Charlotte's Creek

by Therese Creed

  After driving for over an hour, they left the sugar cane behind as the road climbed up a rainforest-covered range. Lucy glanced sideways at the grim, silent man beside her. She didn’t think he’d noticed, but a moment later he spoke.

  ‘You’re not looking too keen about your new job.’

  Lucy gazed straight ahead without replying. She would not rise to the bait.

  ‘You’ll get on well with Mel, anyway,’ he went on. ‘She wears that same face most of the time.’

  ‘You don’t look too joyful either,’ said Lucy, annoyed. She couldn’t resist adding, with unusual acerbity, ‘What do you do anyway, when you’re not picking up new governesses?’

  ‘I’m just a ringer,’ he said dismissively. ‘I usually go home weekends but we’ve got a big muster coming up.’

  ‘Ringer,’ Lucy repeated, intrigued in spite of herself. ‘That’s like a cowboy, isn’t it?’ She turned to look at him, and noticed for the first time that in spite of his rugged appearance he was probably no more than twenty-five.

  ‘You’re in Australia now, mate,’ he said, glancing over at her. ‘We’re called ringers over here. Or townies sometimes call us jackeroos.’

  ‘Well, I’m Lucia Francis, or Lucy, in case you wanted to know,’ she said, trying to be more friendly.

  ‘Not really,’ he replied.

  Lucy sank down further in the lumpy seat, feeling foolish. The road began to deteriorate and the rattling in the ute tray grew louder.

  After a few minutes, the ringer looked over at her again, his expression softening slightly. ‘Ted’s my name.’

  Lucy couldn’t help feeling relieved. ‘Ted. Is that short for anything?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Nobody’s ever asked me that before. Most people are just right enough with Ted.’

  ‘Oh . . . I’m just interested in names,’ Lucy explained. ‘So many names get ruined by association when you’re a teacher.’

  ‘And I’ve just gone and ruined the name Ted for you.’

  ‘Oh no! Not quite yet, anyway.’

  Ted glanced at her narrowly, and Lucy looked away, suppressing a smile.

  They soon reached the peak of the range. The sealed road ended as they began to descend on the leeward side, and the landscape changed with surprising suddenness, from tropical and lush to dry and open. The aged ute hurtled along, its creaking and shuddering the only sound for twenty minutes or so.

  Then Ted spoke again, making Lucy start. ‘Tristan Edward Golder.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You wanted to know.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lucy, processing the name. ‘T-Ed. Tristan. That’s a very dignified name for—’ She stopped abruptly.

  ‘For an ignorant, scruffy-looking bugger like me,’ Ted supplied.

  ‘I never said that!’

  ‘You thought it, but,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you?’

  Feeling sprung, Lucy nodded miserably, then looked out the window again.

  ‘Least you’re honest. Unusual thing in a bird.’

  When Lucy glanced back at him, Ted’s light brown eyes were twinkling and a deep dimple suddenly appeared in his left cheek. ‘A word in your ear,’ he said, looking ahead at the road again. ‘You’re gonna have to come over a bit tougher with Mel’s kids. They’ll have you for breakfast if you don’t treat them like the little ferals they are.’

  They finished their journey in silence, with Lucy searching the dry landscape for something to connect with. The afternoon sun, now lower in the sky, was painting the rugged trees, blond grass and rusty dirt with colour. At least her new home was beautiful, and so spacious it seemed to stretch for eternity. She felt like a small, lost canary that had been released into the wilderness, the boundaries of her world so suddenly extended, further than her little eyes could see.

  Chapter 2

  The ute clattered over a cattle grid and drove towards a sprawling complex of buildings, built on a raised flat that was ringed by a deep gully of thick trees. Pulling up in a vacant spot among a medley of machines in a large open-sided shed, Lucy and Ted climbed out and the sound of dogs yapping and rattling in their cages seemed to be coming from all directions. An old red and tan kelpie, his face flecked with white, appeared from nowhere, his whole body wagging with his tail at the sight of Ted. After Ted gave the dog a quick rub on the head, it rushed over to Lucy and jumped up on her, resting its two front paws on her hip. Unused to dogs, she patted him hesitantly, but Ted reached over and belted the poor animal away. Lucy exclaimed in horror.

