Brumby's Run

by Jennifer Scoullar

  Sam repeated the secret mantra beneath her breath – jabberwocky, jabberwocky, jabberwocky – a psychological ploy she used to trigger a calm response in the face of extreme provocation. ‘You’re right about Charlie not being able to go home. She needs to stay in Melbourne for a couple of months. But don’t worry, the Leukaemia Foundation is putting her up in an apartment. Mary’s already there.’

  ‘She is?’ asked Faith. ‘You’ve seen it?’

  Thank God. The airport was in sight. Not long now. ‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In East Melbourne somewhere.’

  ‘What’s it like?’ asked Faith.

  ‘Nice,’ said Sam warily. ‘Room for one patient and one carer. There’s a rooftop gym, and a pool. Even an organic grocery store nearby.’ She was about to say what a fan of organic produce Mary was, but bit her lip in time.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me? Don’t I deserve to know anything?’

  Past long-term parking, swinging around towards the international terminal. ‘You get upset when I mention Mary,’ said Sam. ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Faith.

  ‘What a stupid question!’ said Sam. ‘I didn’t want to upset you because I love you.’

  ‘You do?’ Faith’s face softened and she reached a hand out to stroke Sam’s arm.

  ‘Yes, I do love you,’ Sam repeated, and then, under her breath, ‘God knows why.’

  ‘I’ll see you off, Mum, then I’m going out to the stables. It’s been ages since I saw Pharaoh.’

  For some reason, her mother seemed in a sudden hurry. ‘No need, just let me out, darling.’ Sam swung into the passenger drop-off lane and helped Faith with her bags.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Faith, taking charge of her monogrammed Louis Vuitton luggage. ‘Call you when I get to Mamie’s. And have a lovely Christmas, darling.’ Sam embraced her in a mighty hug, like the bear hugs she used to give when she was small. Faith’s face lit up in a smile. ‘You’ll crush my suit,’ she complained, but they both knew she didn’t mean it. They both knew this was the very best possible note on which to say goodbye. Sam watched her mother stride off on her ridiculous heels, holding her breath until Faith disappeared into the crowd. Sam tossed her keys in the air and caught them with a deft flourish. Finally she could start living her life, her way. She couldn’t wait to tell Pharaoh.

  ‘Oh, that horse? That one ain’t here,’ said Brodie.

  ‘I can see that for myself.’ Sam had checked all the private turn-out paddocks – no sign of Pharaoh. She waited for an explanation, pretty confident no sensible one would be forthcoming. She’d have to spell it out. ‘So where is he?’

  A slow, sleazy smile spread across Brodie’s pinched features. ‘Dunno, Miss. All I know is it’s gone. Some bloke loaded it on a float yesterday and took off. Ain’t seen it since.’

  Why was she wasting her time talking to this creep? He probably couldn’t tell one horse from another, and there were half a dozen chestnut thoroughbreds at the stables. Perhaps Pharaoh was in the wrong loosebox? Sam turned to go.

  ‘Sal reckons your mum sold that horse.’

  Sam stopped short. She swung around, her stomach coiled in nasty knots. ‘What did you say?’

  Brodie’s face creased into a malicious grin. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You said Pharaoh’s been sold.’

  ‘Did I, Miss?’

  He deserved a good slapping. Instead Sam sought out Sally, the stable manager. She was in the office, on the phone, a mug of coffee in hand. Her cheerful face fell when Sam came in. ‘I have to go,’ said Sally, ending the call in obvious haste. Her expression was disturbing – Sally looked like she was preparing for a fight.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam.’

  So, it was true. ‘Where he is?’ Sam’s voice broke with emotion, with rage and grief and disbelief.

  ‘Pharaoh’s gone to Andrew Wolf,’ said Sally. ‘He was most impressed. You should be proud.’

  Sam wanted to scream, accuse, demand to know how Sally could have done it. How she could take Pharoah away, cast him into the unknown, without Sam’s affection and protection. How Sally could face work and phone calls and coffee, all the while knowing that this moment would come. The moment when she’d have to confess the terrible thing she’d done.

  ‘Get me his number,’ said Sam, her voice hard. Sally looked unsure for a moment, then handed Sam her phone. Sam scrolled through the numbers, found Andrew’s and rang it. The conversation did not go well.

  ‘Sold by mistake, you say? I don’t think so. I have the signed transfer papers.’

