Return to Moondilla

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Think you’ll remember me?’ she asked, her lips brushing his cheek.

  ‘For a very long time,’ he assured her. ‘Go on, have some breakfast. You should be ready for it after last night.’

  •

  He was reading a two-day-old newspaper when she came into the kitchen, freshly showered and wearing the same blue jeans but with a different blouse. There was a real glow about her that he thought was pretty incredible, considering the effort she’d expended during the night.

  ‘You look good enough to eat,’ he said. ‘Tea or coffee?’ The two pots were sitting in front of him on the table.

  ‘Coffee would be wonderful,’ she said, sitting down.

  He poured her a mug and then appraised her again. ‘You shouldn’t look as good as you do,’ he said.

  She shrugged and gave him a small, pleased smile. ‘I was feeling very fresh last night. You know, I’d been thinking about you quite a lot.’

  The idea of her thinking about him like that made him hot all over. ‘I’m not sure exactly how to put this, Liz, but you’re the most . . . the most woman I’ve ever known. I hope you understand what I mean.’

  ‘I like sex,’ she said, matter-of-fact. ‘Especially when it’s with someone I really like. And I like you a lot, honey,’ she added warmly.

  They smiled at each other for a moment.

  ‘What are you going to do with your life, Liz?’

  She dropped her eyes and shrugged. ‘Who knows, I might marry a cattleman.’

  ‘Lucky cattleman,’ he said.

  She got up and came around the table to him. He felt her firm breasts press against him as she kissed him and sat on his lap. ‘You can make a person feel real good without even trying,’ she said huskily, and they kissed for a while, his arms around her.

  When they came up for air, Baxter stroked her cheek and said, ‘Don’t just marry any cattleman, Liz. Marry a fellow who loves you and doesn’t booze. Have a couple of kids. You’re a very warm person—you’d give your kids plenty of love and affection.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She smiled down at him affectionately, then slid from his lap and sat at the table again. ‘Someday I’ll make a trip back here to see you and Julie. Though I should hope that there’ll be no Franco Campanelli to concern me.’

  ‘By then I’m sure there won’t be,’ Baxter said, thinking of what Lester had told him. ‘Maybe you’ll be able to bring your family.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She finished her coffee. ‘There are two favours I’d like to ask of you before I go, Greg.’

  ‘Ask away, Liz,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘I’d like you to take me for a run in your new boat. I want to remember you and this river and my last morning here.’

  ‘Okay, what’s the other?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d like to watch you doing your exercises and martial arts routines—Julie says they’re worth seeing.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘But when do you plan on leaving?’

  She met his eyes and smiled. ‘If it were only up to me I wouldn’t leave at all. But, as it is . . . probably after lunch.’

  •

  Baxter packed ham-and-tomato sandwiches, small cream cakes and a thermos of hot water. With Liz holding on to his arm, they walked down to the jetty.

  He handed her into the new boat and watched as Chief followed. Then he untied the two mooring ropes, threw them onto the boat and jumped on board. Liz stood beside him while he started the engine and listened as it purred into life.

  He backed the boat out into the river and then pointed it down towards the harbour. They passed under the bridge and traversed the harbour’s mouth before coming back into the river proper. When they reached the bridge again, Baxter kellicked the boat and they had their morning smoko in the cabin.

  ‘This and what happened last night must be as close to paradise as I’ll ever experience,’ Liz said and pressed his arm. ‘And doesn’t Chief like to be here?’

  The dog’s tail was wagging and he was sniffing around, his eyes bright.

  ‘He’s nuts on this boat,’ Baxter agreed. ‘Must be all the new smells—he has a very acute nose.’

  Liz was staring out across the water, her eyes suddenly sad. ‘Jack liked his boat. He was liking it more and more towards the end. If only he hadn’t been so keen on the booze.’ She sighed. ‘I still don’t understand why.’

  Baxter gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Neither do I. There’s no answers in a bottle, Liz. Like there’s no answers from using drugs.’

