Redstone Station

by Therese Creed

  ‘Come into our church, boys, and take the seat of honour, right up the front.’ The priest took a clown on each robed arm and escorted them to the middle of the very front pew. Returning to the altar, he smiled down on them benevolently and was seated to listen to the readings.

  Alice discovered later that Michael, a newly initiated bullfighter, had ‘clowned’ at his first rodeo the evening before; he had been instructed by Jeremy, already a seasoned rodeo clown who had trained Michael up with all the tricks in his bag. It had gone off brilliantly, and Michael’s antics in the ring had successfully distracted the raging bulls from the fallen riders. But more importantly, the crowd had gone wild. Afterwards, the two boys had partied all night. How and when they had decided to climb the steeple, Alice never found out.

  The time came for the sermon. It was nearly Easter and the reading for the day was about Lazarus, the dead man whom Jesus had raised to life. Father Callaghan spoke about shedding the ‘darkness of sin’ that drags humankind into a state of ‘living death’. He spoke about hearing the voice of Jesus calling everyone to come out of the tomb. ‘His call is made in many ways, and people answer it in many ways.’ He gestured at the clowns. ‘Just as the people rejoiced at seeing Lazarus alive, we, too, should rejoice when our fellow man comes out into the light. We should embrace him, no matter what he has done in the past.’

  Alice noticed Mr Allen still standing to attention on the altar. Up until this point, he’d been glaring disapprovingly at the clowns. Now, at hearing the old priest’s words, he looked down at his polished black shoes and seemed unsure what to do with his face.

  Father Callaghan paused. The two clowns looked up and he smiled at them again. Michael looked stricken. His plastic red nose dangled under his chin, dented beyond repair. On the side of his face that had hit the ground, the white paint had mixed with red dirt and some blood to make a ghastly ochre. Alice could see him wringing his curly wig in his hands, apparently overcome with shame and remorse. Jeremy, on the other hand, was smiling up at the priest with what looked like genuine regard for the old holy man.

  ‘Cocky bastard,’ Brian O’Donnell muttered through gritted teeth, but Father Callaghan didn’t seem to be affronted by Jeremy’s expression.

  Alice was surprised when the priest gave communion to the clowns first. She could see some of the old ladies whispering among themselves, outraged at this mark of respect to the delinquents. When the recessional hymn was sung and mass concluded, Alice noticed with amusement that Jeremy genuflected on one knee towards the tabernacle, his rubber shoe folding up under his toe.

  But the punishment wasn’t over. Alice watched from the tea table set up outside, as the clowns came out the door, lagging a little behind everyone else. Father Callaghan wasn’t going to let them just slope off; he greeted them with open arms and escorted them again, one on each side of him, towards the tea-sipping churchgoers.

  Jeremy approached the tea table, looking at Alice curiously. She was helping her grandmother and another woman serve out the tea. Last time he’d seen her up close was at the primary school Distance Education camp years ago. It had been her first year of primary school, his last, yet he could still remember the tiny Bambi-like creature who had barely spoken to the other kids.

  He’d gone away then to boarding school and they’d both grown older. ‘She must be fourteen now,’ he thought. ‘Pretty.’ He smiled at her with his monstrous red mouth and was about to ask her for a ‘coffee, white with two’, when her grandmother edged in front of her and handed him a cup of black tea, piping hot. The look Olive gave him warned him not to even ask for milk, let alone sugar.

  Jeremy and Michael stood to one side of the crowd, sheepishly sipping their tea while Father Callaghan loudly discussed the dry weather with a few of the parishioners. Jeremy tried to avoid the flinty glares being shot at him by his parents. Mrs Allen, the acolyte’s other half, was walking around with a platter of Arnott’s biscuits; after offering them to everyone else, she swallowed her pride and approached the clowns. Jeremy was just about to take a Monte Carlo when she intercepted his hand, passing him instead a plain Milk Coffee biscuit.

  Michael saw what had happened and shook his head. ‘No, thank you.’

  As the people started to leave, Jeremy plodded around collecting a few stray cups and delivered them back to the tea table. He gave them to Alice, her grandmother safely out of the way at the sink.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said and smiled. She made him forget he was a clown, her smile so beautiful, friendly and unself-conscious.

  The clowns hung around until everyone had gone, waiting for the lecture they knew must be coming to them from the old priest. But all he said by way of dismissal was, ‘Hope to see you back again next Sunday, boys.’ Then, with a smile, he turned and disappeared into the church, off to the sacristy to change out of his vestments. Just a tired old man again.

