Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  “Yes, of course, do forgive me. Two names over two decades. Must be quite a challenge for you, I am sure.”

  He scowled at the insult, if that was what it was—she could almost see him calculating whether to take offense. A small man in a brown checked suit, blotchy-faced and sweating, he had a habit of dabbing himself with a handkerchief then sniffing it once he was done. He repeated the ritual and calmed a little, took a sip of his brandy, said, “Right, so when are you expecting him back?”

  Days ago, thought Katherine; she had sent a telegram to the Bellevue Hotel and received a reply that Billy had checked out last week. She didn’t know where he was. Beyond Brisbane, he’d not told her anything about his plans. But she held her smile and kept her shoulders pinned and replied, “As I said, he has gone to the city on business, which will take as long as it takes. Then there is the return journey. If you’d telegrammed beforehand, I’d have told you the same thing.”

  “Brave man, leaving his wife all the way out here, fending for herself.”

  Mischief in his eyes when he said it. Katherine knew that glint. “I’m hardly alone, Mr. Collins. And I’m more than capable of fending for myself.”

  He mulled it over for a moment. Another dab and sniff.

  “It’s the commission I’m getting,” he said finally. “I need fifteen percent.”

  Katherine stifled a burst of laughter. “Fifteen percent?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Up from five?”

  “I know it’s a jump, but costs are up, labor, everything’s on the rise.”

  “Your costs aren’t our concern, Mr. Collins.”

  “Well they should be. It’s your cattle I’m putting through.”

  “Indeed. Quite a substantial number of them, as I recall.”

  “Still don’t change the numbers. The business won’t survive.”

  “How you run things at your end is not our problem.”

  “Will be if I go under. You could negotiate, at least.”

  She busied herself with a stack of papers awaiting signature on the desk, slid one across and considered it. “As I said, you really should have telegrammed first.”

  “Twelve and a half then. I could make do with twelve and a half.”

  She looked up at him. “You’ll make do with five, like everyone else.”

  “Have a heart, Mrs. McBride. I’ve a family of my own to look after, so do my men. There’s kiddies’ll starve otherwise. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  Katherine put the papers aside again, leaned forward on the desk. “Well I’m pleased to see you’ve learned my name finally, but let me ask you this: If it were Billy sitting here instead of me, would you be asking for fifteen percent? Suggesting he have a heart, tossing out starving children like bait?”

  “He’s a reasonable man, your husband. Fair.”

  “You wouldn’t still have your seat, Mr. Collins. You’d be out that door and down the front steps with his boot up your backside, or worse.”

  “It’s only business, I don’t mean nothing by it.”

  “Business. Exactly. So what makes you think my answer will be any different to his?”

  “Ten, then. I could scrape by on ten percent.”

  “I’m sure you could. But you’ll have to scrape by on five.”

  His stare hardened, a setting of the jaw. “You’ve a bloody nerve, sitting here in your mansion, telling me to scrape by. The hell do you know about any of it—you ain’t never been nothing but a rich man’s wife. A dozen years I’ve been your selling agent and I ain’t asking for nothing except what’s fair. Have Billy write when he’s back from Brisbane. I ain’t wasting any more of my time.”

  He went to stand but Katherine stopped him with a raised hand. “Mr. Collins, please, sit down. I think perhaps there’s been a misunderstanding here.”

  A smirk teased his lips as he did so. Arms folded, head cocked, like he had her now. “All right, I’m listening,” he said, nodding. “On you go.”

  “Thank you. You’re very kind. And you are correct, of course, about the length of our association. Twelve years is a long time. Over the past decade we have, as you know, outlasted and outgrown almost every other cattle station in central Queensland. Nobody can match us, Mr. Collins. The competition has all but disappeared. Now, we are a fair employer. You can ask any of our men. But when it comes to commercial arrangements such as the one we have with you, there really is no question as to who holds the cards. We set the rates we trade at, we decide with whom to trade; it does not work the other way around.” She paused and waited a beat before continuing: “Imagine a dingo, hunting out there in the scrubs, choosing which rabbit to go after—do you think the rabbits get any say? The best they can do to protect themselves, surely, is to keep their heads down, remain quiet, perhaps scurry into the long grass to hide. But now let us imagine that one particular rabbit begins jumping, screaming, provoking the dingo to its face—what do you think the dingo would do to it then?”

