Charlotte's Creek

by Therese Creed

  Lucy winced. ‘Doesn’t that hurt Shunter?’

  ‘Not him.’ Billie said authoritatively. ‘You should see how the horses flog each other out in the paddock when they’re cranky. They can take a kick that would knock a man out cold, without even blinking.’

  Once any last trace of defiance had dissolved, Cooper pulled him up next to Lucy and jumped down. ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy said firmly, not at all certain that she was.

  ‘Only walking, eh,’ Cooper emphasised.

  ‘Got it.’ Lucy mounted without hesitation and Cooper showed her how to grip the reins.

  ‘Watch he doesn’t try busting your knee by brushing it on a post or knocking you off under that slide gate. He knows all the tricks, that little coot.’

  Half an hour later, a bloodstained, sweaty and elated Lucy, and four proud children, returned to the house for afternoon smoko.

  ‘Mum!’ Cooper exclaimed as they entered the house. ‘Lucy’s not half so soft as she looks.’

  Mel looked Lucy up and down, raising her eyebrows at the sight of the blood. ‘Lucy the gutsy guvvie,’ she said with a wry smile. And Lucy grinned back proudly.

  Chapter 15

  It had been a long, chaotic day, and by dinnertime Lucy was fed up. It was only Tuesday and they were just a few weeks into the term, but the two older children had been exceptionally obstinate in the schoolroom, and the twins mysteriously absent. Lucy had battled determinedly through the long morning, remaining patient and firm, and she’d even tried her best to greet the twins light-heartedly when at last they’d appeared for lunch.

  ‘Hello, you two! What have you been up to all this time? Helping your dad?’

  ‘Nooo . . .’ Molly had said, looking at the ground.

  ‘It was only an accident, fair dinkum, Lucy,’ said Wade.

  ‘What was an accident?’ asked Lucy, battling to keep a straight face.

  Molly straightened up and looked her in the eye. ‘Lucy, we’ve come to ’fess up.’

  ‘So, what have you done that’s so terrible?’ Lucy tried to sound stern.

  ‘We were just practising writing our names, like you said,’ Wade answered.

  ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ Lucy said impatiently. ‘Where?’

  ‘That’s the problem, see,’ Molly started. ‘We didn’t meant to, but we—’

  ‘Shhh!’ Wade interrupted. ‘Lucy . . . if you went over in the shed direction, you’d be getting pretty warm.’

  A few minutes later, they were standing by Lucy’s car, looking solemnly at some deep scratches in the paintwork of her bumper bar.

  ‘Why did you do this to my car?’ Lucy demanded. ‘This is no accident.’

  ‘It was so smooth and shiny,’ Molly answered eagerly. ‘We thought it would be a good place . . .’ Her voice trailed away under Lucy’s glare.

  ‘And then we stopped and thought about it,’ Wade put in hurriedly, ‘like you always tell us to, and we reckoned maybe we’d been real bad.’

  ‘Well, you reckoned right!’ Lucy cried. She ran her fingers over the scratches. Molly hung her head.

  ‘Jeez, Lucy,’ Wade entreated, ‘we just thought that if our names were on your car, you wouldn’t forget about us back there in the city, if you lefted, like all the guvvies always do.’

  ‘I see,’ Lucy said wryly.

  ‘We know you have all those other kids in the city,’ Molly added, a little resentfully.

  Lucy considered their faces for a moment. ‘What makes you think I’m going to leave?’ In her insecurity, she was wondering whether the twins had noticed how unfit she was for station life.

  ‘Oh . . . just ’cause, you know . . . ’cause of us.’ The little girl looked at the ground again and her bottom lip began to quiver.

  Lucy, both touched and relieved, squatted down in front of the pair.

  ‘Because we’re rotten little ferals,’ Wade blurted.

  ‘I don’t think you’re ferals,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Fair dinkum?’ Wade was astounded.

  ‘I think you’re lovely,’ Lucy added.

  ‘Scritching up your car isn’t lovely.’ Molly burst into tears.

  ‘Well, no, not that, but most of the time.’ Lucy put her arms around the little girl.

  ‘I swear we won’t scritch up anything else of yours,’ Wade promised, close to Lucy’s ear.

