Mountain Ash

by Margareta Osborn

  Parnie wasn’t getting any worse but he wasn’t improving either. He still had a limp so Jodie decided, after a weekend of gently working with him, to ring Clem.

  ‘Clem?’ Mue’s son was a man of few words so Jodie got straight to the point. ‘Can you come over and see Parnie? He’s still not right and the vet says he can’t do any more for him.’

  ‘Probably just the muscles,’ he said. ‘Time, Jodie. Just time.’

  ‘Please?’

  A sigh. A puff of resignation. Jodie hung on, knowing Clem would do anything for an animal.

  ‘All right. Friday night.’

  Jodie grimaced to herself. ‘I’m working.’

  ‘That’s okay; I’ll come anyway. He in the same paddock I put him in after the draft?’ He didn’t need to add ‘where you came a cropper’, because they were both already thinking that.

  Jodie nodded distractedly. She didn’t want to think about that accident, or ‘the aberration’, or the near-fatal deer collision after that.

  ‘Jode?’

  ‘Sorry. Yes, that’s the one.’

  ‘I’ll ring you.’ Clunk. Dial tone.

  Clem’s people skills were extraordinary. Thankfully he was a lot better with horses.

  ‘He coming?’ asked Milly. ‘Buggsy’s worried too.’

  ‘Is she now?’ Jodie caressed her daughter’s blonde head and wondered how she could have made something so perfect.

  A noise erupted from Milly’s bottom. ‘Oops!’ The little girl clapped her hand over her mouth and giggled.

  Okay. Maybe not quite so perfect.

  ‘Excuse me, Milly.’

  ‘Excuse you, Mum.’ And her daughter was off, out the back door, plaits flying, legs pumping, little elastic-sided boots moving as fast as they could go.

  ‘The little bugger,’ mumbled Jodie but she was smiling. That was Rhys coming out in the daughter. That cowboy’s sense of humour had been legend, which was one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with him. There hadn’t been much laughter in Jodie’s family life after her mother left. Her father had been shattered and Jodie stunned. Why hadn’t her mother loved them enough to stay? Instead she’d left them both for another man. In time Robert had moved from the coast to work at Riverton, while Jodie had gone backpacking and eventually found Rhys. Which led Jodie to think of a different cowboy at the end of another road-trip. His offer to sew her quilt, the raft race, his laughter tumbling down to her in the water, his smile as she surfaced between his legs. A swag laid out so beautifully on a riverbank. Torches like candles, cups like crystal, a man to be supped like fine wine …

  Oh God. She had to stop thinking like this. She had to stop thinking of him. Nate was just like Rhys. It gets boring doing the same thing year in, year out. You got to have a new horizon to look at …’ And what else had he said? ‘We’ve come from the Northern Territory … on our way to a job near here …

  Then they’d go back to the Territory for the next season. She’d been around that kind of bloke enough to know that’s just what they did. That’s how they lived their lives. From one station to another, hopping like kangaroos, where the will and the want took them.

  And with regards to women, well, she knew what happened there too. She saw proof of that every day, in an energetic bundle with blonde plaits.

  They rode away.

  But not Alex. He was a man who was here to stay.

  Except Alex was also proving a jealous type.

  ‘Does McGregor own you?’ Clem said abruptly when Jodie answered his phone call.

  She groaned. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘He obviously thinks he does. Wanted to know what I was doing at McCauley’s Hill.’ Jodie could just imagine that showdown. Surly Clem and an affronted Alex.

  ‘What’d you say?’

  ‘None of his fuckin’ business, pardon my French.’

  ‘Oh dear. He wouldn’t have liked that too much.’

  ‘No, he didn’t, but he’s got nothing on me. I just got in my HiLux and drove off. I was finished anyway.’

  Jodie could just see a pissed-off Alex, staring at the departing vehicle’s headlights with frustration. It wouldn’t have been a good look.

  ‘Mum, you’re not really a good cooker, are you?’ said the little girl after Jodie had to feed a whole batch of burned cupcakes to the dog. If her look hadn’t been so earnest Jodie would have laughed, or cried. The way she was feeling today, she wasn’t sure which.