  “Hold up now. I already said I never meant no offense.”

  “She would kill it, would she not? She would kill it and gut it and move on to the next. You are that rabbit, Mr. Collins. There are thousands of you out there. We can have ourselves another sales agent before you’ve even got back on your horse. But what would you be without us? Where’s your next Broken Ridge?”

  Shifting in the chair, dabbing himself furiously with his handkerchief, he stammered, “Look, all I’m doing is asking for fair compensation. Seven and a half, six even, anything just to—”

  “I don’t think you’re listening to me.”

  “Fine. We’ll stick at five. But I still want to talk to Billy about this.”

  “This is my station, not Billy’s, and no, we will not stick at five. We are done, Mr. Collins. Our relationship is over. I will not have you come uninvited into my home, insult me, patronize me, make demands you would never dare make of a man, then expect us to continue as before. We are finished—as, I would wager, are you.” She gestured to the door. “Now you may leave. Hardy will show you out.”

  At the sound of his name Hardy opened the door and stood waiting.

  “But . . . we have a contract!” Collins spluttered.

  “You’ll receive a written termination. I’ll get on to it right away. The speed of the mail these days, I daresay it will reach your office before you do. Or you can wait in the atrium while I write it, however you prefer.”

  “This is outrageous! You can’t do this! Twelve bloody years!”

  “Don’t make a scene, Mr. Collins. Good day.”

  Coldly she watched him snarl and bluster to his feet then scurry like a scolded child from the room. Hardy closed the door behind them and when she was sure they were gone she let out a long breath and fell back into her chair. She noticed his glass on the desktop, the lip marks and fingerprints smeared on the side. She cringed. A little laugh escaped. A giddiness at what she’d just done. She regretted none of it. The man deserved every word. She stood and went to the cabinet and leafed through the papers until she found the Collins contract, took it back to her desk, and readied her pen.

  * * *

  She had almost completed her paperwork when an hour later there came a knock on the door and Hardy announced that another rider was approaching on the track. Katherine laid down her pen and sighed. “Surely not Collins again?”

  “I don’t believe so, ma’am. In fact it looks a little like Mr. McBride.”

  She hurried outside and from the verandah railing watched him come. There was certainly a resemblance. Square shoulders, thick chest, a similar way of holding himself on the horse. But this wasn’t Billy. The horse was too knackered, the clothes too unkempt, the rider leaner, trimmer, stronger, younger; hatless, with light fair hair. Trailing a hand along the railing she turned onto the stairs and came down very slowly, rocking slightly on her bad hip, not once breaking her stare. It might have been anyone, one of the men from the compound, a merchant up from town . . . so why
this surge of excitement, this fluttering deep inside?

  He beat her to the bottom of the staircase, dismounted and walked forward, lifting his gaze, those searching blue eyes, and with a gasp Katherine recognized him as the boy who had stood terrified with his brother in the bedroom just behind her, asking if their sister was still alive; the boy who’d never seen a Christmas tree until she showed him hers; the boy in whose saddlebag she’d hidden a packet of lemon lollies, before sending him off to a massacre; the boy who’d come back irrevocably changed.

  She pulled up short on the final few steps. His expression had not changed since seeing her. Unsmiling, riven with deep unease. Gripping the banister she descended to the track, gravel crunching softly under her shoes.

  “Tommy? Is that you?”

  He nodded timidly. Running his thumb over his knuckles, wringing his dust-covered hands. And she knew then, with absolute certainty and a knifelike pain in her chest, that her fool of a husband had died. This scheme of his, this plan . . . he’d gone out there and got himself killed. She folded her arms defensively, tears brimming as she asked, “Is it Billy?” then dripping when Tommy’s grimace confirmed that it was.

