by JH Fletcher
‘How’m I supposed to get home from here?’
Like he had a stretch limo in the shed.
‘The road’s not far. Trucks go past all the time. One of them will give you a lift.’
Give you more than a lift, I wouldn’t wonder. He closed the door behind her and went back to the ruin of the bed. Putting the clothes back on a girl, he thought. Must be a first.
On the wall, a patch of sunlight speared his eyes. He lay down, pulling the soiled sheet over him, and endured the hammer thud inside his skull, the sour aftermath of last night’s booze in his gut. You’d think you’d learn, he told himself.
It passed eventually, but the patch of sunlight had moved a fair way around the wall by the time he staggered out to face the day. He stuck the first fag of the morning in his face, stood at the door of the cottage with the sun’s warmth coming in to greet him and stared at wreckage — a life without focus and without future — and told himself he didn’t care.
It was almost a year since he’d had the bust-up with Grandpa. The irony was that, for once in his life, he’d meant well.
Even then, everyone had known Hedley wasn’t the man he had been. Hardly surprising: even Hedley Warren, carved from raw flint though he was, could not ignore the years indefinitely. There had been a time when he had known every inch of his land, every blade of grass and spear of wheat, but those days were gone. There was nearly five thousand acres of it now, and it was beginning to get away from him.
He’d had a turn, the strength had gone out of him and suddenly his daily routine of marching around every paddock — land worship, Kath called it — had ended. Not entirely. You had more chance of getting a ticket to the Olympics than of changing Hedley Warren altogether, but his visits had become less frequent and, more often than not, he’d stayed in the ute when he got there.
It hadn’t taken long for it to show. The land was like a woman, Michael thought. Neglect it, even for an instant, and it turned its back on you. The Warren land had hardly been neglected, but the extraordinary attention it had known previously had become a thing of the past.
If the land hadn’t been happy, Hedley, too, could not have failed to see how his standards were being forced downwards by the years.
Honest to God, Michael thought now, that was all it was. All right, I wanted to secure my future, too, but surely a bloke’s entitled to do that? I was the oldest grandchild, I had a right to think I’d inherit, but it made sense to be sure. Craig had shoved off to make a name for himself in Adelaide radio, but both Rebecca and Danielle would kill to get their hands on the place. It wasn’t likely — Hedley Warren was of a generation that still thought land was men’s business — but all he needed was to spend the next few years working his butt off and then find the old bastard had left the place to someone else.
So Michael had gone to his grandfather and offered to take over the running of the farm. That would probably have been okay, but he’d taken it a step further. He had suggested that now might be a good time to transfer the land into his name.
Hedley, flint eyes, flint features, had seemed to consider the idea. ‘While I’m still alive? That what you’re saying?’
Michael had been deaf to nuances, as always. ‘I’ll still treat it like it’s yours, of course.’
‘You’ll treat my land as though it’s mine?’
Too late, Michael had seen the chasm under his feet. ‘Look, why don’t we just forget it?’
‘I’ll see you in hell first!’ The bricks and mortar of thirty years of shared life had been consumed, on the instant, in a flare of hatred and suspicion. ‘Treat my land as though it’s still mine? You’ve got a bloody nerve! This place I’ve spent my life building up? This land that brought me back from the war? What kind of mug do you think I am?’
On and on, spittle like hail, cracked voice raving, even the stiff-still furniture of the house aghast, until at length Michael had lost his temper, too, and begun to shout back.
‘You’re too old, that’s the trouble. Face it; it’s time for the next generation to take over.’
That did it. Hedley had been frothing; now he was still. ‘What did you say?’
If Hedley’s rage had angered Michael, his menacing stillness frightened him. He scrambled vainly to mend fences that he knew were destroyed beyond repair. ‘I want to help you look after things —’
‘I don’t recall saying I need any help.’ The words were still calm but, beneath them, hysteria was building like a breaker on the shore.
‘I only wanted —’
Too late.
‘I’ll tell you what you can do.’ The wave broke. Hedley speaking in a conversational tone was all the more deadly for being so calm, so reasonable. ‘You can get out.’
‘What?’
‘Get out. Now. And don’t come back.’
Michael did not believe what he was hearing. ‘All I said—’
‘I heard what you said. And didn’t say. You’re not going to lay your dirty hands on my land while I’m still breathing. Not when I’m dead, either. You hear me? You’ll never own one inch of my land.’
Infuriated by the unreason of what was happening, aghast at the resentment that his words had released and that now was threatening to sweep both him and his future away, Michael had tried once more to explain, to say that he had only been intending … That all he’d wanted …
No use.
A wall — of ice, flint, silence — had risen between them, against which he scratched his nails in vain.
Hedley had waited, as the ranges themselves had waited through the millennia, impervious to rain and drought and season. Michael had argued and pleaded and justified; at last, had fallen silent. Only then had his grandfather spoken.
‘I want you out of here tonight. If you’re not gone by tea time, I’ll put your rubbish out the door myself.’