  ‘No, mate, I’m not much of a cooker, as you so succinctly put it. That’s why we have people like Muey in our lives.’

  Milly was nodding gravely as they heard Alex walk through the door. His arrival startled her. Floss hadn’t barked. She supposed the mutt was too busy devouring Jodie’s burned offerings.

  ‘I saw Clem Bailey here,’ was Alex’s opening line as he entered the kitchen.

  Jodie blinked and took a step backwards. She crossed her arms and leaned against the sink. Two could play at this game, especially if she was innocent. ‘Yes; I was at work. He was here to check Parnie.’

  Alex’s piercing look flickered. It was like he wanted to believe her but couldn’t quite get his mind over the line.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Clem reckons time is all he needs.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late for me to buy you Warrior. He’s gone. Someone else has bought him.’

  ‘I don’t want another horse – I told you that.’ She knew she sounded defensive but there was nothing she could do. He was having a go at both her and her horse. All she needed was him to say something about Milly …

  ‘And you, young lady, should be outside skipping or something while I’m talking to your mother.’

  Milly looked like the deer Jodie had run into on the Barry Way. Her eyes were wide. At Alex’s words the cake spatula she’d been licking dropped forgotten on the table. The little girl took off out the back door.

  ‘Milly!’ Jodie yelled, starting after her.

  ‘Going to see Billy!’ came her daughter’s voice across the backyard. A gate slammed shut. Next thing, Jodie saw a pair of plaits flying as little legs pedalled a bike hell-for-leather down the hill.

  ‘Damn,’ she muttered. Now she wouldn’t see Milly until dark.

  She thrust back her shoulders and stormed inside to Alex. How dare he talk to her daughter like that? How dare he insinuate she was having an affair with Clem Bailey?

  But all the fire left her soul as she reached the kitchen. The man was sitting at the table, scraping his finger through the leftover cake mixture around the edges of the bowl. His face was so tired and forlorn she didn’t know what to say. It was just as well he got in first.

  ‘I used to love it when Elizabeth cooked. She used to give Nathaniel the beaters and I’d snaffle the bowl.’ His eyes dimmed at the memory. He was back in the past. ‘But that was before, well you know, everything didn’t go so well.’

  Jodie dropped into a chair. She hadn’t known his son was called Nathaniel. She hadn’t known much about Elizabeth either except she had been a perfect 1960s-style wife who was a CWA member and loved to sew.

  ‘I shouldn’t have talked to your daughter like that,’ Alex said, reaching forwards and clasping her hands. ‘I had no right. I do apologise. It’s just been so long since I was around little children, I’m no good at being a modern parent. My own parents believed children were to be seen but not heard. Elizabeth’s were much the same. Nathaniel, well, he …’ Alex stopped and took a breath. ‘Anyway, that’s all in the past. You’ll have to teach me how to do better with Milly, Jodie. I am sorry.’

  Jodie went to speak but Alex held up his hand. ‘And I jumped to conclusions with Clem. Of course he was only here to see your horse. I … well, I just worry that I won’t be enough for you, that you’ll find another man …’

  Milly was forgotten as she said, ‘Oh Alex, of course you’re enough for me.’ Liar, liar, pants on fire. ‘Of course I wouldn’t cheat on you.’ You already have!

  ‘I know,’ h
e said. ‘You’re not that kind of girl.’

  Two weeks later, and what kind of girl she was became a moot point. Caught up in the flat-out rounds of being a nurse, mother and keeping a randy Alex at bay, she’d forgotten one teensy-weensy little thing.

  Her period. Actually the non-appearance of her period.

  If there were two things on the earth you could be certain of they were her daughter’s obnoxious farts and the regularity of Jodie’s monthly bleed.

  But this month it hadn’t come.

  And the only person she’d slept with at about ovulation time was Nate. The odds of her being pregnant to Alex were astronomically low, given the timing.

  This couldn’t be happening. They’d used protection. For God’s sake, she’d even watched him put the damn thing on.

  She wasn’t even going to think, What if it doesn’t come?

  It would come. It had to.

