by JH Fletcher
All along she had been careful to say nothing that might encourage him in any way. Now, facing what was tantamount to a straight question, she did not hesitate. ‘I would like that.’
She watched him walk away down the crowded street. You have known him less than twenty-four hours and you say that to him? I would like that. Aren’t you ashamed?
No, she thought, I am not. If saying it would make it happen, I would tell him to come back tomorrow.
What had she told herself, only five minutes ago?
I shall not allow myself to think too much about him.
Easily said.
Briefly, she caught a glimpse of his tall figure above the crush of passers-by, then she lost it. Until the next time. If there were a next time.
39
KATH
1999
The get-together had left Kath unsettled, out of sorts with herself and the world. Walter’s children, she thought. Look at them.
Rebecca pretending to be so passionate about the country when everyone knew that her interest in the farm began and ended in what she was going to get out of it. She and that wretched husband of hers were game to sue the pants off anyone if they felt they’d been badly treated. Was that the way for family to behave to each other?
It wouldn’t have happened when I was a kid, Kath thought. Then laughed, mocking herself. You’ve probably just forgotten. You were the only child, so in your case the problem didn’t arise, but remember what Benjamin was like.
Danielle was another one. Willing to go to war to prevent a single acre being sold. It was as though they hated each other. Perhaps they did. Was that what land did to people? And suspected it might be possible. Danielle deserved something, all the same, the way she worked. Although Heaven knows, Kath thought, I would hate to see it all end up with a ratbag like Hugo Welke.
Michael wanted it as well, but that Kath couldn’t see happening. The fight with Hedley had been vintage Michael, no sense to it at all, but Hedley wasn’t likely to forget it.
What had Michael told him? Too old, that’s your trouble …
Asking for it.
Craig was less selfish than the rest of them, but there was no doubt that at one time he had been as attached to the land as Danielle herself. Nobody had thought he had a look-in until Hedley and Michael fell out, but now he could be back in the running after all. If he wants it, Kath thought. Radio career or not, I’ve a hunch he will. Then we’ll see how generous-hearted he really is.
The fact was that she was sick and tired of the whole business, but seemed incapable of putting it out of her mind. She stalked into the kitchen, where she bullied a few pots and pans in the sink, punishing them for her own feelings of frustration. They all want it, but none of them is willing to share. I’ve no patience with any of them. Why can’t they work it together?
But that was fairy-tale country; given the Warren nature in them all, it was never going to happen. One of them would have to win out. Heaven help all of us, thought Kath. With the family doing its vulture act, it looked as though they would all be in for a trying year.
From what she’d heard, the other side of the family wasn’t doing any better. At least Julia was home again, that was something. She seemed to be doing all right in her career, but she certainly hadn’t made much of a success of her personal life. She should have stuck with Craig, Kath thought. They were right for each other. As it was … Julia divorced and not even thirty, and Craig with a bimbo who, from her photographs, Kath wouldn’t have allowed inside the gate.
The rest of them were no better. Susie gone, nobody had heard from Bronnie for years, Garth left the district, Woody doing odd jobs for his brother. All he was capable of, poor lamb. You could hardly call them a family at all, any more.
Everything was on Steve’s shoulders now. He was the farmer. Doing all right, too, from what she’d heard. Once again, his private life was a mess. But what chance had he ever had? An upbringing like that, he was bound to be different.
Kath remembered when Dulcie had brought him around to the house after Wilf died, back in 1965. He’d been a sorry creature, even in those days, and Dulcie herself had been no better.
She had pitched up unexpectedly, dragging Stevie along with her. Dulcie, the size of a house, her fat face streaked with tears, greasy hair hanging in rats tails; Stevie, a woeful tyke with a tidemark round his neck, one hand clutching a skirt that might have been made of sacking. They looked a right pair.
Kath eyed their filthy clothes, wondering what to do with them. Did the honours, all the same, ushering them into the living room. Dulcie was Hedley’s sister-in-law and had that right, whatever Hedley might say about it.
