‘No. I won’t let her down.’
Matt’s face broke into a smile.
Dear Brigit, I let you down. I let you down, I let you down – and I’ll never do it again.
‘And you tell her from me that I’m saving her bottle of rum for when she comes back in?’
‘Rum? Aunty Ida?’
‘You bet, beautiful. She bloody loves a rum and a talk about local politics. She knows what’s going on in her kingdom, too. You can bet she does!’
He pulled out a bottle of the house’s finest. She was glad she wasn’t paying. ‘And have you met Greg?’ he asked as he poured a couple of glasses.
‘Yeah.’ She stepped back and directed her speech downward. ‘I’m afraid I can’t pat you tonight, Greg – my dog Mac just died, and I’m a bit fragile around dogs at the moment. Maybe if you were a Chihuahua or a Pomeranian – they look more like cats.’
Greg wagged his tail in sympathy. He liked cats; they were delicious.
‘Shall we?’ Alex gestured to a table in the lounge. Cate nodded and followed him there, gripping her wineglass nervously.
‘How did you go with seeding?’ Alex asked after they were seated.
‘Pretty well, I think. We’ll probably cover our stock feed. The farm is quite small, and I don’t imagine Aunty Ida takes much feeding. The Riordans came over a week ago to actually put the crop in. They only trusted me with ripping up.’
He laughed. ‘I hope you won’t be leaving too soon?’
‘We’ll see. The situation seems fairly fluid at the moment. I think Perth is the place for me in the end. This has been an amazing experience. I have so few solid memories of the farm that I’m glad to have become reacquainted with my aunt, and with the country.’
‘Ida was lucky you came along to help out.’
‘No, she really wasn’t. I was the lucky one.’
He smiled at her, like she didn’t really mean it. ‘Well, I think you must be a special person to come and help an old lady the way you have.’
‘No – I’m not a great person. Just the opposite. I have to confess I really didn’t know Ida before I came to stay.’
‘Really?’
‘No, I just thought of her as old, out of touch, unsophisticated, which is pretty much true, incidentally, but totally fine.’
He laughed at her, and she grinned, embarrassed.
‘See? Bad person.’
‘You’re too hard on yourself. I’ve heard Ida is thrilled to have you living on the farm. You’ve given her a lot of happiness.’
Cate took a large sip of wine. She was grateful to hear it. ‘Well, I haven’t done anything, really, but I had help with a lot of the stuff.’
‘That Henry guy? Did I hear you say he’s stopped hanging around?’
‘He was never hanging . . . He’s gone now. Long gone,’ she said. ‘He was only ever a drifter anyway. We all knew he wasn’t going to stay.’
Alex considered her. ‘I must say, I’m relieved. I was worried about you living by yourself on the farm with Henry. I thought he was a bit strange – not the sort of guy you find travelling around looking for work.’ He looked at her pointedly. ‘I used to wonder what his story was, why he was really here.’
‘Dunno.’ Cate was getting keen to move on. ‘But, as I said, gone now.’
‘And you?’ he asked. ‘Have you thought about if you’ll be staying for a while?’
‘I doubt it. I have a few things that may take me back to Perth.’
‘Really? Job-related?’
‘No, just something I need to deal with.’ She took another long, sustaining sip of wine. ‘Just personal stuff.’ She wasn’t going to think about it. Any of it. Ida, Brigit or the charges still hanging over her.
‘But is this somewhere you think you could live?’
Man, this was getting pointed pretty early on; it was like the opposite of the Henry experience. She hadn’t managed to divert him at the picnic. She wished she’d made a joke. She knew how to do that, at least.
‘Probably not. I like it, but maybe it’s too isolated for me.’
He looked disappointed with her answer. ‘But I’m here.’ He smiled. ‘I’d love the chance to spend some more time with you if you stay. I think you’re a really fascinating woman, Cate.’
Okay, she thought. The farm man was making a move and she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t noticed anymore. Maybe this was a great idea; he was kind, handsome, clever, he had a great career on the farm, a genuine future. She drained her wineglass and he filled it again while she made herself imagine them, sitting in his lovely kitchen talking about the day, settling onto the couch to watch TV.