  •

  Liz sat on a chair in the shed and watched Baxter perform some of his old gymnastic exercises followed by his martial arts routine. He was clad only in white shorts and white gym shoes. When he’d finished, she told him it was a performance she was likely never to forget. She said, a sparkle in her eyes, that Baxter had the best body she’d ever seen, and she had never seen anyone who could move like him. She didn’t have to add that this included her late husband.

  After they’d eaten lunch, Liz handed Baxter a small slip of paper. ‘That’s my address and phone number in Queensland. If you’d ever like to come and visit me, you’d be more than welcome. And would you mind if I ring you occasionally?’

  ‘You can ring me any old time,’ Baxter said.

  She smiled and he thought she looked young and wonderful. ‘Can we talk frankly, Greg?’ she asked.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘I think so, Liz.’

  ‘Your illustrious mother would probably say that I wasn’t good enough for you, but if the writing business doesn’t work out and you don’t want to go back to cooking, I’d be very happy for you to come help me run the property.’

  Smiling, he shook his head. ‘I don’t know the first thing about cattle, except how to cook the meat. And I thought you said you might marry a cattleman?’

  ‘Oh, you know I was just joking. After you, any man would be a letdown, and I don’t want to settle for second best. I had one bash at that.’

  ‘There must be plenty of good men looking for good women like you.’

  ‘I doubt I’d qualify as a good woman anymore. And from my experience, really good men are hard to find.’ Her eyes were sad. ‘Anyway, I want you to know that if things get tough, come to me. It’s a big property—big enough to keep us.’

  He wished he didn’t have to hurt her, but he didn’t want to give her false hope either. He took her hand, met her gaze and spoke as gently as possible. ‘Look, I appreciate your offer no end, but I don’t see us settling down together. And right now, all I’m interested in is my writing.’

  ‘But you’re sweet on Julie, aren’t you?’ Liz asked, her voice sharpening. She slid her hand from his.

  ‘Yes, I like her a lot,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve always liked her. But Julie doesn’t want a man in her life. We’re good mates and that’s about it.’

  Liz nodded, seeming to accept this. ‘I used to think she was the smartest person in Moondilla, but if she was she’d have grabbed you, Greg. A woman with any real feeling in her couldn’t keep coming out here and not make love.’ Liz paused, bit her lip, and said, ‘Do you know she’s never been to bed with a man?’

  Baxter wondered if Julie would have wanted Liz to tell him that. ‘You appear to know more about that side of her than I do,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve talked quite often, sometimes about men. I don’t think you’d be happy with her, Greg. She’s married to medicine.’

  Liz sounded a little sharp again, but he accepted that what she’d said was probably true. It was also true that as a sexual being, Liz Drew left Julie Rankin for dead. Liz invested everything she did with her own innate appeal. A woman could work at developing a persona, and many did, but Baxter reckoned she’d been born with hers. If a fellow simply wanted a good sex life, she’d fit the bill to perfection—and of course, there was much more to Liz than her talent in the bedroom.

  Baxter wondered why it was that although he felt very warmly about Liz, he didn’t love her. There was
a wide gulf between warmth for a woman and love. It was demonstrated by the fact that he wasn’t greatly concerned about her leaving Moondilla. If he’d loved her, he would have fought tooth and nail to keep her close to him.

  There was a rumble of thunder and it began to rain. The river was pockmarked by solid droplets.

  Liz got up and went to the window. ‘It’s going to be a wet afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have to head off in a storm. You can stay another night.’

  ‘You don’t understand. The longer I stay with you, the longer I’ll want to stay and the harder it will be to leave.’ But Liz made no move to get going. Instead she asked, ‘While it’s raining, though, can I have a look through your house?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘I am your guest,’ she said with a smile.

  She wandered with him from room to room until she found his study, which it appeared had been her objective. ‘Is this where you work? Is that the book?’ She pointed to where the pages of his manuscript were stacked up.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Or the first draft, at least.’ He sat on the edge of his big wooden desk and looked up at her. ‘I’ve been held up because I don’t know how to finish the damned thing. Beginning it was easy—it’s the ending that’s difficult.’