  Her gaze slid over the sun-drenched hillside, the shadows gently lengthening, the daily sundial of the trees. It felt inevitable, really. In a way she had always expected this, that one day someone would ride up and tell her Billy was dead. A fall, a quarrel, a drunken brawl. He was never going to go nobly, or drift away in his bed at a grand old age. Roughly she swiped a tear from her cheek and asked Tommy, “How?”

  He looked about uncertainly. “Here?”

  “I want to know.”

  “All right.” Awkwardly he shuffled foot to foot, then: “He found me, came to the house, only he was followed. It was one of Noone’s men.”

  “Shot?”

  “Long-range rifle. He never saw it coming. Went out happy in the end.”

  She scoffed—of course he bloody did. Oblivious even to his own death. But as the laughter faded she found that she was reeling, the ground lurching, nausea rising up; she reached for the banister behind her but missed it, stumbled, her heels struck the bottom step and she fell. Tommy lunged and caught her, helped her down, Katherine groping for the solidity of the staircase and sitting gratefully on the steps. She smoothed her skirt then went on rubbing it rhythmically back and forth, unable to fill a breath, the sun blinding suddenly, hot as a soldering iron, while her mind tumbled forward into her future like a bucket down an empty well. The children would grow up fatherless. She was a widow, again. Stuck out here, alone save the house staff; she would not remarry, she knew with startling clarity, not now she didn’t have to, not now the only man she would love in her lifetime was dead.

  Hesitantly Tommy sat down beside her, lowering himself stiffly onto the step, legs wide, elbows on his knees. His head was turned away from her, squinting off into the distance, to the compound and south to the land beyond.

  “I want to know what happened. Don’t spare me. Tell me everything.”

  She saw him nod and waited. He fished a cigarette tin from his pocket, offered one to Katherine. She didn’t usually smoke but took one anyway; the tin looked like Billy’s, she thought. Tommy lit the cigarette for her. The tip trembled terribly in the flame. He lit another for himself and for a moment they smoked in silence, Katherine’s furtive little drags and exhalations, Tommy drawing the smoke all the way down to his boots.

  “He said he’d been looking for me, for years maybe, some bloke of his finally tracked me down . . .”

  Quietly she listened to the unraveling of Billy’s life, and with it the children’s, also hers. This folly he had embarked upon, the stranger at her birthday party, some misguided plan to go after Edmund Noone. Why? What was the point? Of course she could understand him wanting to find Tommy, but why couldn’t that be enough? She already knew the answer. Because nothing ever was, for Billy. Not her, not their children, not the empire they had built . . . nothing was ever good enough.

  “I think maybe he wanted to put things right about what happened,” Tommy said. “Show you he was sorry for what we did.”

  “Billy isn’t sorry. Surely you know him better than that.”

  “Well, that’s what he told me anyhow.”

  Angrily, she tossed her cigarette. “Billy’s only regret is that I found out the truth about him. Nothing more than that.”

  “He said he wanted you to be able to look him in the face again.”

  “More likely I’d have slapped him. He risked everything . . . and for what?”

  “It ain’t been easy, you know, living with what we did.”

  She looked at him sharply. “I’m sure it hasn’t, for you. But Billy has slept like a baby every night of his life. I know you’re only saying these things to be kind, Tommy, but don’t. We both know what he is—was. Deep down Billy never cared about anyone but himself. He believed himself a victim too. Going out there to right the wrongs against him . . . in his own mind Billy was the hero of every story. It was always someone else to blame.”

  From her sleeve she pulled a handkerchief, dabbed her eyes, her nose, stuffed it back under the cuff and composed herself. “He would have taken us all down with him. You included. You’re lucky you got out alive.”

  “Only barely.”

  “Do you have a family? Are they safe?”

  “Of sorts. No children. I doubt he knows anything about them. Billy didn’t.”

  “And what about you? Would Noone still come after you?”