  ‘My mother signed those. She doesn’t own Pharaoh. I do.’

  ‘According to the papers,’ said Andrew in an infuriatingly pompous tone, ‘Faith Carmichael was the horse’s registered owner. She told me about how you’d lost interest. It happens all the time,’ he said, like he understood everything. ‘You girls discover boys, and, well, horses take a back seat, don’t they?’ Sam tried to speak, but Andrew talked over her. ‘Shame to see Pharaoh going to waste like that.’ There was a long silence. Sam got the dreadful feeling that there was no point trying to defend herself against Faith’s wicked allegations. ‘Are you saying this isn’t your mother’s signature on the transfer?’

  Sally sipped her coffee while Sam explained that Faith was Pharaoh’s owner in name only, over and over again. ‘I haven’t lost interest. That’s ridiculous. I broke him in myself when I was fifteen, and I’ve been the only one ever to ride him.’

  ‘That’s not quite true,’ said Sally in the background. ‘Rachael worked him sometimes.’

  Sam ignored her. ‘Please, he’s my life! You have to send him home. You just have to.’ Her voice was a stammer. ‘I didn’t even get to say goodbye.’ But it was no use. Andrew just kept repeating that Faith had signed the transfer, rubbing it in again and again. Rubbing in her mother’s ultimate betrayal. Sam threw down the phone and fled. She had to talk to Charlie.

  Charlie rewound her outlandish scarf, a colourful cane-toad print this time. ‘Mothers are like that,’ she said sagely. ‘They rip out your heart one minute, and then expect you to keep right on loving them the next. If she’s anything like my mum, she’ll twist this around until it’s all your fault.’

  ‘Mary does that too?’

  Charlie nodded, swung her legs off the bed and stood up. She still looked so frail. If only they could leave the damned hospital and go to a bar or something. Drown their sorrows, make a plan to get Pharaoh home. But it was clear just from one glance that Charlie’s recovery was going to be long and slow.

  ‘Can’t you just buy him back?’ asked Charlie. ‘Isn’t your family loaded?’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ said Sam. ‘The buyer won’t budge. And anyway, there’s a limit of ten thousand on my credit card. That’s not nearly enough.’

  Charlie whistled. The sound was surprisingly strong and melodious. ‘How much is Pharaoh worth, then?’

  ‘A lot more than that. It’s ironic, isn’t it? I spend all year training him, and now he’s worth so much, I can’t afford him.’

  Charlie pulled a tissue from a frog-shaped box, gently lifted her sister’s mask, and wiped the tears from her face. The gesture was as sweet as it was unexpected.

  ‘I’m going to miss him so much.’ Sam’s words erupted in short gasps, like she’d been winded. ‘He was all I’d ever wanted. How will I live without him?’ Charlie murmured soft words of consolation, but her expression of sympathy only provoked in Sam a further flood of self-pity. ‘There’s nothing left,’ she managed, between sobs. ‘Dad’s away, and he’s always been too busy for me anyway. I don’t have any proper friends. Except for Cate, and she’s gone too. Pharaoh was it … All I had. There’s nothing left for me here in Melbourne. Nothing at all.’

  Charlie reached out, stroked Sam’s hair and shushed her. ‘There are lots of horses back home at Currajong.’ She said it in an odd tone, as if the remark was
imbued with some secret significance.

  Sam blew her nose behind her mask, a great honking blow. ‘So?’

  ‘So you go home to Currajong for Christmas. Home to Brumby’s Run.’ Charlie slipped from the bed and fetched a box from the cupboard. Beneath some action shots of Charlie campdrafting lay a battered stockman’s hat. Charlie handed it to Sam. ‘For you. My lucky akubra. Try it on.’ Sam did as she was asked, catching her reflection in the mirror. She looked just like the girl in the photographs.

  ‘You already said that there’s nothing for you here,’ said Charlie. ‘The house back home is empty, and the stock need checking. Mum asked Max to look in on the place, but he’s a dodgy old bastard. You’d be doing me a favour.’ Charlie pointed to the horse in the pictures. ‘Tambo could use some TLC.’ Sam took a long look at the photos. ‘Well?’ asked Charlie, with a broad smile. ‘What do you say?’

  Chapter Eleven

  Bill pushed aside the half-finished plate of bacon and eggs. ‘Mary Kelly is a failed hippie, not a farmer. She’s got no bloody idea.’