  ‘It’s okay! I don’t mind him,’ she said, as the dog slunk off, its tail between its legs.

  Hearing excited voices, Lucy turned towards the buildings. On the veranda of one of two rambling Queenslanders, a woman was teetering on a stepladder, with two small children and a fat blue heeler hanging off the lower rungs.

  Lucy turned back to thank Ted for the lift, but he and his dog had already walked away.

  No one at the house had noticed her, so she made her way towards the veranda. As she climbed the front steps her mouth fell open, and she stopped in shock. The floor was littered with writhing frogs, dying where they had fallen from the hidden nooks behind the veranda roof beams. Judging by the astringent smell and the spray bottle in the woman’s hand, the frogs had just been squirted with undiluted Dettol. The two grubbily clothed, barefooted children, a boy and girl with identical brown curls, were busy kicking the frogs into the bushes below.

  Suddenly noticing Lucy, the woman paused in her work. ‘What’re you gawking at?’ she said abruptly. ‘You got a problem?’

  Lucy quickly closed her mouth.

  ‘You’re not some bloody animal welfare nutter, are you?’ The woman snorted as she turned back and sprayed another frog. ‘“Save the ants!” and all that. Here’s an idea, I’ll come and crap and piss on your veranda and see whether you feel sorry for me!’

  Lucy swallowed, then tried to smile in greeting at the two children but they only looked back at her curiously. The woman climbed down the stepladder, put down the spray bottle and wiped her hands on her jeans. ‘I’m Mel,’ she said. ‘Melissa West.’

  A tough-faced brunette, probably close to forty, Mel looked like she might once have been very pretty. Now, though, everything about her spoke of a deeply entrenched tiredness. Her hazel eyes were dull and her lank hair was roughly tied back, the ends of it a faded red from a long-ago dyeing. The rest was streaked with grey and greasy at the roots.

  ‘I’m Lucy. And you must be the twins?’ said Lucy, smiling again at the small boy and girl now clinging to Mel’s jeans.

  Hearing a shout, she turned and spotted an older boy and girl trotting towards them from the direction of a large, timber-fenced area where dust was rising. Beyond them, a cow bellowed.

  As they approached, Mel barked, ‘Billie, take the new guvvie over to Lotte’s Hut.’ She turned to Lucy. ‘You go and get settled. I’ll catch up with you later.’ And with that she returned her attention to the frogs.

  Billie complied grudgingly with her mother’s request, striding ahead of Lucy, who stopped at the shed to collect her backpack, and trudged along under its heavy weight. The sandy-haired, brown-legged girl led Lucy towards the quaint wooden cottage that she’d noticed beyond the machinery shed on her arrival, standing inside a small house yard fence and shaded by a pair of white-trunked gums. It was made from wide slabs of timber, greyed by the weather, with a rusted tin roof and brick chimney at one end. Stepping up onto the little veranda, Billie pushed open the front door and waited, looking impatient.

  ‘This is where all the guvvies live,’ she said, regarding Lucy critically with grey-blue eyes. ‘Stinking hot in summer but it’s a bit away from the dongas where the ringers sleep, and you got your own bathroom.’

  Lucy gratefully dropped her backpack on the veranda.

  ‘That’s our house,’ Billie went on, pointing to the building that Mel and the two smaller children had been de-frogging. ‘Gran and Pop live over there.’ She in
dicated the second Queenslander, set a little apart from the rest of the buildings and flanked by an enormous trio of mango trees. ‘They’re in town for a few days, but they’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Thanks, Billie,’ Lucy said. ‘How do you spell your name?’

  ‘With ie at the end, I suppose.’ The girl shrugged. ‘My name’s really Belinda but I hate it.’

  ‘Belinda’s a nice name,’ Lucy tried to laugh. ‘What are the other kids called and how old are you all?’

  ‘Cooper’s eleven, he’s the oldest. I’m nearly ten. Molly and Wade, the twins, are four, and our house dog’s called Bear. And Mum’s up the duff again. At least, I think she is. I heard her and Dad shouting about it the other day. Can I go now?’