Kath brought tea, muffins from yesterday’s baking, orange squash for the boy. The tears continued to fall as Dulcie slurped and sprayed crumbs energetically.
‘What shall I do, Kath? Whatever shall I do?’
Kath was a fly trapped in a web of unfocused sympathy. There was nothing she could do, or say.
‘I loved that man,’ Dulcie said. ‘He was a fool to himself, I always told him so, a fool to all of us, but I loved him, Kath.’ The fat face crumpled like a paper bag. ‘I know the wicked things people say about me. They’re lies; I was true to Wilf all my life.’
Which was possible, Kath supposed. She, of all people, had no right to criticise. All the same, would have wished herself anywhere but here. She felt for Dulcie, of course she did, but such naked sorrow embarrassed.
Kath was well aware she had brought it on herself. If she hadn’t gone to Wilf’s funeral … In Hedley’s world, quarrels were for eternity, but Dulcie, unscrubbed or not, was family, and Kath had gone alone.
Not much of a crowd: some of Wilf’s disreputable mates, one or two from Dulcie’s own family, as down-at-heel as Dulcie herself. They had swapped stories, raucously, outside the church, sucking ciggie smoke into toothless mouths. Like the third world come to visit, Kath had thought, despising herself.
You played together as kids, she reminded herself. But the memory had not helped. Unable to think of anything to say to them, she had swallowed her tea and escaped as quickly as she could.
Not for long; now the third world was sitting in her living room. Kath knew that Hedley would expect her to get rid of her visitors as quickly as possible, but tea was two hours away; let Dulcie stay, if it eased her. All the same, the day’s routine had to be observed.
‘I must get on with Hedley’s tea,’ she said. ‘You can give me a hand, if you like.’ She would have liked to give her a good scrub first, but that was hardly feasible. At least it got her out of the living room.
‘Want to peel some potatoes for me?’
Potatoes were dirty to start with, and water might work wonders. So they worked, while Stevie, silent as a tortoise, crept away to the shed where Kath told him there were kittens. In the kitchen Dulcie talked about the accident that had left her a widow at thirty-nine.
‘Pissed. That’s what the doctor said. Pissed out of his mind.’ She made short work of a spud, chucked it into a bowl of clean water with the rest, seized another one. ‘He probably was, it was a problem he had. On the other hand, they could have said it just to do me out of the compo.’
Wilf had been killed by a grain train, scythed down at the crossing on his way home from the pub. Don Rickett, the publican, had sworn blind that Wilf had only had a couple, but Don had his licence to consider. The train driver had told a different yarn, how this bloke had loomed out of the darkness and half-walked, half-fallen in front of his locomotive. Nothing anyone could have done; Wilf Warren was mince before the driver’s hand had reached the brake.
‘I wonder,’ Dulcie said. ‘Wilf wasn’t a falling-down drunk. Not that it makes any odds, the poor lad’s dead, anyway.’
‘Did he have any insurance?’
By her expression Dulcie could have laughed. ‘You got to be joking. I’m trying to get the railway to kick in something, but I don’t suppose they will.’
It did not
seem to trouble her much; Dulcie, one of life’s losers, was already reconciled to getting no compensation. And money had never been a major consideration in her life.
‘At least Stevie got that land,’ Kath said.
It was a story that had kept the gossips going for weeks, how Juniper Harris, dead of cancer at forty-eight, had left her land to Stevie Warren in her will. Something very fishy about it, the town decided. Of course — elbows prodding in a frenzy of innuendo — Wilf Warren and Juniper Harris had been good friends, at one time. Very good friends, know what I mean? But to leave the land to young Stevie, instead of Wilf himself … Bit of a slap in the face, that was. Wouldn’t read about it.
Kath waited expectantly, but Dulcie, garrulous over most things, was not to be drawn.
‘How are you going to work the land without Wilf?’ Kath wondered.