  ‘Fair call,’ said Drew, ‘but why should her stock suffer for it?’ He could feel the hot rush of blood to his temples, something that was happening all too often lately. ‘We can’t just let them starve.’

  ‘They’ll manage until the autumn break,’ said Bill, with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘And anyway, what exactly do you propose that I do about it?’

  ‘It’s your fault in the first place,’ said Drew angrily. ‘You’ve leased every bit of good land she’s got, pushed her cattle into that rocky top corner. That’s mongrel country. Not enough grass up there for goats.’

  ‘Nobody put a gun to Mary’s head to make her sign that lease.’ Bill gulped the last of his tea, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘If she’s overstocked, that’s her problem.’ He stood up and stalked away, thereby declaring the subject closed.

  Drew started to clear away the dishes. Mai, their housekeeper, appeared from the kitchen. ‘I do that,’ she said. He nodded. ‘I decorate?’ she asked. ‘Mrs Carmichael always have me decorate on Christmas Eve.’

  Christmas Eve. If Mum were here, the place would be groaning with ornaments and lights and the biggest cypress pine Bill could find. There’d be the smell of roasting pork and homemade plum pudding. Chocolates and lollies and bonbons. Extravagantly wrapped gifts spilling from under the fragrant tree. Melinda, Steph and Mum, arguing and giggling, a joyous confusion of perfumed hair, pretty clothes and flashing Santa Claus earrings. His sisters could always make Dad smile. But Mum was spending Christmas in Sydney this year, with her new bloke and the girls. She’d asked Drew to go up, but he’d said he couldn’t leave Dad on his own. He was beginning to regret the decision. Without Mum’s festive energy, the day would be just a poor copy of Christmas.

  Drew looked at Mai’s expectant face. ‘Decorate if you want,’ he said.

  ‘No tree?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Mai,’ he said, and grabbed his hat from a peg by the door. ‘No tree.’

  After breakfast, Drew finished bolting the new rails on the round yard, then he and Bess took a run into town. The day was stinking hot, the bitumen on the road already sticky. He picked up fuel and a few things at the produce store: oats, layer pellets, dog kibble. Lunchtime found him at the pub, asking questions.

  ‘Mary Kelly?’ said Kevin, behind the bar. He wore a hat sprouting Christmas reindeer antlers. They waved when he shook his head. ‘Who the hell knows where she is?’

  ‘In jail?’ suggested Harry, the town mechanic.

  ‘Best place for her,’ said a dour-looking man. Drew sighed and ordered the mixed grill. Mary was unpopular amongst some of the older cattlemen, who judged any unmarried mother harshly. She’d been just a teenager when she inherited Brumby’s Run, following her father’s early death. Jock Kelly had been a lazy drunk who’d neglected his land. For years Jock’s lower pastures had acted as a weed reservoir. They’d infected neighbouring properties with a flourishing cornucopia of invasive species, infestations that Mary in turn had also mainly ignored. Waterways choked with willow and Cape broom. Paddocks purple with Paterson’s curse. Bridal creeper, blackberries and boxthorn. Horehound, periwinkle and ragwort. Brumby’s Run seemed to spontaneously generate every noxious weed known to man.

  The Department of Environment had issued Mary with a string of infringement notices, none of which she’d complied with. Fines accumulated, totalling thousands of dollars, but you had to hand it to Mary – she’d argued no capacity to pay, and requested her fines be converted to community service in lieu. Mary never paid a cent. But she did establish a glorious herb garden for the old folks at the Tallangala nursing home. In desperation, neighbours slashed and sprayed Mary’s paddocks themselves. Bill became the main catalyst for the intervention. By the time he’d finished, Brumby’s Run was as clear of invasive weeds as his own Kilmarnock Station. The whole exercise had not won Mary any friends.

  There was a long list of other grievances. Common boundary fences weren’t maintained. Mary ran up accounts all over town, and came up with bizarre excuses not to pay. A baby magpie has flown into my house, and I have to stay home to feed it. Or All names are put into a hat. If I pull out yours, you get paid. If not, you stay in the hat til next week. Drew’s personal favourite was when Mary argued she suffered from multiple personality disorder, and the contract for sale of goods had been made with a personality that she wouldn’t be seeing for a while.