  ‘Good.’ Lucy stood up again. ‘You’d better not!’

  They started back to the house.

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘Yes, Molly?’

  ‘You should really think about giving us a flogging, you know. You let us off too easy.’

  ‘Shut your gob, Molly!’ Wade hissed.

  Ignoring Wade, Lucy asked, ‘Do you think you need a flogging?’

  ‘Well, it might stop us from doing it again,’ Molly said quietly.

  ‘You said you wouldn’t,’ Lucy answered simply, ‘and I believe you.’

  ‘Jeez, Lucy,’ Wade whistled, ‘you’re not that switched on for a grown-up. But I still like you.’

  Once she’d recovered from the vandalism of her car over a cup of tea in her cottage, Lucy had returned to the family house. From the hallway, she heard Dennis and Mel having a heated argument. She was about to retreat again when all four children came pelting down the hall towards her. Dennis stormed after them.

  ‘What are you bloody gawking at?’ he yelled into her face in passing.

  Then, when Lucy went to help Mel in the kitchen, the older woman had snapped at her continually, and most unfairly Lucy thought. So by the time evening finally arrived, Lucy was feeling fed up and a little defiant. As a small show of protest, she flew in the face of tradition and turned off the blaring television as they sat down to dinner. Ted looked up in surprise and gave a thin whistle, like a kettle letting off steam. Mel looked as though she was about to object, but then she met Lucy’s eye and paused.

  ‘We haven’t always had mealtime TV,’ she said at last. ‘Natalie got us all into the habit of sitting in front of the “box” to keep the kids quiet when they were eating.’

  ‘Why not try meals without it for a few days?’ Lucy suggested, and Mel reluctantly agreed.

  For the next week they had television-free dinners. Surprisingly, none of the kids complained about this change, or even appeared to notice. But the lack of distraction highlighted the uncomfortable silence between Mel and Dennis. So apart from the chattering, bickering and feeding-animal type noises made by the kids, dinner at Charlotte’s Creek was generally a silent affair where the adults were concerned.

  As no one else stepped up, Lucy took charge of managing the children’s conversation, which tended to get a little out of hand. Billie enjoyed nothing more than shocking her with graphic and gory descriptions of aspects of property life, usually involving the death or mutilation of some paddock creature, using language that never failed to take Lucy’s appetite away. Cooper wasn’t much better, the only difference being his intent. He had no wish to horrify Lucy, only to tell her interesting anecdotes, but in the end he achieved the same result. Meanwhile, the twins succeeded in spreading fragments of food within a wide radius of the table. At first Lucy had put it down to clumsiness, but then she’d noticed that the spilled food was never meat or potato, but invariably peas or cabbage. So now that mealtime communication was possible, Lucy worked quietly on table manners as well.

  Occasionally, desperate for some moral support, Lucy would look to Ted, but if he ever met her eye, his features invariably remained blank and severe. It was as though his spirit was elsewhere, while his body undertook the necessary task of refuelling. As a result, after a few days, Lucy began to wonder whether the lack of television at dinner was indeed an improvement at all. Family mealtimes had always been held sacred in her Sydney home: the importance of families eating together, sharing good food and conversation had been drummed into Lucy and Gemma from their highchair days. These were things Lucy had always taken for granted—until now.
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br />   After enduring the situation for a whole week, Lucy decided something drastic must be done to change the dinner dynamics. While culling a pile of outdated encyclopaedias in the schoolroom she came across an ancient book of Australian verse, and it gave her an idea. She would administer some mealtime poetry. It wasn’t as though it would be preventing any decent conversation, as there was none, and there was a slim chance that it might even stimulate some.

  As they sat down at the table that night, she announced, ‘We’re going to have some poetry with dinner.’ Looking around, she tried not to sound nervous as she continued, ‘Cooper is studying colonial history at the moment for school, so we’re all going to get into the spirit of it.’

  Dennis raised his eyebrows and sniggered. Mel didn’t even look up. After taking a deep breath, Lucy began to read the poem she’d selected, Clancy Of The Overflow, by Banjo Paterson, having to raise her voice to be heard over the clattering of cutlery and plates. When she finished, there was no reaction from the adults and older children. Only the twins truly seemed to enjoy the music of the words.

