Charlotte's Creek

by Therese Creed

  ‘We call this place the Dining Room,’ Ted said.

  ‘Well, I’m honoured, sir,’ Lucy perched herself on a root, ‘to be allowed into the Dining Room.’ She listened for a moment to the musical babble of the water on the pebbles, and smiled up at Ted. He grinned back, folding his long legs to crouch down beside her. When he took out his sandwich and tore it in half, she accepted her portion humbly, and the water that he scooped out of the little stream for her with the battered tin mug was sweet and cold.

  After lunch, the next paddock they visited was Ginger Ridge. Leaving the road, Ted drove through the grass to a small clearing in a nondescript patch of ironbark and bloodwood.

  ‘Why are we stopping here?’ Lucy asked.

  Ted got out silently, gesturing with his head for her to come and watch. He took a lidded bucket from the ute tray, and tipped its contents in a pile at the base of a particularly gnarled bloodwood.

  Lucy wrinkled her nose. ‘Dog faeces? You collected those?’

  ‘Bloody oath. The more they stink the better. Would’ve done a leak on that too if you weren’t here.’

  Taking a shovel, he dug a shallow pit beside the stinking mound, into which he placed a long steel contraption. He pushed apart its serrated jaws and set the catch. Lucy looked at it distastefully, recognising it for what it was.

  ‘A dingo trap?’ she asked.

  Ted nodded. ‘Not the nicest of jobs.’ He looked mildly regretful as he concealed the trap with a sheet of newspaper followed by a thin layer of dirt. ‘Don’t usually mind a few dingoes getting about. This place is their home too. They keep the rabbits down as well. But these dogs have got a taste for calves, and once they start, they don’t let up. Lost a good half dozen over the past month.’

  ‘Can’t you poison them? The trap seems so cruel.’

  ‘You’ve never seen a dog that’s taken a bait, then,’ remarked Ted, making a face. ‘It’s not pretty. And they soon wise up to poison. Usually only get the big pups that way.’ He fluffed up the grass around the trap and marked the tree with a piece of pink surveyor’s tape. ‘I’ll check this trap first thing tomorrow. Old man dingo’ll be sitting here, quite calm. I’ll pop him off from a distance with the rifle. Quick and clean.’

  Lucy raised her eyebrows, far from convinced. As they drove away she gazed back sadly at the spot where the trap was set.

  But before they had left the paddock, the discovery of a fresh atrocity caused her to reconsider slightly. Ted drove up the steep side of Ginger Ridge dam, following the wall around. It felt so precarious that Lucy clung to the sides of her seat and initially failed to notice what Ted had spotted immediately. A mob of cattle were gathered near the water; standing in it up to her knees was an exceptionally forlorn-looking cow. Her tail was held out at an uncomfortable angle, her back was hunched, and there was a bloody protrusion hanging from her rear. The other cattle moved away in a colourful mass as the vehicle approached, but the cow in the dam stayed where she was.

  While Lucy watched from the ute, Ted waded in and hunted the cow out onto the muddy bank. The effort of walking through the sucking mud seemed almost too much for her, and once she was on the harder ground she stood dejectedly, her sides heaving, without the energy to even walk away when Ted came closer. After examining her for a moment, he returned to the ute. Wordlessly reaching behind Lucy’s seat, he drew out a rifle. Lucy watched with appalled fascination as he shot the cow in the middle of her forehead. The rifle’s deafening crack echoed around the hills.

  Ted returned to the ute and stowed the rifle again. Taking the surprised Lucy by the hand, he led her over to the dead cow. As they approached, she covered her mouth in horror. Hanging out of the cow were the ragged remains of a calf, mauled by sharp teeth.

  ‘They got to this one before it was even out of its mother,’ Ted explained. ‘Poor bugger.’

  The cow’s back legs, udder and underside were also a bloody mess of torn flesh. Lucy was unable to speak. Ted left her standing there and went back to the ute, which he reversed over to the dead cow. After hooking a chain around its back hocks and then to the tow bar, he indicated for Lucy to get back in. They dragged the cow’s body away from the water and over to the brink of a gully. Getting out of the ute, Lucy watched while Ted unhooked the chain and levered the cow’s body with a crowbar until it rolled into the depression.

  ‘Couldn’t leave her to rot there near the dam,’ he explained.