  By contrast, the local alternative lifestylers loved Mary, and frequently sought her out for her encyclopaedic knowledge of herbal remedies. Even the odd station owner’s wife had been known to surreptitiously pay her a visit. Still, it was unlikely that Mary earned much money that way, and she certainly didn’t make a living from beef. Drew couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a pen of Kelly cattle go through the saleyards. Whatever could have happened to her and Charlie?

  Bess howled from the pub verandah. Drew wrapped a burnt sausage for her in a paper serviette covered in pictures of snowy pine trees and gold angels. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said to nobody in particular, and finished his beer.

  Outside, Bess swallowed the snag in one gulp. He secured her in the back of the ute, then headed out of town. It was time to get some answers.

  The rusty wire gate of Brumby’s Run hung off its hinges. Drew dragged it open and drove up the rutted track to the house. A car was parked next to the house. Not Mary’s car, but a late-model Volkswagen. It looked like a shiny blue Christmas beetle.

  Drew parked the ute and lifted Bess down from the tray. Nose to the ground, she trotted to the front door, scratched at it and disappeared inside. ‘Hello,’ said a girl’s voice. ‘You’re a big girl. Where did you come from?’ It was Charlie’s voice – and then again, it wasn’t. Drew nudged his way inside. Charlie knelt by the stove, hugging Bess tight. When she looked up, when she looked straight at him, he couldn’t pick at first what was so different about her. Then it hit him. Everything … and nothing. Her hair was the same rich brown, with the same slight wave. Yet it was a shorter cut, layered and stylish; fashionable, even. Her figure boasted the same full breasts and slim waist, the same long legs. But her clothes were all wrong: tailored shirt, tapered pants, riding boots. Where were the worn jeans and faded T-shirt? One thing was certain, though. Charlie looked a million dollars.

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ Drew asked.

  She looked uncertain, bewildered. Charlie was many things, but uncertain had never been one of them. ‘You might have me confused with my sister,’ she said in a hesitant voice. Her pretty mouth moved in an unusual way, rounding out each vowel with particular care, and clipping the consonants. It was Drew’s turn for confusion. Charlie gave Bess one last hug, and stood up. She extended a slim arm. ‘I’m Samantha.’ Drew just stared, open-mouthed. She let her arm fall to her side. ‘Charlie and I are twins.’

  ‘What are you playing at now, Charlie?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Gone and got yoursel
f a makeover?’ He walked around her, nodding approval. ‘It sure does suit you.’

  ‘I’m not Charlie Kelly,’ she said firmly and with great poise. ‘My name’s Samantha Carmichael.’ A hesitation, like nerves had the better of her, then she flushed like a schoolgirl. It was absolutely charming. ‘People call me Sam for short.’

  This gorgeous girl might be the spitting image of Charlie, but she sure as hell didn’t act like her. Argue with Charlie, and she was likely to jump on you like a wildcat. Drew shook his head. It was such an absurd story though. A pile of luggage lay on the kitchen floor. Expensive-looking luggage. Could she be telling the truth?

  ‘Now that I’ve introduced myself,’ said the girl, ‘just who, exactly, might you be?’

  She had perfectly even white teeth. Charlie had a little gap. Drew took off his hat, and slapped at a fly on the table. ‘So you’re fair dinkum?’ he said at last.

  She nodded. ‘I’m fair dinkum.’ The phrase sounded foreign on her tongue. There was no doubt about it. This girl was not Charlie.

  ‘Okay, I’ll bite. Where is she?’ Drew was intrigued, fascinated by this non-Charlie. So beautiful, so classy. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘And where did you spring from?’

  ‘My sister wants her whereabouts to remain confidential, for the time being,’ she said with preposterous formality. ‘Her mother, Mary Kelly, has expressed a similar wish.’

  Drew raised his eyebrows and moved closer to Sam. He looked furtively around, as if he thought someone might be listening, then leaned in close. ‘They’re in jail, aren’t they?’

  ‘Of course they’re not! Now, would you please leave?’ She escaped out the door. He followed, as if drawn on a string. The girl who wasn’t Charlie marched past the house and up the hill. Bess bounded after them. Sam stopped by the closed gate of the dam paddock. She turned around and tossed her head, seeming surprised and annoyed all at once to see him still there. They locked gazes. She had Charlie’s eyes – eyes that burned right into you. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.