  ‘That’s bloody nice, queer sounding talk Lucy,’ Wade remarked. ‘Can you read it again?’

  Lucy put the book down on the table, feeling deflated. The rest of the meal proceeded as normal, with the kids squabbling and Mel maintaining a sullen silence. But when Ted got up from the table at the end of the meal, he briefly nodded to Lucy before carrying his plate to the sink and leaving the kitchen.

  Then it was the usual madness of bathing the kids and supervising as they cleaned their teeth. Lucy read the bedtime stories, wondering why Mel hadn’t come to say goodnight to the children as she normally did. Once the kids were all in bed, she decided to retreat to her cottage. On her way out, she remembered that she’d left the poetry book in the kitchen, so she went back down the creaky hall. When she entered the kitchen, Mel was standing bent over the volume, which was open on the bench. Her posture was slumped; even from behind, Lucy could tell she was overcome by some strong emotion.

  At the sound of Lucy’s footsteps, Mel turned and stared at her with eyes full of terrified desperation. It felt to Lucy as though the older woman was looking right through her. Without a word, Mel lifted the open book and held it out to Lucy accusingly.

  Lucy took it from her with confused concern. Something was terribly wrong with Mel, and although she didn’t know what it was, she felt that she’d intruded on a moment of great vulnerability. To allow the other woman some privacy, she lowered her gaze to the book. The page was open to Henry Lawson’s poem ‘Past Carin’’. As Lucy’s eyes ran over the stanzas, random phrases jumped out at her.

  . . . I’ve got to be past carin’ . . .

  Past feelin’ and past carin’ . . .

  Through hopeless desolation . . .

  flood and fever, fire and drought . . .

  I, the one that loved him best, Have grown to be past carin’ . . .

  My eyes are dry, I cannot cry, I’ve got no heart for breakin’ . . .

  And now I only wish to be, Beyond all signs of carin’ . . .

  The poem suddenly held new meaning for Lucy, and tears sprang up and blurred the text. She met Mel’s gaze, which was still fixed resentfully on her face.

  ‘What the hell are you tearing up about?’ Mel demanded. ‘What would you know about it?’ She stabbed at the page with her finger. ‘What would you know about any of this?’

  Lucy stood there helplessly.

  Mel went on, ‘You can take your bloody poetry, and shove it up your nightie.’

  ‘Mel, I’m so sorry,’ Lucy murmured.

  ‘Just get outta here and leave me alone, would you?’ Mel said, running her fingers through her lank hair.

  Lucy backed away a step or two before turning and leaving the kitchen. Never again would she complain if the television was switched on at mealtimes.

  Chapter 16

  Lucy, after putting the book of poetry firmly back in the schoolroom bookcase, hurried to her cottage, showered and went straight to bed. But she tossed and turned, drifting in the no-man’s land of semi-sleep, stray phrases from ‘Past Carin’’ mingling with snippets of the bitter arguments between Mel and Dennis that she’d recently witnessed. Suddenly Dennis’s angry face loomed up in front of her, just as it had looked when he’d yelled at her in the hall the week before. It was replaced by Mel’s stricken eyes as she’d handed back the book of poetry. Lucy wrapped her arms around herself and gave a desperate little sob.

  Morning seemed to come just a few moments after she’d finally dozed off. She lay there with her eyes shut and listened to White Trash crowing in the distance. After dragging herself out of bed, she made a strong, sweet instant coffee instead of her usual tea, and sat sipping pensively. She felt tired, but strangely removed from herself and completely ill-prepared for the day ahead.

  Fifteen minutes later, as she wandered lethargically over to the chicken coop with the bucket of scraps from the family house, she ran into Ted coming out of the hayshed. She looked up in surprise, unsure how to greet him as they hadn’t spoken properly in so long. Even when he’d revamped her vegetable garden it had been done in silent willingness—he’d come, worked, and gone again without wasting more than a few words in the process. But now she noticed fondly that his tow-coloured hair was still ruffled from sleep, and in her dazed state of exhaustion, nearly reached up to tidy it for him without thinking. Looking down hurriedly, her eyes rested on his strong wiry arms, the sleeves of his stained shirt being rolled up, and she found herself longing wearily to sink into their steady grasp. She scolded herself inwardly.