‘How do you feel about The X Factor?’ she asked.
He leaned across the small sticky table and kissed her. She was taken aback; the wine had hidden his advance, but his kiss was very nice, very interesting. She kissed him, too, and imagined Brigit watching her from the darkness of the empty street outside.
When they got home, he kissed her again, and she leaned against him and dropped her arms around his shoulders. He was warm and lovely. He lived up the road. He was a total grown-up and he didn’t know what she’d done.
‘Cate,’ he murmured, ‘I want to say something.’ She bit back the joke that had been trying to sneak out and waited. ‘I want to say that you could trust me. If you ever wanted to.’ The night was quiet because it was listening to every word he said. ‘I’m a good guy. I’ve lived here all my life, and this is where I’ll stay. If things get tough, I want you to know I’m not the sort of person to give up and disappear. If you have ever wondered if you could rely on a man – you can rely on me.’
A chill swept through her and she felt strangely exposed, like he’d guessed a truth about her but he wasn’t going to embarrass her, or he’d wondered about her but thought her past didn’t matter. It moved her, to have earned such kindness and loyalty with so little effort, as if his heart was so large and open that it took a mere handful of beats to include her in it. There were tears in her eyes.
‘Goodnight, Cate,’ he whispered in her ear under the open heavens, and she closed her eyes and held his voice there, feeling the weight of it, measuring it in her mind, testing it in her heart. ‘You call me when you want to see me again, and I’ll be right here.’ And as he walked back down Henry’s garden path, they both wondered if this could be the start of something.
Inside, the house was cold, and she hadn’t bothered with the fire for a few days. She dragged the heater into her room, turned it on high and hoped she didn’t burn down the house in the night. As she fell asleep, she thought again of Alex’s kiss goodnight and how nice it had been.
CHAPTER 30
Alex left flowers on the doorstep a few days later, which she found waiting for her when she came back from a long walk along the fence line to the timber patch and back. She glanced down the driveway, but he had long gone, and she was sorry to have missed him, although she didn’t call him to thank him for the gesture, and even she wondered why. Henry was gone, and yet he loomed over her heart like they had an agreement. They didn’t, she told herself, and she’d tossed aside men she knew much better than she knew Henry. She was being childish and she knew it. Fixating on some weird drifter who’d passed through her life instead of returning the advances of the world’s nicest man. It was time to grow up, she told herself. Again.
When Ida returned to Cate’s parents’ home a couple of days later, Cate called her for a chat, but for once Ida wasn’t interested in hearing news of the farm and the district. Her voice was weaker, and although she was polite, Cate could sense she wasn’t concentrating on what she was saying. She tried a few funny stories about a greedy magpie who had come into the garden, but Ida wouldn’t be drawn. ‘I think I need a lie-down, dear,’ she said, and Cate let her go as cheerfully as she was able, then sat staring at the kitchen table for over an hour.
The house was quiet and, except for the odd breeze rustling through the trees by the garden fence and the occas
ional birdsong, so was the farm. There was nothing to hear, nothing to say and no one to hear it anyway. The sun rose, shone weakly through the windows and flew away again whether she was there to see it or not. The night fell as softly as always, the sheep cropped the new grass and the curlew didn’t call to her. She took to long walks around the borders of the farm, sometimes counting her steps like a child, sometimes reciting poems she had learned at school, chanting them out to the rhythm of her feet. Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are. She was waiting for something, for someone.
Dear Brigit, he’s gone. And my heart won’t do as it’s told.
Cate was just turning out the lights one night when the phone rang. Her heart dropped. Ida. She ran to answer it.
‘Hello, dear?’ Ida’s voice was soft and shaking.
‘Aunty Ida? Are you okay?’ Cate’s stomach churned. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t want to be here anymore, dear,’ she whispered, as if her voice wasn’t working. ‘They can’t help me, and now they want to put me somewhere to die.’ It sounded almost delusional, but it also sounded pretty likely.
