Love on Forrest Downs

by Sheryl McCorry

  *

  On a Wednesday in February I travelled with Michael to the Boyanup cattle sale, where I was shocked to see my ex-husband Terry’s vehicle. I called Leisha and begged her to rescue me from a situation that I knew I was still not strong enough to handle. The aggression I remember seeing in Terry’s face with his set jaw and bulging eyes, accompanied by the constant clenching of his fists – all of that still haunted me.

  ‘Come on,’ Michael would say whenever I would recall Terry’s behaviour, ‘you’re safe. He wouldn’t dare lay a hand on you.’ And I knew that dear Michael was always there for me. But I couldn’t bring myself to attend that cattle sale, not even with protective Michael by my side.

  When Leisha arrived at the saleyards she said, ‘Mum, you’re still letting him bluff you. He can’t touch you now.’

  ‘I know, love,’ I replied. ‘I promise it won’t always be like this. I am getting stronger.’ I paused, collecting my thoughts. ‘Let’s go for that cup of tea now.’ I just needed to get away from the sight of Terry’s vehicle, away from the saleyards, to get somewhere I could breathe easily again.

  I still hadn’t conquered my fears of coming face to face with that violent man. But I will lose those fears, I told myself. Terry’s not God – he’s just a man who has some underlying problems of his own, and one day those problems of Terry’s won’t bother me any more.

  Unfortunately that day hasn’t come yet – but I am certainly looking forward to it.

  *

  Around this time, Michael and I had been saying that we both felt our love for each other could not grow any stronger by waiting to tie the knot. One sultry evening we sat across the table from each other after dinner, clasping each other’s hands, laughing and talking about our rather hectic day working with the cattle. Eventually we fell quiet and I felt the heat and ruggedness of Michael’s huge hands as they squeezed mine ever so gently, bringing a feeling of tranquillity between us.

  Michael’s head was now bowed, and I couldn’t help but notice that he was quietly concentrating on the engagement ring he had bought for me, gently turning it around and around on my ring finger. It was a beautiful large, round diamond, surrounded by many smaller diamonds. I gazed at his downturned head, taking in the light sprinkling of grey in his dark hair, and reminded myself how lucky I was to have met this strong, gentle man who was now my lover and husband-to-be.

  There was really no need for conversation between us; since we’d started living together on the farm we seemed to be able to pre-empt what the other person was thinking. So when Michael raised his large, brown, questioning eyes to mine, I answered with, ‘Yes, I am truly ready to marry you, and I really do love you.’

  Overjoyed, Michael came around the table and lifted me into his arms in an enormous bear hug. As he held me tenderly he said, ‘You’re the first woman I have really loved.’

  The following morning, while searching for a marriage celebrant in the local phone directory, I called Leisha with our good news. Michael and I had decided to marry on my son Kelly’s birthday, 24 April.

  ‘Mum,’ Leisha said, her happiness echoing down the line, ‘I was just going to call you, because Nigel and I have been talking and we had planned on doing just that too.’

  We could not believe that each of us planned on phoning the other with the same wedding plans – we were both beyond excited.

  Leisha continued in more sombre tones, ‘I told Nigel that when we married it would have to be on Kelly’s birthday – that I really need for him to be there with me, if only in spirit.’ I understood exactly what she meant, because I felt the same way.

  Realising that we were both becoming a little sad and nostalgic, I reminded Leisha, ‘Love, we can’t let the sadness take hold of us now. Kelly wouldn’t want that.’

  ‘I know,’ Leisha replied. ‘It’s okay – I promise it’s all good.’

  I agreed. ‘Marrying on Kelly’s birthday should only bring us happiness.’ And I thought our lives would indeed be good from then on.

  By the end of our rather long phone conversation I agreed to leave it to Leisha to find a reputable marriage celebrant. Within days she found a wonderful gentleman, Mr Peter Ellson from Bunbury, to marry us both.

  When Leisha phoned with the news I was curious to know more. ‘What’s so special about Peter, love?’ I asked.