  ‘Endings are always difficult, Greg,’ she said. ‘Like leaving here and you.’

  He sighed and gestured to the manuscript. ‘I’m going to scrap what I’ve done and start again.’

  ‘You’re going to scrap all that work?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘More or less. I’m going to reshape the story’s direction. It’s not good enough, and when I began to write it I hadn’t met you or reconnected with Julie. You’ve inspired me.’

  He wanted to write about them as well as Rosa—three very different women who’d all had their lives changed by the drug trade.

  Liz looked pleased. ‘And has this book got a title?’

  ‘Nothing set in concrete, but I think of it as River of Dreams.’

  She rolled the title over her tongue. ‘I like the sound of it. I suppose living here, you can’t help writing about the river.’

  ‘That’s partly right. The lovely old river out there was one of the main reasons I bought this place. But there are other meanings behind the title. A river is a source of life because so much depends on its flow, but it isn’t dangerous like the ocean. And life itself is like a river. It flows on and on, then eventually it comes to an end. Our dreams form part of that flow of life.’

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ Liz said. ‘I’d read it based on that alone. Send me a copy?’

  He grinned. ‘I might even bring you one if it ever gets published.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The rain continued to bucket down, so Baxter made a pot of tea. They sat in the living room, Liz curled up beside him on the couch.

  ‘You didn’t move to Moondilla just to write, did you?’ she said.

  ‘No, I was looking for a place that offered me an escape from Sydney . . . a kind of haven. It was an illusion that Campanelli shattered. But without dreams, life is a humdrum affair, isn’t it? And at least it’s better here than in Sydney. I couldn’t leave the river now and go back there.’

  ‘I had a lot of dreams. One was that I should meet a man just like you—although I never imagined he’d be a martial arts champion!’ She laughed. ‘That dream came to me after it was clear I wasn’t going to be a country and western star. And for a long time, looking for a bonzer man proved an illusion too.’

  ‘Tell me the story, Liz—about you and Jack.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘All right. When I realised I wasn’t going to make it big, I was disappointed. I misbehaved and drank too much for a while myself. I decided to quit singing and stay in Moondilla—that was when I took Jack on.’

  Baxter couldn’t help his grimace. He wished it hadn’t been like that for her.

  ‘What was I to do, Greg? Drag around the country for years, backing the stars and staying at hundreds of motels and hotels, with men groping me at every second one of them? No star billing, no big money.’ Her whole body had tensed up and her face had gone pale. ‘But that’s not the whole story. Early on, when I was still in the troupe, Campanelli and his men surrounded me after a concert, when I’d had a few drinks, and hustled me onto his yacht.’

  Baxter looked at her in horror. ‘Liz—’

  ‘Don’t worry, I was only out there for a few minutes. I was tiddly enough to think I could swim to shore, so while the yacht was still driving I pretended to trip over my own feet and fall into the water. Jack and a mate were out fishing late at the wharf. Back then he could swim like a fish, so he dived in, got me out and carried me to my hotel.’

  ‘And then you fell for him.’

  ‘Not completely. Jack said he needed me and he offered me a home. I wasn’t aware how big a boozer he was until after I married him, but from what I could see, all men drank anyway. They all drank and they all played around.’

  ‘Not all men play around,’ Baxter said, hating the jaded note in her voice.

  ‘You know that for a fact, do you?’

  ‘I’m sure my father didn’t—and I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I’m talking about your average male, not supermen,’ she scoffed.

  ‘I’m no superman. And if I were lucky enough to be married to a woman I loved, I certainly wouldn’t cheat on her.’

  Liz’s eyes were damp. ‘Yeah, I reckon you wouldn’t.’

  Baxter stroked her hair and they sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘Well,’ Liz said briskly, ‘now I’ve found my man but he doesn’t love me, so I’m going home to do something else with my life.’