‘Do it myself, I suppose.’ For the first time the rich laugh flowered in Kath Warren’s kitchen. ‘Can just see me on a tractor, can’t you? My brother will gimme a hand. Break his back for him if he doesn’t.’
The message was clear; she intended to seek no help from the Warrens. Just as well, Kath thought. She probably knows she wouldn’t get it.
Hedley had been fit to be tied when he’d heard about the Harris land. ‘I’d have made her a fair offer if only she’d asked …’ He was bitterly resentful that she had not, in his heart thought her inconsiderate for allowing cancer to kill her before he’d spoken to her. And to Wilf’s kid, which was the same thing as saying Wilf himself … On top of the land that Emily intended to leave him, that meant he’d end up with eleyen hundred acres. A man who spent half his time and all his money in the pub, someone who didn’t even try to hold down a job. Even by his own dour standards, it had put Hedley out of temper at the world’s injustice.
‘Maybe Emily will change her mind and leave you her land after all,’ Kath had suggested, seeking to console. Hedley had not bothered to answer; they had both known there was no chance of that, with Emily barely on speaking terms with her son over the way he had cheated his brother, all those years before.
As for the mystery of Juniper’s land … Kath prodded and hinted while she put the mutton in the oven and Dulcie finished the last of the spuds, but she got nowhere; clams weren’t in it so far as Stevie’s land was concerned.
Kath was less than delighted when the pair of them shoved off a little later, leaving her no wiser than when they’d arrived; the muffins had been a bad investment, after all.
40
CRAIG
1998–1999
Somewhere between arriving in Singapore and leaving it there had been a fundamental shift in Craig’s thinking, in the possibilities of his life. Back in Adelaide, the first thing he did was find out what leave he had owing.
He sent Yukiko an e-mail. I’ve got a fortnight. Can you get time off?
Yukiko did not answer until the following day. She had a month owing to her, but planned to spend most of it in Osaka.
I can manage a week early in the New Year, if you think it would be worth coming all this way for such a short time.
Craig would have been happy to fly up for the weekend. He phoned her, hungry for her voice. ‘Perhaps we can go somewhere away from Singapore,’ she said. ‘The Cameron Highlands is a hill resort four hundred miles north of here. I think you would like it. There’s a golf course. Do you play golf?’
They knew so little about each other, but Craig, no golfer, was willing to accommodate her in this, in everything. ‘The way I play, it could take us the whole week. I’ll be happy to go round with you, though, if you want.’
‘You could fly direct to Kuala Lumpur,’ she told him. ‘I could meet you there. That would save you two hundred and fifty miles. Or we can drive up together from here.’
‘I’m coming to be with you,’ he said. ‘We’ll go together.’
The QANTAS flight got into Changi Airport at nine o’clock in the evening, and he took a taxi straight to the hotel.
‘I have to work late to clear my desk,’ Yukiko had told him. ‘Do you mind if I leave you to find your own way?’
‘Of course I don’t.’
Of course he did, but accepted it philosophically. She had said she’d pick him up at six in the morning. He had a shower, was in bed shortly before midnight, with a wake-up call booked for five. He slept better than he had expected, was awake before the operator rang.
He drew back the curtains and looked down at the city. It was still dark but, even at this hour, there was traffic in the streets. It was raining; the pavements shone, the traffic lights cast red, green and amber gutters across each intersection, the passing vehicles threw a light spray from their wheels. He had nothing against this place but it was just another city, another Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide, and he was glad they would be spending their brief time together somewhere else.
He made himself a cup of coffee, had settled his account by five-thirty. Another fifteen minutes and he took his suitcase and went out onto the hotel forecourt to wait.
Ten to six.
Five to six.
Six o’clock.
At five past, a waiter from the hotel came out to him. ‘Mr Warren? There is a phone call.’
She has changed her mind, he thought. She is not coming. He picked up the phone in the lobby. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m on my way now. I’ll be with you in five minutes.’
It took less; he was hardly through the revolving door when she drew up with a screech of tyres before the entrance. She looked at him through the open window of the car, and he felt his heart turn over.