  When Billie had gone, Lucy looked around her new home. It was a fairly spartan, single room, containing a sink, fridge, kitchen cupboard, a table and two chairs, and, against the other wall under a window, a bed and a little chest of drawers. Mounted near the fridge was a grimy old phone which Lucy checked for a dial tone. She was glad of this, as her mobile had been without service since crossing the range just outside of Ingham. An old mud-brick mantelpiece occupied most of the back wall, with a wooden sea chest filling the fireplace. The walls and floor of the cottage showed no signs of having been cleaned in recent memory.

  Investigating further, Lucy discovered behind the only internal door a tiny sulphur-scented bathroom with a toilet and rust-stained shower. Noticing a dark shape in the corner of the bathroom ceiling, she took a closer look. It turned out to be a small brown frog, its limbs neatly stowed as though in hibernation.

  ‘You’ll be safe with me, little man,’ Lucy said. ‘No Dettol here.’ She made a sudden resolution to save any future veranda frogs from Mel and the Dettol.

  As she looked around, she realised that her stomach was clenched. Her horror at the sight of the frogs’ suffering had only added to her growing misgivings about her new situation. The early twinges of homesickness were also closing in.

  Other than her overseas trips, Lucy had always lived with her parents. She and her younger sister Gemma had been raised in an inner-city Sydney home with a doting mother and father who were, nonetheless, in charge at all times. On the rare occasion that a rule was breached, it was invariably Gemma who was the guilty party, being the more boisterous of the two, while Lucy had always been a thoughtful and serious child.

  A tidy little woman of Maltese descent, Lucy’s mother, Marie, believed that apart from a few recipes and her secret knowledge of the odd Maltese swear word, she had largely lost touch with her cultural roots. But her family-centred approach to life, her devout Catholicism, and her adoration of her husband all revealed traces of her ancestry. Marie’s aqua-coloured eyes were as striking as her blunt, direct manner, and lovely against her olive skin and dark hair. Her round face was usually open and smiling, although it could rapidly transform when she flew into a temper.

  Lucy’s father, Graham, was fifteen years his wife’s senior and one of the finest heart surgeons in Sydney. A contented bachelor for many years, he’d met Marie when her father was dying from a heart condition, and had been drawn by her devotion to the old man. To outsiders, Graham seemed stern and serious, and his bedside manner wasn’t overly warm. But to his wife and daughters he was a gentle yet rock-like source of stability and comfort.

  Gemma, four years younger than Lucy, was not only more bubbly and outgoing than her sister, she was also beautiful, with the tall willowy build and fine features of her father, combined with her mother’s arresting blue-green eyes and olive complexion. By contrast, Lucy had fair skin and hair of a nondescript brown, and pale blue eyes like her father’s. Those mild eyes belied the depth of feeling of which she was capable.

  Though chalk and cheese, Lucy and Gemma had always been close—until recently. Their life paths had diverged once they left school. Lucy had thrown herself into study and obtained a four-year teaching degree in three years. Gemma, on the other hand, cheerfully conscious of her own beauty, saw no need for the inconvenience of furthering her education or career.

  It was while the Francis family were reeling in the aftermath of Gemma’s elaborate wedding to a wealthy, much older businessman that Lucy had accepted the position at Charlotte’s Creek. Marie, still overcome by the loss of her younger daughter, had gone into hysterics at Lucy’s news.

  ‘What about that lovely young Cameron Irvine?’ she had cried, throwing up her hands. ‘You can’t expect him to wait around while you have your crazy stint in the wilds.’

  Lucy replied decisively, ‘I don’t expect him to.’

  ‘Your father thinks very highly of him, Lucia,’ Marie lamented, ‘and so do I!’

  ‘Well, it’s not you he’s after,’ Lucy retorted.

  ‘Graham! Tell her! You can’t treat that lovely boy like that. Not after what Gemma did to him!’

  ‘It’s not my fault Gemma went off with a sugar daddy,’ Lucy muttered.

  ‘Lucy!’ Graham warned.

  ‘Something’s got into you,’ Marie continued, ‘to make you want to take off to some outback, middle-of-nowhere cattle ranch. You’re usually so sensible.’

  ‘Marie,’ Graham said calmly, ‘Lucy is an adult now. She is free to make her own life choices.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ Lucy sighed.