  ‘Mum, I’ve spoken to many couples he has married,’ she said. ‘They are all happy, and still very much married.’ She laughed. ‘It has to be a good omen.’

  I thought for a moment and then I had a laugh too. ‘Well, love, it will be Mummy’s fourth wedding, and this one must work.’ I couldn’t let Leisha get off scot-free, so I added, ‘And your second.’

  ‘I know,’ said Leisha, still laughing. ‘We have had a few, haven’t we?’

  Well, I thought, that’s life. I could only hope to have learnt from these marriages, and now I was looking forward to a very happy future with Michael.

  I called Robby and Tara with the good news, not forgetting that their new baby was due not too much before our planned wedding date. I explained to Robby that there would be no big deal made of our marriage, and if for any reason the new baby and our wedding clashed, his priority was to be at home with his family. Also, because Michael and I had both been married before, I couldn’t see any reason to make a big deal out of the ceremony. ‘Keep it simple and personal’ was our motto, and in line with that Michael and I planned on keeping our marriage under wraps and not telling a single person apart from those directly involved.

  In the following weeks I found that Leisha was becoming a bit overwhelmed by all the arrangements, and I worried that moving back in with Nigel, becoming engaged and getting married in two months’ time were going to prove too stressful for her. So I suggested that we visit our favourite restaurant, which overlooked the turquoise waters and idyllic beaches of Bunbury, for lunch and to discuss wedding plans. And we did, with pad and pencil in hand.

  Several hours later, after enjoying a wonderful meal of freshly grilled snapper with a simple side salad and many cappuccinos, we agreed that organising our weddings wasn’t that hard after all. We also agreed that it didn’t matter how low-key we wanted to keep our weddings, we would still dress for this special occasion, so we set shopping dates for the weeks ahead.

  *

  The next day was a Monday, and on the farm this meant drafting and weighing cattle for the abattoir and butchers. Michael and I pushed the number-one pen of 200 head of feedlot cattle down to the homestead yards, where our stock agents Orrie and Chats would run them over the scales. ‘Different weights for different markets,’ they’d say, and as soon as Orrie had selected eighty head of ‘butchers’ cattle’ from that pen, Michael and I would send the remaining cattle back to the feedlot. We’d select another 200 head to repeat the drafting and weighing process all over again, until we had that week’s cattle sorted and held in the homestead yards. The agent would then return to Manjimup, some 140 kilometres south-west of Forrest Downs, to continue weighing and drafting for other cattle producers.

  After they’d left, Michael began to mix another batch of feed while I returned to the homestead, washed the gritty black yard dust from my face and hands, and collapsed on our bed. I had simply run out of energy. Suffering from aches and pains, I had been battling to even sweep the dining-room floor or hang out a load of washing. On that particular day I slept for seven hours, and I’m sure that even if bombs had dropped on us I wouldn’t have woken up or even cared.

  Thursday came around, which meant that Michael had to attend the local cattle sale at Mount Barker to continue buying cattle for the feedlot, because we needed to keep the numbers up. I took this opportunity to visit my doctor in Kojonup, to see if he could shine some light on my health problems. Some time later that day, after another lot of tests, I arrived home none the wiser. But I did know that I was feeling terrible, so I slept for another six hours, only waking to the constant ringing of my telephone.

  �
�Mum,’ Leisha said, ‘what’s wrong? You sound really terrible.’

  I probably sounded exactly how I felt at the time, but it took another twenty minutes to try to convince my girl that I wasn’t overdoing the farm work and that I would be okay, and that my health was just another hurdle in my life that I had to overcome.

  Michael arrived home in his truck with the first seventy head of cattle from Mount Barker. He had a quick cuppa before returning to the sale yards for the second load. I travelled with him to lend a helping hand loading the second mob of cattle in the dark. Prior to my arrival in his life he’d always had to do the hard slog alone, much to his mother’s distress. Now I tried to help him even though I knew he was more than capable of working by himself.

  For me there’s nothing better than ‘offsiding’ the person you love: no matter how difficult the job or how dirty the work, it never seems quite that bad when you’re helping each other. In fact, we can both be absolutely stuffed and still find the energy to make fun of the way the politicians are running our country from Canberra.