  Strenuous exercise was what she needed to bring it on, so she walked down the hill, met Milly at the bus stop, made her walk home. The poor little girl’s legs were shaking when they finally made it through the back door. Jodie went for a ride on Parnie, figuring maybe the gentle motion might encourage her body to bleed.

  It didn’t.

  Alex rang and Jodie used every excuse in the book. Despite his seemingly polite acceptance, she could hear the pent-up frustration in his voice growing. Work. Milly needing an early night. Quilting. Even book club, although she hadn’t read a book in years.

  ‘I didn’t know you were in a book club,’ said Alex. ‘Elizabeth loved her reading group. It’s lovely how you both have the same interests.’

  Another thing she hadn’t known about Elizabeth. And it was lovely. Just bloody lovely. Except Elizabeth wouldn’t have found herself possibly pregnant by a man she barely knew.

  Shit.

  And double shit.

  It had to come.

  Chapter 27

  It didn’t.

  Dr Weir didn’t pull any punches. ‘You’re pregnant. Seven weeks is my guess. An ultrasound will confirm.’

  He was scribbling on a sheet of paper. ‘Here. Take this to pathology. It’s a blood test, and this,’ he handed over another sheet, ‘to radiography for your ultrasound. Twelve weeks.’

  She sat in the chair opposite, poleaxed. No, this couldn’t be happening. Not again.

  ‘That, I think, will be all,’ said the man sitting opposite her. Dr Weir’s bedside manner left a lot to be desired.

  She looked down at the forms he’d given her and bolted for the adjoining bathroom. When she’d finished retching she stood up, leaned against the cold wall and tried to pull herself together.

  Dr Weir’s voice came through the door. It was softer now, more gentle. ‘Are you okay, m’dear?’

  With considerable effort Jodie pushed herself off the tiles and lurched to the sink. She washed her face and swished some water around her mouth.

  ‘I said, are you okay?’ The doctor had opened the door and was looking at her with concern. ‘Are you vomiting often? More than you did last time?’

  So he knew there had been a last time. She mentally slapped herself. Of course he did. She guessed it would be in the file that she already had a daughter.

  ‘It was like this with Milly.’

  ‘My wife was the same.’ He was silent, like he was remembering those horrible first few months.

  Jodie closed her eyes. Somehow she couldn’t imagine the very poised Julia Weir throwing her guts up. She had to get out of here otherwise she was likely to disgrace herself again. She heaved herself back from the basin. Dr Weir made way for her at the doorway and guided her to the chair. There was a compassionate side to the man after all. She wondered if Alex would be the same.

  After gathering up her paperwork, making another appointment and leaving Dr Weir’s office, Jodie blindly made her way down the street towards her ute. It was parked up against the kerb. An uncomplicated and rusted heap of nuts and bolts that had seen Jodie through so much. The breakdown of her relationship with Rhys. Her search to find a job, a life for her and her daughter. As she walked towards the vehicle she didn’t see her fellow nurse, Lucy Grainger, wave at her through the window of the local art gallery she ran with her partner, Alice. She didn’t see Travis Hunter peering her way as he stepped out of the newsagency with a Weekly Times under his arm. She didn’t even note that he walked towards a four-wheel drive where his new wife, Tammy McCauley, patiently waited for him. She just kept blindly walking, past everyone she knew, past her ute, past the travel agency offering holidays to sun-drenched parts of Australia. All she could see was Narree Lake glinting in the sun. She needed space. She needed to walk and walk and walk until this pregnancy thing was left on the track somewhere far behind her. It wasn’t supposed to happen. For Christ’s sake, she’d seen him put that frigging condom on. So surely she couldn’t be pregnant? And to another cowboy. The kind of bloke who got on his horse and rode away.

  Although to be fair, she reminded herself later as she was getting into her ute, she was the one who’d fled this time. But she’d only done that because she knew he would and she wasn’t prepared to risk her heart again like that. As she drove along, her hand kept instinctively seeking her belly, her fingers cupping the non-existent bump. She carried ‘all-out in-front’, or had previously, thanks to her body’s slender build. There was no reason to think this baby wouldn’t be the same – more so, in fact, as it was the second time. All the more reason to get her affairs in order. Tell Milly. Sort out what she was going to do. To get rid of it wasn’t an option. In her eyes life was life regardless of how old the foetus was. Her Catholic upbringing didn’t allow her to think otherwise. Plus, this child was half hers and that meant a lot.