  ‘Yes, thank you!’ Marie exploded. ‘When Lucy is gored to death by a raging bull, I won’t say, “I told you so, Graham!”’ She stormed out of the room then, rummaging in her bra for her rosary beads and sobbing out a Hail Mary as she went.

  Lucy frowned helplessly at her father. He looked down at her intently, ‘I’ll miss you, Lucia,’ he said, his blue eyes smiling. ‘But I’m proud of you.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ Lucy said again, gratefully.

  What Lucy hadn’t told either of her parents was that Cameron Irvine’s interest in her was another reason why she was keen to escape Sydney. Cameron was a handsome medical graduate who’d completed his internship under her father. He and Gemma had been an item for six months, until the day he’d taken her along to his family’s private box at the races, where she’d met his obscenely wealthy uncle, Lloyd Irvine. Lloyd’s profession was unclear, but it was generally understood that he’d made his money through ‘business’ and ‘investments’, and he’d been semi-retired since the age of forty. This was more than sufficient information for Gemma, while Lloyd, who’d fallen in love with her on sight, pursued her relentlessly. The fact that he was twenty-nine years Gemma’s senior hadn’t concerned her one iota. They’d become engaged within the year, and married on Gemma’s twentieth birthday.

  The Francis family were all shocked by Gemma’s apparently hasty marriage, but Lucy was particularly shaken by it. She simply couldn’t reconcile herself to the fact that her beloved sister—whom she’d always believed had real substance beneath her frivolous exterior—could have sold herself so easily to the flashy, middle-aged Lloyd. Gemma had raged at Lucy when she’d refused to congratulate her on her engagement, and it had caused a serious rift between the two siblings, a chasm that Lucy believed could never be bridged.

  For his part, young Cameron, not one to dwell on the past, had simply shifted his attention to Dr Francis’s other daughter. And in spite of Lucy’s attempts to be as clear as possible about her lack of interest in him, Cameron persisted, telling her he was quite happy to let her amuse herself for a while with her little game of ‘playing hard to get’. In doing so, Cameron unwittingly added impetus to Lucy’s resolve to leave the city.

  Now, Lucy unzipped her backpack, took a deep breath and blinked away her tears. She hadn’t made a mistake in coming to Queensland, she told herself. As much as she loved her family, she’d been aware for some time that she needed to fly the nest, to get away from her mother’s fussing and even her father’s quiet doting. She’d come up here in search of a complete change and a challenge, and now a challenge was presenting itself. She was determined not to fall at the first hurdle, give up and rush home to safety.
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  Pushing away all thoughts of the comfort and familiarity of home, she packed away her belongings in the dusty chest of drawers. Checking the kitchen cupboard, she found some basic supplies, including teabags and an old kettle. But when she turned on the tap to fill the kettle she was greeted with a splutter, then a gurgle, followed by a rusty trickle of water. A moment later, a small brown frog shot out, landing with splayed legs over the plughole. After this blockage had been expelled, the tap began to run with clearer water. Giving up on the tea, she took the frog outside then sat down at the table with her own water bottle and watched the sun going down through the window.

  Some time later, hearing a sound at the back door, Lucy turned to see three faces peering around the doorframe. Two of them belonged to the twins, one above the other. The third and lowest was that of a sheep. All three heads had shaggy curls in need of shearing, but the sheep’s were a dirty yellow, rather than chestnut brown, and it regarded her through long pupils in pale vacant eyes, that contrasted with the alert hazel ones of the twins.

  ‘It’s dinnertime,’ said the boy, then, looking down at the sheep, added, ‘Clear off, Rambo, you stinking thing!’ There was a woolly thud and the animal withdrew.

  ‘Can we come in?’ two voices said in unison.

  ‘Of course!’ Lucy said, pleased to have a distraction. ‘Molly and Wade, isn’t it?’

  ‘You beauty!’ Molly exclaimed. ‘Natalie never let us in here.’ They rushed in the door, jostling each other to be first to leap on the bed, which creaked in protest.

  ‘Who’s Natalie?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Last guvvie!’ said Molly.

  ‘Natalie always sended us packing,’ explained Wade. ‘We’re only four so we don’t have to do school yet.’