  A week later I travelled to Boyanup to spend the night with Leisha, Nigel and the boys. The next day, with Nigel at work and Brock at school, Leisha, Cohen and I headed for Bunbury to start the frantic search for our wedding outfits.

  We ventured into the main-street boutiques, trying on clothes and pulling them off again, becoming quite disillusioned about the whole wedding thing, when Cohen, bless him, said, ‘Mummy, you’ve got lots of clothes – you don’t need a new one to get married in.’ He’d had enough of shopping for wedding outfits, and so had we. We knew it was time to stop and have a coffee at our favourite waterfront cafe, before the whole wedding idea went into the too-hard basket for us both.

  Just before we arrived at the cafe we spotted a boutique that neither of us had seen before.

  ‘Should we, Mum?’ said Leisha.

  My feet, which were swollen and sore, were saying, ‘Bugger it.’ But my mouth said, ‘Go ahead, love.’

  While Leisha went into the boutique, Cohen and I window-shopped at the neighbouring stores before ending up in Toyworld across the road. My mobile phone rang.

  ‘Mum, where are you?’ asked my girl. ‘Have you got a minute?’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute, love,’ I said.

  Holding Cohen’s hand, I crossed the road to find Leisha in an exquisite, slinky 1920s-style gown. She wore a band of pearls flapper-style across her forehead, with a flower attached to the side. I just loved it and thought the soft teal colour suited her skin tone perfectly.

  ‘It’s a Lisa Ho,’ Leisha whispered, ‘and Mum, it’s quite expensive.’

  Young Cohen put in his two bobs’ worth: ‘Yeah, Mummy, buy it.’ The cost factor never meant a thing to Cohen, but the ice-cream parlour next door did.

  Once we’d had a break at the cafe I set off on the long drive home via the small town of Donnybrook and the fresh veggie marketplace, followed by Boyup Brook, with its country-style statues and splendid rose gardens. Once I had travelled fourteen kilometres south of Boyup Brook I was left with seventy-five kilometres of undulating road that wound its way through deer, sheep and cattle properties, and several lush nature reserves, before I reached Forrest Downs. What I loved about living in the Great Southern was the many quaint, beautiful, character-filled little towns dotted all over the countryside. The distances between towns were short, not vast as they were in the Kimberley.

  I arrived home to find Michael stressed, slightly agitated and clearly very hurt about something.

  ‘What’s wrong, love?’ I queried gently. I sat down beside him and over a mug of tea he opened up to me about his dilemma.

  Michael had just spoken to his daughter, Carrie. He worried that Carrie’s mother, Julia, was too dependent on Carrie and too needy, and that Carrie was becoming the adult and taking care of her mother, not the other way around. To make matters worse, Julia had again taken Carrie into the middle of Queensland’s outback.

  I really felt for Michael, because this pattern of events had repeated itself more times than I care to write about, and unfortunately it is still going on. The victim out of all of this is Carrie. And I’d be lying if I said that the turbulence between Michael and Julia hasn’t bothered me. If Julia is around when he calls Carrie, he will cop an earful from her. Both Michael and I worry that eventually Julia’s behaviour towards him will affect Carrie, if it hasn’t already, and because of this Michael does not call Carrie as often as he would like to.

  When all this started I asked myself how Michael – such a kind, gentle soul – could ever have married such a person. I agonised over my thoughts for a long time before eventually bringing them out in the open. I needed to discuss them with Michael – there was no point in our marriage going ahead if we weren’t both 100 per cent comfortable with each other’s pasts.

  We sat down and talked over many mugs of tea, trying to make sense of why such strong and confident people can sometimes make disastrous matrimonial and relationship decisions. I’m convinced that loneliness plays a huge part in it.

  When we were both close to becoming ‘tea-logged’, Michael carefully asked me, ‘What did you see in Terry – what do think drew you together?’