  ‘What a shame,’ Lucy said sadly, looking at the cow’s red hide, still smooth and glossy. ‘She was a fine-looking animal.’

  ‘Yep, she had a good quiet temperament too. Probably why the dogs got her. Had a calf every year without fail.’

  Lucy gazed at Ted in astonishment. ‘Do you mean to say you recognise that particular cow from all the others? But there are hundreds!’

  Ted shrugged.

  ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ Lucy said accusingly.

  ‘No, mate. I don’t know all of them as well as her. She was a specially good type.’

  Lucy laughed incredulously. ‘There’s nothing you don’t know about this place, is there? In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that Ted Golder is the backbone of Charlotte’s Creek.’

  ‘Shows how much you know then, doesn’t it?’ Ted said dismissively, turning back towards the ute.

  But as they drove away, Lucy couldn’t resist pressing him further. ‘With all the family conflict going on, this place would be in a real mess if you weren’t here.’ She regarded his poker face and waited for a reply. When he said nothing, she went on, ‘Adam thinks Gwen and Noel are going to sell up. Is that true?’

  ‘Oh, he does, does he?’ Ted muttered. ‘Well, he’d know. No need for me to comment.’

  ‘Yes there is need, Ted,’ Lucy contradicted. ‘I’d like to hear your version.’ She waited again, then added with more urgency, ‘Why can’t they all sit down and work out a solution so that Dennis and Mel can stay?’

  ‘Well,’ Ted began reluctantly, ‘it’s kinda gone past that. Too much bad feeling involved now. Everyone blames Mel, but they’re just using her as a . . .’ He paused.

  ‘Scapegoat?’ Lucy supplied.

  ‘That’s it.’ He nodded. ‘The can of worms was already here before she came on the scene. She just brought the tin opener with her, eh.’

  Lucy briefly admired the aptness of his metaphor. ‘But what about the brothers and the sister? Surely they don’t think they’re entitled to an equal share when Dennis has spent his whole life working on this place while they’ve gone and made careers elsewhere?’

  ‘Dunno what they think. Westy’s not exactly the golden boy. Always the way—the absent ones can do no wrong. Easier to play your cards right from a distance. The middle fella, Justin, is his mum’s favourite. Gwen still thinks he’s coming back here to settle.’

  ‘Well, why couldn’t they come back and live here too?’ Lucy said. ‘Run the place together if they want their share. That seems to be what Gwen wants. It’d be such a shame if the place were to be sold after all the work Dennis and Mel have put in.’

  ‘Those blokes have no intention of coming home.’ Ted spoke with certainty. ‘Never did have. The two boys have got jobs in the mines and Liz is some sort of therapist and married to a doctor in Cairns.’

  ‘So Adam was right then,’ Lucy remarked, more to herself than to Ted. ‘I was hoping he might have been exaggerating.’

  ‘Dunno why you’d think that about the poor fella.’

  Lucy looked across at Ted and noticed that his iron features were threatening to break into a smile, but then he grew serious again. ‘You’re right. It is a bloody shame. Got a lot going for it, this place. Dunno why I bother with it when it’ll probably end up being another foreign investment before long.’

  ‘Adam said that too!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘Don’t tell me that’s true as well?’

  Ted shrugged. ‘It’s pretty simple. Countries like China and Indonesia can see food shortages coming. So they’re buying up food-produci
ng land, water leases, mines, you name it, from any country dumb enough to sell it to them. Cheap security, eh.’

  ‘Ted, are you certain about this?’

  ‘Wish I was wrong, let me tell you. China wanted to buy up the Atherton Tablelands last year, and Cubby Station’s gone, with the biggest single freshwater licence on the continent. There’s talk that they’ve earmarked the Channel Country out west for a huge food bowl too. And who’s to blame them? They’re thinking ahead, and we’re the “clever country” that’ll jump at anything to line our pockets in the short term. Just lie back and think of China.’

  ‘But this is unbelievable!’ Lucy cried. ‘How can the government let this happen?’

  ‘Let it?’ Ted laughed mirthlessly. ‘They’re the worst of the lot. Here’s an example for you. Last year the government forced Bernie Ackers off his place because of the coal under it. Then they sold it to India, and now the Indians are building a private railway and port to ship out the goods. End of story—closed circuit. Even importing their own workers, and who can blame them? Them fellas work for peanuts, don’t strike every other week or claim compo for stubbing their toe.’