  She moved away from him, sitting up on the couch, and told him a little about her plans for the cattle station. She sounded full of enthusiasm as she talked about installing a feedlot and breeding cattle, things that he knew almost nothing about.

  ‘I know you’ll succeed,’ he said and smiled. ‘You’ll have a marvellous life out there. I hope you’ll find your cattleman husband and have a couple of kids too.’

  She gave him a soft look of gratitude. ‘You amaze me, Greg. You should know you’re a wonderful man with a woman. Heaps of women would live with you in any kind of circumstance—it doesn’t matter if you don’t get your book published.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. A lot of women would try to change me because I’m not a high-flyer. Sure, I always set out to do the best I can in anything I try, but I’m a man who simply wants a peaceful, decent life.’

  ‘I’d live with you in a tent, Greg,’ Liz said. Her eyes were damp.

  It had stopped raining a while before, and in the silence between them was the sound of water dripping from the roof and the trees.

  ‘If you’re going,’ Baxter said, ‘you’d better go, unless you’ve changed your mind and want to stay another night.’ He took her hand and held it to his heart. ‘I’ll remember you and last night for a long time, Liz.’

  She looked up at him, blinking her tear-filled eyes. Tears were running down her cheeks. ‘I wanted this a lot, Greg. Most of all, I want to remember you in this place. You and your dog and this last morning on the river—your river of dreams.’ She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. ‘Now I’d better head off before I bawl my eyes out and leave you with a dreadful picture of me.’

  •

  The air was cooler now that the rain had ceased. Baxter carried her bag out to the car. Liz turned, put her arms around his neck and then kissed him several times: full-on kisses that would linger in his mind. Then she crouched down and put her arms around Chief’s neck. ‘Look after him, big dog,’ she said.

  ‘There’s some very weird people travelling that northern road,’ Baxter said, ‘so don’t pick up any hitchhikers. And ring me when you get there—I’ll worry until I hear from you.’

  Liz gestured to her fully packed car and grinned. ‘I couldn’t possibly fit in a hitchhiker even if I wanted to, but I l
ove your concern.’

  As Baxter opened the car door, Chief padded along to stand beside his master and quietly gaze up at Liz while she got in. When she turned on the ignition, she gave Baxter a look that said she could hardly bear to leave them. Then she was driving away.

  Baxter stood with light rain falling on him from a transient filmy cloud that would soon pass. The cloud was like most of the best moments of his life that had passed all too quickly. He would never forget the sight of Liz lying naked on his bed, her lovely body creamy white against the blue sheets and her arms outstretched to clasp him to her. And then there was the completely uninhibited way she made love, giving everything she had to give.

  If he had lifted a finger, Liz would have stayed with him—but for all she had to offer, she wasn’t Julie.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  It was tough going back to writing after Liz Drew’s visit. The thought of her teamed up with another man like Jack worried Baxter a lot, and preoccupied him for the next few weeks. But his thoughts of Liz were interrupted by the arrival of Detective Sergeant Ian Latham.

  Latham’s long hair had been cut short, and he was in clean slacks and a pressed shirt. The disreputable putty-coloured van had been replaced by a white Holden.

  ‘You almost had me thinking you were a stranger,’ Baxter said, greeting Latham at his front door. ‘Off the undercover work for a while?’

  ‘Yes, thank goodness. I’ve got a lot of leave owing to me. And it’s good to see you, Greg.’ Latham shook hands with Baxter.

  ‘What brings you here, Ian?’ Baxter asked, gesturing for him to come inside.

  ‘Some good news, for the time being at least,’ Latham said, sitting down.

  ‘Good news is never hard to take.’

  Baxter had just made some coffee, so he brought two steaming mugs from the kitchen. He was hoping to hear that Campanelli had finally been arrested and the drug shipment seized.

  Instead Latham said, ‘It looks like Campanelli and Company have switched their field of operation. We believe they’re landing drugs in Western Australia for the moment. It’s a bigger hassle for them, because they have to move the stuff over vast distances, either by road or by air.’