‘Would you mind if I asked you to drive?’ she said. ‘I’ve been up all night.’
‘As long as you give me directions.’
She shifted into the passenger seat, he took the wheel, they headed north towards the Causeway connecting Singapore with the Malaysian peninsula.
‘Up all night?’ he asked her. ‘How come?’
‘We’re arranging the finance for a big American investment in China. They wanted everything tied up for a meeting with the principals this morning.’
‘Pretty cool,’ he said, ‘when they knew you were going on leave.’
‘They wanted me to cancel,’ she said. ‘I told them I wouldn’t.’
‘How did they like that?’
‘Not at all. It’s why I worked all night, to get everything put to bed.’
‘Everything but yourself,’ Craig said. ‘You want to sleep now, go ahead.’
Once across the Causeway and into Malaysia, that was what she did. ‘Just follow the signs that say Kuala Lumpur.’
It was two hundred and fifty miles and Yukiko slept most of the way. From time to time, Craig took his eyes off the road to look at her. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. Vulnerable, too, which he suspected was a false impression. Pretty cool, he thought again, her boss expecting her to cancel. It made him feel good that she hadn’t, perhaps a tad apprehensive, too. Craig, a man who liked to be in control, was beginning to wonder whether things might not be getting away from him a little.
Halfway between Seremban and Kuala Lumpur, Yukiko awoke. ‘Where are we?’
‘Twenty-five miles to go.’
In Kuala Lumpur they stopped at a hotel for breakfast and to freshen up; an hour later were heading north again with Yukiko at the wheel. They took the toll road past Slim River and came at last to Tapah, where they turned right onto the winding road that climbed steeply into the mountains.
It was six o’clock by the time they arrived. It was still light, but the sun had set behind the rain-forested hills and the air was chilly.
The hotel was on the edge of the golf course, where one or two couples were still playing. They went to the desk to book in.
‘Warren and Fukuda,’ Yukiko said. ‘We have two rooms booked.’
She looked at him. He thought she might be challenging him to say something — this was the end of the twentieth century, after all, not the eighteen-fift
ies — and took care to hide his thoughts. It was a blow, undeniably; all the way from Adelaide, he had been indulging himself in pleasant day-dreams; now it seemed he could forget them. We hardly know each other, he told himself, trying to make the best of it. She needs time. And smiled back at her, a man without a care in the world.
They had adjoining rooms. They were identical, each with wallpaper patterned in brown and red leaves, a reproduction Victorian bed and wardrobe, chintz curtains for the multi-paned window that opened on the golf course. The bathrooms were also identical, a deep bath standing on clawed feet, a lavatory with a wooden seat, a wash basin with worn chromium taps. It was like stepping back a hundred years.
Perhaps she was right, after all, Craig thought. Perhaps we really are in the eighteen-fifties.
‘Do you like it?’
For the first time Craig realised how nervous she was. She has arranged everything, he thought. All I have done is get on a plane. The least I can do is let her see how happy I am to be here with her. The separate rooms don’t matter. If things work out, we shan’t be needing them; if they don’t, they may be a blessing.
‘It’s wonderful,’ he told her, meaning it. ‘Really wonderful.’
Her eyes lit up. ‘I wondered …’
‘Wonderful,’ he repeated firmly.
He unpacked, drew a bath into which he plunged; old-fashioned room or not, the water was hot, the bath a yard deep. By the time he had towelled himself dry, he felt thoroughly refreshed and looking forward to dinner.
He knocked on Yukiko’s door, and they went down to the dining room together. The waiter, suave and dinner-jacketed, flourished an elaborate menu.
Yukiko said, ‘I was told they have a good wine list.’
Craig ran his eye down it. Wines from France, from Germany, from America. Tucked away near the bottom of the reds, a 1993 Australian shiraz from the Gilbert Valley.
‘Where I come from,’ he told her, and ordered a bottle to go with the pheasant they had both chosen. Now it was his turn to be anxious as she tasted it.