  Lucy listened attentively as Ted went on. She’d never known him to be so vocal.

  ‘The coal seam gas is even worse news,’ he said. ‘At least the mining mobs buy you up so you can go and make a start somewhere else. With the CSG they just slice up your place around you, bugger the groundwater and poison your soil. And all for an industry with a lifespan of a few decades.’

  ‘It’s all wrong!’

  ‘Too right it is.’ Ted gave a single nod. ‘Land that should be used to grow food for generations to come.’

  ‘But why are we hearing nothing of this in the cities?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Must be in someone’s interest to keep it quiet, I suppose,’ Ted said, shaking his head. ‘I just hope they find coal under some celebrity’s cattle place. Might get in Women’s Weekly then.’ He laughed wryly, but Lucy was aghast.

  She was still shaken by what she’d learned when, twenty minutes later, they came across another broken fence. So when Ted handed her the pliers and went to get the roll of wire, she didn’t feel quite up to the challenge. She hunted around in the grass for the broken ends of barbed wire, then picked one up gingerly.

  ‘Now . . . a loop,’ she said to herself, but in the process of trying to bend the end of the wire she managed only to scratch and prick her hands in several places. Ted stood by watching silently, which made her even more self-conscious. After quite some time and several more minor injuries, she’d made a loop in each end. Ted handed her the roll of plain wire and she fed it through both loops and tied it off at one end. But when it came to tensioning the wire, Lucy found she was at a loss. Her small fingers barely spanned the handles of the pliers and she hadn’t the necessary technique. The wire suddenly seemed to become slippery, repeatedly springing from her grasp. It had looked so simple when Ted had done it.

  Watching her fumble with the pliers, Ted laughed good-naturedly. Flustered and frustrated, Lucy flared up. ‘You might think I can’t do anything useful,’ she said, ‘but I’m not as stupid as you think!’

  ‘Stupid? Heck, I know a smart bird when I see one,’ Ted said quietly. ‘I’m sure if I went to the city with you for the day, the shoe would be on the other foot. Not that you’d ever drag me into one of them meat ants’ nests.’

  Lucy’s glare softened. ‘Well, I can’t be like Bri or Tash. I wasn’t born to this life, and I don’t have the courage to do what they do. But I want to learn as much as I can.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s courage you’re short on.’ Ted met her eye, addressing her more directly than he’d ever done before. ‘It’s your attitude that makes or breaks you out here, Lucy, not how nifty you are with a pair of pliers.’

  Lucy took a deep breath and smiled, her anger evaporating. It was the first time Ted had used her name.

  ‘As for Bri and Tash,’ he added, ‘they’re bloody handy all right, as good as blokes in most tight spots. But there’s nothing wrong with a girl who’d rather be a lady, if you see what I’m getting at.’

  Lucy laughed. ‘If you said something like that in Sydney, you’d be shot down in flames for being a chauvinist.’ Ted shrugged unconcernedly.

  She looked down at the pliers in her hand, wondering what to do or say next. Suddenly Ted moved close behind her. He put his big, rough brown hand over the top of her small white one holding the pliers, and steered her back to the fence. Reaching his other arm around her to grip the wire, he helped her to manoeuvre the pliers until the join was tight. Lucy smiled, reminded of all the times she’d helped a small child gain mastery of a pair of safety scissors. But doing that had never made her feel like she was feeling now.

  Ted hesitated briefly before releasing her. Even after he’d stepped away she could still feel his warmth on all the places where he’d made contact with her skin, and her hands, still holding the pliers, tingled with the power of what was possible—with all she could learn from a patient teacher.

  ‘Better be making tracks,’ Ted said gruffly. ‘Can’t spend all day on a broken wire. Westy’ll think we’re up to something.’

  Lucy wondered if he was flirting with her, but on scrutiny of his departing form she dismissed the notion and trotted after him towards the ute.

  Chapter 25

  On the way out of her cottage the next morning, Lucy glanced at her calendar and noted that it was the first day of spring. What a wonderful time to be bringing a baby into the world, she thought as she made her way over to the house.

  But when she entered the kitchen she saw that Mel was looking far from overjoyed. Her face was drawn and she was clearly uncomfortable on the hard, upright kitchen chair.