‘Are you sure?’ Cate asked.
‘Dear Cate, just please bring me home? I don’t want to die here.’
Maybe she sounded confused. Old people often got confused. ‘What did your doctor say?’ she prompted.
‘He said I would be well looked after —’
‘Did he say if you were going to improve?’
There was a long pause. ‘He said my heart is failing. If I don’t have the surgery – and I won’t – then I don’t have much time left, dear. He suspects I’ll have another attack. It may only be weeks, but I think he means even that may be if I’m lucky. I’ve told them and told them I want to come home, but they treat me as if – as if I’m an idiot. They don’t think I know I’m dying right now. I hate it here, with all these doctors and specialists and friends of your parents I don’t know.’ She caught herself. ‘They’ve been very kind. But I want to come home, now, please, Cate.’
Cate’s mind churned anxiously. The fear in Ida’s voice was contagious, but she had promised she was not going to let her down.
‘Don’t worry, Aunty Ida,’ she said with quiet confidence. ‘Pack a bag. Don’t let Mum and Dad see it – they’ll just make a fuss. Just pack it and shove it in the cupboard. Put your medicine in it now – if we do this, I don’t think I’ll be able to ask my parents to send your stuff on.’ She paused. ‘Is that okay?’
Ida didn’t respond and Cate thought she could hear silent, wet tears.
‘Aunty Ida? I’ll come for you tomorrow. I promise. Don’t let them take you anywhere, like the hospital. I’ll come to the house. Okay?’
‘Yes, dear, I can do that. Thank you. Please come for me tomorrow,’ she whispered and hung up.
Cate held the phone, her body chilled. She wasn’t ready for this. She had clung to the hope that there would be treatment for Ida, or that she would just drop and would never place her in this position. Poor Aunty Ida, who didn’t know that Cate couldn’t be relied upon, because she’d never managed to get her own life together, let alone take custody of a dying person. Her parents were going to freak, Ida was going to have a fatal heart attack in the driveway, and it was going to be for nothing. Her palms were sweating, like life was giving her an exam and she wasn’t prepared. She sat at the kitchen table in a daze, looking into the night, waiting for the curlew, who never came.
‘Cate! Cate! Open the door!’ It was well after midnight, and Cate was lying naked on a bed in a hotel room, with a drained minibar and a bag of weed.
‘Go away!’
‘Cate! Honey, it’s Brigit.’
‘I know – go away, Brigit.’
There was a pause. ‘Cate! Open the door. Come on, mate – let me in. I know you’re feeling crappy now, but you know tomorrow is another day. Those idiots wouldn’t know good bookkeeping if it bit them on the face. You are a great bookkeeper.’
‘No, like everything, I suck, Bridge.’
‘Well, it sounds like you and that very nice random guy are having a party in there, and you know how I like to party.’
‘He’s gone.’
‘Oh good, exclusive. You know how I like an exclusive party —’
‘Where you’re always the star attraction, Beautiful Brigit, Amazing Lawyer Brigit, Hilarious Brigit, Kind-to-Animals Brigit. Now GO AWAY!’
‘Do you know what you forgot to say?’
‘Please?’
‘Well, yes, but no. You forgot to say Brigit, best friend to Cate Christie. That’s the best one of all. Best friend to Cate Christie, who can make a whole room laugh without even trying, who is smart and honest and loyal. Cate Christie who gets shy sometimes and never lets on, who can recite Tennyson and Whitman, and who has stuff going on which is so amazing she won’t even tell me, because she knows if she did, she’d blow my mind. Best friend to Cate Christie, who has never let me down.’
Cate sat motionless on the bed, her mouth open and wet with the tears that were flowing down her face with gratitude and shame. The vodka was watching her from the top of the minibar, and the lights of the city were pushing through the gauzy curtain. She closed her eyes and tried to forget the feel of his hands on her, trembling slightly, disgusted at herself.
‘You get some sleep, babe. I love you, and I’ll be right here. I’ll always be right here.’