  I told him that when McCorry died, it felt as if he had left me wandering around alone in the dark of this huge world. Then Heath, a much younger and rather ambitious lover, came onto the scene, wanting to become a gentleman farmer at my expense, and that wasn’t to be. He was followed by Terry, an older man who seemed confident and in control of his life. I have since wondered if I tried to replace old McCorry with Terry – or was I looking for a more matured-aged companion after being with Heath? What I do know is that the marriage to Terry was a bloody disaster.

  Michael and I left it at that, promising to be open and honest with each other, and I was confident our mutual love and respect would make sure of that. And when it comes to his ongoing efforts to maintain his relationship with his daughter, Michael has my support and always will. He is not alone in this and he never will be.

  *

  A few weeks later, Cohen was due for a check-up to monitor his progress after the hip operations that had started back in 2008. We had been told that the medical profession had broken new ground when operating on our boy’s hips, and there were many doctors and specialists following Cohen’s progress very closely.

  So I travelled through farmland, via Boyup Brook and into pretty, undulating country to Donnybrook, and in no time had crossed the Preston River and arrived at Leisha’s home. With Nigel away at the time driving Mitchell’s road trains, I decided to accompany Leisha and her boys to the hospital in Perth, where young Cohen was to see the doctor. In actual fact, both boys were unwell. Brock was home from school with a croupy cough that could easily have been mistaken for a young crocodile’s mating call, and Cohen had a temperature. I had just recovered from the flu but now it looked like Leisha was getting it too.

  We rose early the following morning and travelled to Perth via the newly completed freeway, which was a first for me. The trip from Bunbury to Perth was a hassle-free run, but I’m afraid I couldn’t say the same for our city venture, or the battle we had trying to get a spot in the hospital’s car park! We had to park as close to the building as possible, as Cohen was still unable to walk long distances and had grown far too heavy to be carried. He was certainly not an invalid, though, and was well and truly on his way to full recovery. On each of these trips Leisha would have to convince him that he wasn’t going to be admitted back into hospital, and that the check-up was to show the doctors how well he had mended.

  Once we entered the hospital, I sat with Brock while Leisha took Cohen for the many X-rays he had to have on each check-up. Then the specialist and a team of half a dozen young trainee doctors surrounded Cohen to prod, pull and roll his body on the hospital bed.

  The specialists who had operated on our boy in 2008 were amazed with his progress. Cohen had even started to ride his bike around the veranda
and to run around the backyard of Leisha and Nigel’s home. Little things that had caused him great pain in the past were now done easily – he just got a little sore and tired sometimes.

  Leisha had gone through a terrible time watching over Cohen’s recovery; there were occasions when she hated to let him out of her sight, as she was fearful that he might take a tumble and damage the good work the specialists had done. But now Cohen’s goal was to go to school and run and play with Brock and his new mates. ‘Nan,’ he would say, ‘I just want to run in a school race.’

  ‘You will, my boy, you will,’ I would tell him, because I was absolutely positive that he would run in a school race one day, and that Leisha and I would be there to watch him do it.

  While in Perth, Leisha and I toyed with the idea of shopping for a wedding outfit for me, but within seconds we canned the idea. With the boys not well, Leisha was next in line for the flu, and I wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels after having had it. So with a glowing doctor’s report for Cohen, and another check-up booked for six months’ time, we happily left the hospital and the city behind and returned to Boyanup.

  Several days later, after Michael had worked extra-long hours on the farm to get the cattle feeding done, he drove with me to Perth. It was a real pleasure to have him by my side as I shopped for my wedding outfit. And, would you believe it, within two hours I had found what I was looking for, in Claremont.

  I hadn’t wanted an outfit that screamed ‘wedding’ – and I certainly did not want a wedding gown. I could not forget that my two disastrous marriages (not the one to McCorry) had happened when I was dressed in rather expensive wedding gowns, and I certainly wasn’t going there again! Plus I wanted an outfit that I could wear for my marriage to Michael and also wear five hours later as mother of the bride for Leisha and Nigel’s wedding. I soon found just what I wanted and felt comfortable in – something soft, feminine and elegant. It was a three-piece outfit that was both refined and tasteful, I thought, and in the wardrobe at home I already had a beautiful pair of Italian shoes that would complement it nicely.