  Mel and the kids hadn’t arrived home from Townsville until after nine o’clock the previous evening, and the children hadn’t surfaced yet. The table looked strangely empty with only Mel and Dennis, seated at opposite ends. Dennis had his head buried in a tractor manual.

  ‘How did your appointment go?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Baby’s fine,’ Mel replied tonelessly. ‘Big, apparently.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good,’ Lucy responded; then, seeing Mel’s expression, she wondered if perhaps a small baby was preferable.

  ‘Speaking of that,’ Mel went on, ‘I noticed the other day, Alpha’s full of pups. Bloody tart, she is. Third time it’s happened. Had her locked up when she was on heat as usual. Must’ve missed a day.’

  ‘Look who’s talking!’ Dennis exclaimed gleefully, looking up from his page. ‘That’s the pot calling the kettle black if ever I heard it.’

  Ignoring her husband, Mel took a bite of toast. Dennis addressed Lucy. ‘Too bloody fertile, my woman. Should’ve been a breeder cow.’

  Lucy decided to follow Mel’s example and ignore Dennis. ‘Pups?’ she said excitedly. ‘Who’s the father?’

  ‘Have to be stinking old Shep,’ Mel replied. ‘Ted lets him wander round like he owns the place. So they’ll be kelpie–collie cross, same as the last lot. I got rid of them, but. This lot are only a week or so away by the looks, and they’re all yours if you wanna save them.’

  ‘Oh!’ Lucy exclaimed in delight.

  ‘After what happened with the cat ’n’ that . . .’ Mel said flatly, ‘I thought I’d let you know first. Up to you, anyway. Let me know what you decide.’

  ‘Yes! I’ll decide now!’

  ‘Might be a problem if you want to go home in the school holidays.’

  ‘No.’ Lucy shook her head decisively. ‘I thought I’d stay, since the baby’s so close now. Leave it to me, I’ll find them homes!’

  ‘Righto then, but not in Sydney, eh?’ Mel looked intently at Lucy’s face. ‘Be kinder to dong them at birth. Town’s no place for a working dog.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true, of course. Thanks, Mel. I’m so excited!’

  ‘You’re a queer one, you are.’ Mel gave a half-smile. Heaving herself up out of her chair, she waddl
ed to the kettle, shaking her head. ‘I’ve just given you a bugger of a job and you’re thanking me for it.’

  Lucy spent a lot of time over the next couple of days thinking about the pups, and then began phoning prospective owners. By Thursday lunchtime, old Mollie, Cliff Tyrrell and Rowdy McCann had all agreed to take a pup, and another young local grazier had called in to see Lucy and request one. Then Ted’s old boss Stumpy phoned the main house and said he’d heard on the grapevine that some of Shep’s pups were going begging. He asked a surprised Mel to keep one aside for him. It seemed the old kelpie’s bloodlines were quite a drawcard, but Mel advised Lucy to hold off from further phone calls until the pups were born, alive and well, and she knew exactly how many homes were needed.

  With the onset of warmer days, Lucy’s vegetable garden flourished. The two rows of real corn plants were now taller than Lucy, and looked lush and sturdy. The plot of carrots and spinach appeared luxuriant. Resisting the temptation to dig up the carrots and inspect their progress, Lucy had to satisfy herself with the sight of the spectacular clumps of feathery lime-green fronds and the fat orange root tops poking out of the soil. The beetroot, too, was thriving; like the eggplant bushes it had so far been low maintenance. But the masterpiece was the tomato bed. Ted had helped Lucy to stake the plants and rig up a square of shade cloth to block the hottest of the midday sun, and the bushes were now tall and dense, laden with flowers and perfect plump green fruit the size of gourmet cherries.

  The first crop ready for harvest was the spinach. It was a moment of triumph. The plants were tall, juicy and dark emerald green. After phoning Marie for some tips, Lucy cooked up a simple Maltese dish of spinach and pine nuts. That night at dinner she looked around shyly to see whether everyone was appreciating this most special of vegetables, which she’d set in pride of place at the centre of the table. But the children were all chattering as usual, oblivious to the food they were shovelling into their mouths, and the twins had smothered everything, including the spinach, with tomato sauce. She noticed with dismay that Dennis hadn’t taken a single spoonful from the dish.