  And you really liked Nate.

  Yes, she really liked the cowboy. Could have grown to love him. In fact, she was already a little in love with his memory, which didn’t help her relationship with Alex.

  Oh God, Alex. What was he going to say about this?

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she blurted out over the top of her coffee cup.

  On the other side of the kitchen bench, Mue went perfectly still. Jodie saw a strange expression fleetingly cross the older woman’s face.

  ‘Have you told him?’

  ‘No, I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘He’s at Glenevelyn. I saw him yesterday,’ said Mue. ‘I was up there doing the housework.’

  And that was when it hit Jodie. Mue thought the baby was Alex’s. Of course (mental headslap) and why wouldn’t she? No one, except Stacey, knew she’d slept with the cowboy.

  Could she get away with it? After all, the only time she and Alex had made love was the fortnight before she’d gone to Riverton. It would be easy enough to fudge the dates … She grimaced. How low an act was that? Passing off her pregnancy as the wrong man’s doing.

  But what choice did she have? Really? What did this baby deserve? A home and two parents or a series of rentals, long hours of day care and a worn-to-a-frazzle single working mother? Parents who respected each other and stayed together or an absent derelict dad, long gone cold on his lover and family responsibilities? This baby could just as easily appear to be Alex’s as long as she was able to stop Stacey’s flapping tongue, and that should be easy enough. For all Stacey knew the baby was Alex’s and the cowboy just a roll on the riverbank.

  Jodie refocused on her friend. Mue was looking at her like she’d seen a ghost.

  ‘Muey? Are you okay?’

  Mue shook herself a little, then smiled. ‘Of course. I was just thinking how lovely it’ll be for Alex to have another heir. He’ll be delighted.’

  Jodie nodded. ‘Yes.’ She smiled bravely, hating herself already. ‘Hopefully.’

  ‘He’s only got Nathaniel and he’s not around, which is a shame,’ said Mue. ‘It’s such a beautiful property …’

  Jodie pictured Alex’s family station in her mind. Thousands of acres of hill and river flats. An imposing double-storey mansion ma
de from locally quarried stone and placed on a rise above the Grace River. It was a house fit for another era, where the grazing aristocracy’s hunger for grandeur trumped comfortable living and the depth of one’s purse. That said, Alex hadn’t let his home become shabby, which Jodie suspected was due to his ability to fund such a money-suck from off-farm. He’d made canny commercial investments, which she knew included a bevy of service stations placed along Australia’s eastern coast. Alex was a very wealthy man and, thus, so was his son.

  ‘It was such a sad day when Alex kicked Nathaniel off. Elizabeth was heartbroken, although she never did anything to stop the boy leaving.’

  Jodie tuned back in. What? Alex kicked his own son off the farm? She guessed Cowboy Nate’s story wasn’t such an uncommon one.

  Mue was moving to the sink to drop her coffee mug in the washing-up water. Jodie could see by the older woman’s expression she was reluctant to say more. Mue’s final words on the topic were, ‘The lad came home for her funeral, but I don’t think he’ll ever come back proper. The rift is dreadful.’

  So that’s why Alex never talked about the boy. Well, actually Alex and Elizabeth’s child would be a man now. It was funny how when Jodie thought of someone having kids she immediately assumed them to be Milly’s age or littler. But it was the exact opposite in this case.

  If she did marry Alex, her stepson would be older than she was. And that was a bit of a conundrum. She wondered what he’d make of her – a woman his own age marrying his father.

  She gave herself a shake. This was the only sensible option. Marry the man who wanted to look after her and Milly. Alex had already said he wanted to try harder with Milly, it stood to reason he’d be even more committed to a baby he thought was his own. And if she didn’t love him, she couldn’t get hurt. If she married Alex, the future would be secure.

  Chapter 28