Now he had the strength, the power, the wealth: Billy could ride out any scandal far easier than Noone. Because Noone was a politician, and politicians are men of straw: light a fire under them and see how quickly they burn. With him gone Tommy would be safe, Billy could fix it for his brother to come home. And if he did this, if he was able to pull it off, Katherine might find a way to forgive him, they could have a real marriage again.

  He was see
ing it so clearly: redemption, at last.

  All he had to do was confess.

  Chapter 31

  Tommy McBride

  Birds chirruped softly as Tommy rose and swiveled to the edge of the bed; the rapid-fire cackle of a kookaburra’s cry. Carefully he slid the bedsheet back over Emily, protecting her modesty, and her body from the early morning chill, let his hand rest on her shoulder, cupping the slender bone. She lay on her front, her head turned away from him, blond hair spread over the pillow, naked beneath the sheet. Tommy was naked also. They’d slept however they fell. He stood and padded quietly from the bedroom, eased the door to behind him, stopped short of closing it fully on account of the hinges’ creak. Into the living room, where he found his trousers and pulled them on, then the kitchen, the coffeepot, the stove. He rolled a cigarette while the water was boiling. Their dinner plates were still on the table. Tommy tucked the cigarette behind his ear and tidied them away, scraped the leftovers into a bowl and put the plates in the washtub for later. He poured his coffee. Steaming in the cool dawn air. Juggling the mug and bowl of leftovers, he opened the door and found Tess waiting on the back verandah, her black-and-white head cocked toward him, like she’d heard them last night and known.

  “Don’t look at me like that, you cheeky bugger. Come and have a feed.”

  He stepped out, set down the bowl, and lit the cigarette while she tucked in. Prime beef steak and fried potatoes, she had a good right to be keen. Tommy sipped his coffee. Looking out over the backyard with its fowl house and veggie patch, its dunny and wash station, into the paddocks beyond. Some cattle were near the fence line, grazing peacefully on feed as green and rich as the day he’d first come—somehow he still didn’t trust it, assumed it couldn’t last. He drew deeply on the cigarette, exhaled through his nose, blue eyes narrowed in their customary squint. His face was lightly stubbled, gray and gold, red in places, he didn’t ever grow a full beard. Broad in the chest and shoulders, work-thick sunburned arms, his torso dusted in freckles and wispy fair hair. He scratched his chest and yawned heavily, tossed the coffee dregs. With the cigarette between his lips he unbuckled his trousers to piss off the steps, then reconsidered after a glance at the house. She was probably still sleeping, but what if she saw him? He dropped his cigarette in the bucket, then, holding up his trousers, waddled awkwardly down the steps and barefoot across the yard to the dunny instead.