Michael, still unable to believe that the axe could have fallen with so little warning, had gone. There was a rundown cottage on Billing’s place, on the other side of the range. Not the most salubrious spot — Rog Billing into pigs and muck generally. The yard was littered with the rusted relics of broken-down machinery, bales of soiled hay and rubbish everywhere — but Michael didn’t care. It was a place to squat, somewhere to bring his birds until the Old Man came around.
Because Michael could not bring himself to accept the permanence of his banishment. When the Old Man comes round … It became an article of faith that remained unsullied, no matter how many months went by. Yet in his heart Michael knew what his brain would not acknowledge, that forgiveness and reconciliation were not in Hedley Warren’s nature and that this banishment was forever.
It turned him, like milk on a hot day. He’d always been a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke, but now began to be known as a man to watch out for, when he’d had a few. Or more than a few, which was another change. Michael had always enjoyed a jar with a mate but now drank like he was planning to sink the fleet. As for his women … a sensible bloke wouldn’t have touched them with a pair of tongs.
There was always work; he made out, after a fashion, but you couldn’t call it a class act.
Always had too big a mouth, he thought now, puffing his smoke and staring at the sunlight. This time it’s really landed me in it, no error. He ground the butt of his fag into the dust — at least he was still capable of getting some things right — and went to make himself a cup of coffee.
He put the kettle on and the phone rang.
‘Yeah?’
‘Michael? It’s Grandma.’
Craig sat on the balcony of his unit, a glass of scotch and water on the table beside him, and stared down at the city.
It was evening, and on the bridge across the river rush-hour traffic was heading homewards, tiny beads on an endless string. He was too high to hear the noise or smell the fumes, but they would be there. Until today he had never given them a thought but now, with the news of Grandpa Hedley’s illness, they had become an important factor in his life.
He had a choice, after all. He had a good career here, in the city; a woman whom he loved, who might be willing to marry him, to come and live with him. In the city. With her background, he did not see how she could possibly fit in as a farmer’s wife in the mid-north.
So there should be no argument. The city — with its fumes and noise — it would have to be.
And yet …
In the hot ribbon of traffic, a driver was belting his horn, the angry sound brought to Craig by some vagary of the evening air.
Is that what it comes down to? he asked himself. A choice between the land I have wanted all my life — that, if I am honest with myself, I still want — and the woman I love?
A farm that he might have, or not.
A woman whom he might have, or not.
Ask her, he told himself. She’s an adult, sensible person.
And say what?
I have a chance — a very slight chance — of inheriting the family farm. How do you fancy being a farmer’s wife, a job you do not know, in a place you do not know, surrounded by people you do not know?
It was impossible. He could not lay that responsibility upon her. He had to decide for himself what must be done.
Go to the farm, he counselled himself. Meet the others. Find out what schemes are hatching in the mid-north. Maybe then you will know what to do.
After Kath had finished speaking to Craig she put down the phone, went onto the veranda and stared out across the valley. Hedley’s illness had brought home to her how close she, too, had come to the end of things.
She had been born here, lived here, would eventually die here. Against the backdrop of these ranges were displayed all the joys and sorrows, anguish and fulfilment, suffering and ecstasy of her life.
Certain memories stood out above the rest: events, thoughts, feelings rising like termite mounds from an otherwise featureless plain. Some were more significant than others, like the day when, at the age of eight, she almost fell to her death from the cliff outside the coastal town where the Schulz family had gone, with their friends the Warrens, for three weeks after harvest.
2
KATH AND HEDLEY
1930–1940
The beach shack where Kath and the two Warren boys slept was dark, hot, airless. Through its planked walls, paper-thin and glistening with salt, she listened to the sea’s quiet voice, the lethargic waves turning and turning along the beach. It was the contrast that later she remembered most: the shack sealed tight against mosquitoes and peopled by the slow breathing of the boys, while beyond lay the vastness of the night. The sound of the peacefully-breaking sea accentuated her awareness of the others compressing the space around her here, the infinity of peaceful emptiness there, no more than a finger’s breadth away, yet as inaccessible as the moon.
In years to come she remembered how she lay in her blanket on the dirt floor of the shack, face wet with tears for what she did not know, aware only that whatever it was would always be inaccessible to her.
The days of that holiday were filled with laughter and sunshine, salt water and the magic of rock pools lying open for exploration, yet of these she remembered little. By contrast, that moment of oppressive longing, an undefined sense of loss of what she had never had, stayed with her, clear as light, over the years.
So many years.
The two boys were her sort-of cousins, Hedley and Wilf, Mrs Warren some vague relly of her own mother. Hedley was almost the same age as she was, although he denied it.
‘Two months older,’ he said fiercely in his don’t-you-forget-it voice.
‘Two months isn’t much.’ Kath, as always, quite capable of standing up for herself.
‘In any case,’ Hedley pointed out with truth, ‘I’m a boy.’
One way or the other, he was determined to be the leader. Wilf was also a boy but younger, five to their eight, and didn’t count.