  Tommy shrugged. “I was lying in a hospital bed four days ago, he could have done anything to me then. Me and him, I don’t know, I think he almost liked me in a way. It hardly seems worth his while bothering. What could I do?”

  Hesitantly she reached for his hand and held it, the skin as rough as unplaned wood. “Thank you for coming all this way to tell me. I know it was a risk.”

  “You deserved to know.”

  “I suppose it makes this a little easier, hearing it from you.”

  She smiled at him, let go of his hand, watched him take it back and cup it in his lap. He looked weak, she thought, compromised somehow. The stubs of his two missing fingers—she remembered him nursing the bandage, fourteen years old, right here on these same steps.

  “Will you stay?” Katherine asked him. “Our eldest two are away at school, but Thomas and Suzanna would love to meet you I’m sure.”

  “It’s their daddy they’re waiting on, not me.”

  “They’d be grateful for it, Tommy. As would I.”

  He glanced at the house over his shoulder, a little fearfully Katherine thought. All the memories would be so raw for him, this the first time he’d been back. Watching him in profile, his worn and stubbled face, a faraway absence in his eyes. There was so much pain in him. All those awkward furtive glances and shrugs, the little tics, Tommy was a man literally crawling in his own skin. Obvious, now that she saw it, the effect his childhood still had. That same darkness she’d seen in Billy, but amplified, more raw, more real—he was not that naive little boy but a man, a stranger, truthfully she had no idea who he was.

  “I was thinking I’d go down to the house while I’m here. Might be my only chance. Visit Mary too, if that’s all right.”

  “Of course it is. Don’t be silly. Take as long as you need.”

  “Will you manage, d’you think? After?”

  She sat up tall and sighed. “I expect so. I’m used to being alone.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Raise my children. Live my life. Carry on. Mourn him, obviously. When we were first together, Tommy . . .” She drifted into silence, shook her head. A quick burst of laughter as she said, “You know, he once just about threw my father down these steps. Kicked him out of the house, said he’d castrate him if he ever came back. I was horrified but delighted. That’s the effect he had on me, the kind of man he was. Then, I don’t know, status, money, secrets, lies—is it even possible for two people to love each o
ther after such a length of time?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  She pulled herself up to her feet. “No, well, I’m not sure it is. Please consider staying, Tommy, even if it’s just for one night. If you head down to Glendale now the sunset may catch you and you’ll end up sleeping there, which is not the best idea. Besides, I’d welcome the company. I’d love to hear your stories—I’ve thought about you often, we both did, wondering where you’d got to, how you were. If it helps, I won’t tell the children until after you’re gone. That way you won’t feel responsible, and it’ll give me time to get used to the idea, not to mention figure out what on earth I’m going to say.”

  She walked back up the staircase, her shoes clipping softly on the wood. When she reached the top she turned and found that Tommy hadn’t moved. Hunched forward, his head hanging, worrying his hands together, the wounded and the good, as if trying to rub them clean.

  Chapter 43

  Tommy McBride

  The grave couldn’t have been much longer than the shovel they’d dug it with. A five-foot plot with a low iron fence, and a white marble headstone bearing Mary’s name and dates. No flowers, but that wasn’t surprising. Flowers never lasted out here.

  Tommy touched his fingers to his lips then rested them on the headstone, out of obligation more than anything, it had been so long ago. What was left in him now was not so much grief as the vivid memory of that grief, of standing hollowed-out at this graveside on the day they’d returned from the dispersal, only to learn that their sister was dead.

  It had been Katherine who had told them. Funny how things come around. She had buried Mary while they were away to stop the body from rotting, and John Sullivan had nearly shit himself that a McBride now lay in his land. Tommy smiled at that one. Glanced across the little cemetery to the mottled gray headstone that bore that fat fucker’s name—who was buried on whose land now? For eternity Sullivan would lie there fuming in McBride soil; would have watched Billy take his station, marry his widow, raise their kids. Tommy didn’t really believe in the afterlife, but it was nice to imagine sometimes.