  Fortunately, he saved her the trouble of making any small talk. ‘Wanna come for a ride this afternoon?’

  ‘On a horse?’ asked Lucy blankly.

  He looked sideways at her and raised one eyebrow. ‘Yeah, a horse. Got a bit of time up me sleeve, and a filly that needs some work.’

  ‘Oh . . . thanks,’ Lucy replied in surprise. ‘I mean, yes, I’d love to.’

  ‘You look like you could use a bit of fresh air,’ Ted added. Lucy gazed up at him, surprised that he’d noticed. He looked uncomfortable and hooked his thumbs over his belt. ‘Righto then, see you at the yards round four.’ Then he was gone.

  Still feeling tired, Lucy muddled through the day. Luckily, the children were relatively manageable. She also found that the thought of the afternoon ride was buoying her up. She’d had several more riding lessons with Cooper since the nosebleed, and with Ted by her side, she was sure she’d be game to venture out of the safety of the yards. And there was no longer any point denying to herself that being with Ted made her happy, as baffling as it was.

  But when she walked eagerly over to the yards that afternoon and found the ringer replacing some broken timber rails, she was met with an unwelcoming frown. Glancing at her watch, she noted regretfully that she’d arrived half an hour before the agreed time of four, and was suddenly conscious of appearing overly keen. She withered under his look. ‘I’m afraid I might be a bit early,’ she faltered. ‘I can come back later if you’re busy.’

  ‘Just finishing up here,’ Ted muttered. ‘Was planning to have the horses all saddled and ready for you, but you’ve beat me to it.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lucy said, relieved to think that maybe he wasn’t annoyed with her after all. ‘I don’t know how to put on a saddle,’ she went on. ‘I’d like to see how it’s done.’

  ‘Hasn’t Coop covered that with you yet?’ Ted asked.

  Lucy was mortified. So Ted knew all about the lessons with Cooper. She’d been hoping to impress him with her emerging horsemanship. Glancing up, she saw his dimple flicker in his cheek; clearly he found her vexation amusing.

  Ted cut the last rail to size and Lucy watched, fascinated, while he finished fixing the new length of heavy timber into the joggles in the old posts with a thick wire twist. His huge hands were amazingly adept with the chainsaw and drill, and meticulously precise with the crude set of pliers. The job was done in no time.
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  Then, trotting to keep pace with his long-legged stride, Lucy followed him over to an ancient shed behind the vet crush that she’d not yet been into.

  ‘This is where we keep all the tack,’ Ted said, opening the squeaky door.

  ‘Tack? Horsey stuff?’ Lucy surmised.

  Ted nodded and stood aside for her to enter first. It was very dim inside, and the weak shaft of light from the little window at the back was full of floating dust. Lucy looked around in awe at the mysterious paraphernalia and breathed in the pungency of old oiled leather. She recognised many of the articles—saddles, stock whips, bridles and saddle blankets—but some of the beautifully crafted leather and brass items were more obscure. Many looked as though they’d seen heavy use in days gone by. A whole host of miscellaneous tins and jars, their labels faded and peeling, stood like dusty soldiers along a beam.

  ‘Here.’ Ted pointed at a small stock saddle. ‘You can use Billie’s. Bit big for her, just right for you, I’d reckon.’

  Lucy went to Billie’s saddle and tried to lift it, but it seemed to have adhered itself to the rail. Letting go, she bent down to inspect it. Ted came over, slid his forearm under the tree of the saddle and swung it up and away effortlessly.

  ‘I’ll carry it!’ Lucy said, hurriedly taking hold of the saddle. But she grunted with surprise when Ted lowered it into her arms.

  ‘These old stock saddles are heavy buggers,’ he conceded kindly. ‘Made to last, that’s why. You reckon you can hump this over to the yard?’

  ‘Hump? I think so.’

  Ted took down an enormous saddle of his own, onto which he piled two saddle cloths and bridles. Carrying them easily, he squeezed out the door. Lucy staggered along after the ringer, now fast departing towards the yards. She was still in transit when she heard the motorbike start and saw him puttering away into one of the smaller timbered paddocks close to the yards.