They explored the dunes that lay along the landward side of the beach, clambering up the shifting slopes where the sea wind hissed in the stiff grasses. They found a goanna, poked it with a stick, nervously, and let it go. They fished for little shrimp-like creatures in the rock pools.
One day, leaving Wilf behind, Kath and Hedley explored, against parental orders, the rocky outcrop at the far end of the beach. It was a hundred feet high, a sandstone cliff rising straight from flat rock ledges swilled by the tide. Hedley leading the way, they scrambled up. And up. Near the top, an exposed section, an overhang barring further progress. Hedley managed somehow to reach, grasp, haul himself up and over. Kath couldn’t manage it.
She tried; railed. Tried again, feeling her breath, the heat beating from the rock against her face, the muscles of her legs and body drawing tight, tighter … She looked down past scrabbling toes, saw herself falling, tumbling through the sun-bright air. Froze.
‘Come on!’ Hedley’s voice.
Somehow her voice escaped through rigid lips. ‘I can’t.’ He tried to help, arms stretching towards each other, fingertips just brushing, but that was as close as they could get.
‘Go back down, then.’
She couldn’t do that, either.
‘I’m stuck.’ Again and again, her voice choked with fright and tears. ‘I’m stuck.’
‘They’ll tan your bottom …’
Hedley’s voice was fierce, threatening. He was right, they would both be due for a whopping over this, but there was no help for it.
‘Don’t move …’
As if she could.
Her parents came, her father got her, she was safe. The skin of knees and toes were scraped and sore from the sandstone, but there was no whopping.
That night, in the close-smelling shack, Hedley said over and over, indignantly, ‘What d’you expect from a girl? What d’you expect?’
‘Shut up!’
But she thought he was right, and was ashamed.
The next day, to punish her, Hedley and Wilf went off together.
‘Girls can’t come …’
The episode had changed their relationship, had established the hierarchy that forevermore would exist between them.
Hedley was the leader, Wilf his second-in-command, Kath tolerated. Or not even that.
Not willing to be left out, she went with them, despite being ordered not to. It did no good; they behaved as though she weren’t there at all. Then they took her back into their games, only to dump her again the next day.
‘You’re different …’
She jumped up and down in the tumbling waves, a little apart. ‘I’m glad!’
But was not.
‘Let’s have a peeing contest!’
That was Wilf, something he’d picked up from one of his urchin mates.
‘What?’
‘A peeing contest. See how far you can pee!’
They tried, giggling, furtive. Hedley won; Kath was no good at all.
‘It’s not fair!’
Nor was it; but that was how things were.
‘I wish I was a boy,’ she confided to her mother.
The two women — her Mum, Hedley and Wilf’s Mum — sat outside the adults’ shack and knitted and gossiped and made cups of tea and did nothing while the two men fished off the beach, chucking baited lines that, very occasionally, caught something.
‘Well, you’re not,’ her mother said. Which was all the consolation she was going to get from that quarter.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Auntie Emily told her.
So she did, or nearly. When she was older and discovered the further implications of being female, her sense of justice was again outraged.
It’s not fair …
But by now had learned to keep it to herself.
Kath didn’t see much of her so-called cousins after that holiday. The patterns of life kept them apart — what boys did, what girls did — but she barely noticed. It was the way things were. She accepted it witho
ut a thought, having no wish to join in the boy things. Then she was eighteen, and matters changed.
It was 1940, the war was a year old, and she’d been seeing Hedley for a while, now. Enough for their parents to take note, although nothing much had happened. A kiss or two, a cuddle, hands trying to explore where, so far, she had not permitted.
It tickled Kath’s vanity to be wanted, although she still thought of it more as a game than anything. Of course, if it were only a game, she told herself, she could safely allow him to touch. She had often wondered how it would feel to be touched like that, yet had always stopped him before it reached that point. Not because she thought it was wrong. Had she been sure of retaining control of her life she might have permitted many things, but doubted that would be possible. So she smiled, and teased, and said no.
Hedley sat back, sweating, swearing softly beneath his breath. Kath was sweating a bit herself; told herself it was the hot day, only that.
Time to distract him.
They were sitting on a patch of summer-yellow grass amid a gathering of trees. Sunlight flashed through the rhythmically-stirring leaves and lay in golden patches about them. Behind them a sandstone knoll reared its tawny head, reminding Kath of the summer holiday, ten years earlier.
‘Remember how I got stuck climbing that cliff?’
Hedley worked his shoulders restlessly; he hadn’t walked over here to talk about old times. Yet was unsure how to gain access to the flesh that, after months of siege, she continued to deny him. Perhaps, if he humoured her …
‘Course I remember.’
‘You were that mad …’
‘Was I?’ Not half as mad as I am now.
But said nothing. He still held the hand with which she had thwarted his last foray, her palm sweat-slippery against his own. His groin ached.
He remembered, all right. More things than the climb.
One night, moonlight a silver blaze upon the rippling gulf, Kath and Hedley crept out of the shack, holding their breath against the creaking of the door as they edged it shut behind them.