Cate slept. Hammered and inadequate. When she woke the following morning to find her hangover already waiting for her, she rolled out of bed, flopped onto the floor and opened the door. Brigit was asleep in the doorway.
She woke early but stayed in bed, because it was chilly in the house and she didn’t want to face it. Or think about her promise for a while. Even so, she lay in bed, staring at the empty ceiling, picturing taking Ida and driving her away from the safety of her parents’ house.
There was a knock at the door. She was startled and dropped the book she’d been reading on the floor with a loud flop. There hadn’t been the sound of a car. Had someone walked up the drive? She was here alone, and a weirdo had walked up the drive with an axe in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Stupid, Cate. Curled up in your undies and about to die.
She got out of bed, then she searched for her jeans and a T-shirt. Who the hell was it? She peeked out into the corridor, where she could see movement on the verandah at the front of the house. Maybe she could pretend there was no one home?
‘Who is it?’ she called.
There was the movement of boots and then, ‘Henry.’
She froze. Henry. He was back. She hadn’t seen that coming. She’d probably rehearsed some pissed-off speech in her mind a few days after he left, in the days when she’d thought she’d see him again, but now she had forgotten what she wanted to say and she didn’t want to say anything, because nothing sprang to mind that didn’t sound pathetic.
‘Cate. It’s Henry.’
Like she hadn’t heard him the first time. Okay, she had to open the door now so she didn’t look like a one-night stand who was going to sook. She had more dignity than that.
She opened the door and he was standing there, with his short dark hair, a two-day stubble, in his jeans and flannel shirt, holding a border collie pup. She stared at him remorselessly.
‘Who’s your mate?’ She refused to look at it. The puppy wagged its tail hopefully. He could tell she was a dog person.
‘Finley,’ he said. ‘I bought him for you.’
‘Oh, well. I don’t want him.’
Finley looked disappointed. Henry barely blinked. She went back inside to make herself a coffee, but she left the door open. He could come in if he wanted to. She could care less.
She heard him fuss gently with Finley, place him on the verandah fifty times, suggest he chew his toy rabbit forty-three times, then slowly close the door on the little dog to the sound of disappointed yipping. Damn it. Now she wanted to go and pick him up and give him a cuddle. Well played
, Sir Henry.
She poured water into the coffee pot as she heard his apologetic footsteps fall cautiously on the kitchen floor. She took down one mug.
‘Cate.’
She ignored him. She was busy with her morning coffee.
‘Cate. Are you talking to me?’
‘Of course I am, Henry. You just haven’t said anything yet that requires a response.’
‘Look, I can see you’re angry.’
‘Well done, Henry. Were you in the intelligence service during your army career?’
‘Can I talk to you, Cate?’
‘Or were you in the get-the-fuck-out-of-town division?’
He leaned in the kitchen doorway, like he didn’t dare come inside or couldn’t commit either way.
‘Those guys would’ve given you a medal.’
‘I don’t know what you’re so pissed off about. I told you I was leaving. I never bullshitted you.’
‘Oh, really. I think you kind of did,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t remember you mentioning that you were leaving while you were inside me.’
He looked at the floor. ‘Maybe because I didn’t know myself,’ he muttered.
‘Whatever. I’m going to have a coffee – I’m busy. You can stop that dog from eating any of my stuff. And it stays outside.’
‘How’s Ida?’ he asked, coming closer to her, his eyes trying to catch hers.
‘None of your business.’
He strode into the room and took her upper arms in his warm hands. ‘How’s Ida?’ he repeated, watching her closely.
She moved restlessly because her body wanted to step closer to him and she was angry with both of them. ‘Dying.’
‘Have you seen her?’
‘They won’t let her come home. I’m going to take her anyway.’
He blew out softly. ‘Are you sure? I mean, she’s close to hospitals and doctors with your parents. That’s not nothing.’
‘Go,’ she whispered. ‘Just go – wherever you go when anyone needs anything from you more than muscle. I’m busy – screwing up again.’
‘Cate —’
The Drifter Page 23