  Chapter 5

  Olive could see that Sam was surprised when she agreed so easily to let Jeremy eat with them on his first night at Redstone. She supposed he’d been expecting her to insist on him eating alone in his cottage. But she had her reasons. Once they were all seated with their meals, she said, ‘Before we say grace, I have something to say.’

  ‘Bloody hell, a welcome speech!’ exclaimed Jeremy, lowering his fork.

  ‘Not exactly, although you are welcome here, Jeremy.’ Olive had decided that a little kindness to start with wouldn’t hurt. ‘While you’re working for us, there are a few things we expect.’

  ‘Old Ma calls the shots here does she?’ Jeremy looked at Sam in commiseration. ‘Same at my place when I still lived there. My old lady’s always worn the pants, but she lets Dad think he’s running the show.’

  Olive’s face was stony. She’d played this scene out repeatedly in her imagination. In her mind’s eye, Jeremy had listened demurely. Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat and Alice shot Jeremy a warning glance. He seemed to realise he’d pushed his luck. ‘Righto. I’m all ears. Fire away.’

  Olive regained her composure and decided to launch into it with no gentle preamble this time. ‘Firstly, we always say grace before meals. No one swears at the dinner table. There will be no drinking of alcohol or smoking while you’re at Redstone.’

  ‘Shi—. . . struth, a dry camp! That sounds serious. A bloke’s gotta run amok every now and again otherwise his work suffers.’ Jeremy winked at Alice.

  Olive continued coldly, ‘Girlfriends will not be welcome here. And there will be no weekend trips to town. I hope you can cope with those few conditions, Jeremy, as we do hope you can keep this position.’ She finished off with a little sniff.

  Jeremy looked at Olive with a direct, not unfriendly expression. ‘The way I see it, Ma, is this. Beggars can’t be bloody choosers. I know I only got this job because there wasn’t anyone else.’ He paused, challenging her to deny it. When she said nothing he continued, ‘On the other hand, I could go to the mines tomorrow and get a starting wage four times the pittance I’ll be getting here. All my mates have gone that way. But the truth is, the stinking mines make me sick. I’d rather work for a bloody septic sucker than go there.’

  Olive had gone pale and was holding on to the sides of her chair.

  Jeremy went on, ‘But about your rules, I’ll stick to ’em when I can. I’m not making any promises.’ He looked at Sam. ‘Better to be upfront about these things.’

  Sam nodded in agreement and then withered under Olive’s glare. ‘Liv, let’s just see how things pan out, shall we?’ he suggested reassuringly.

  Olive was thoroughly crestfallen. So far the reformation wasn’t going according to plan. ‘Well, the least you can do is call me Mrs Day. We’re accustomed to some respect around here, and none of our other workers have ever had a problem with that.’

  ‘Can do. I can cop that. Any day, Mrs Day.’ Jeremy chuckled. ‘And you can call me Jed. Jeremy was my Pommy great-granddad.’

  There was a brief silence as Olive considered how to respond. Sam jump
ed into the opening with unusual alacrity. ‘Let’s get started – food’s getting cold.’

  Somehow after all that they missed saying grace. As she washed up after Jeremy had gone back to his cottage Olive clashed the pots in mortification. She felt a sense of rising panic. Sam and Alice didn’t seem overly concerned; Alice was calmly drying up and Sam was poring over the funeral notices in the paper. Olive wanted to say something to shake them up as she’d been shaken. But Jeremy’s cheerful unconcern had made her feel unusually powerless. She finished tidying up and went to bed without doing any of her crochet.

  The next morning, after breakfast, Olive watched from the window as Jeremy, Sam and Alice walked to the yards. She began to puzzle again over her new problem. How would she fit another man’s wages into their already stretched budget? Should she ask Lara for help? But Lara’s life now seemed to revolve entirely around her husband, Conrad Harradine, and their three children. Lara had met Conrad not long after leaving Redstone; the older brother of one of her university peers, he was now a successful barrister in Brisbane and Lara’s life seemed to be complete, without the worry of her Redstone connections. Olive knew that the Harradines weren’t short of money and were in fact often on the lookout for new ventures to invest in. But did Lara still care enough about the future of Redstone to consider money spent on it an investment?

  Olive asked herself what would have happened if she’d listened to Sam and kept Alice at home instead of sending her away to boarding school. The money they’d laid out on school fees would certainly have come in handy now.

  Alice had hated that boarding school and then wasted the opportunity by leaving in year ten. It had seemed outrageous at the time, as the quietly spoken girl had been awarded an academic scholarship for years eleven and twelve. Olive had fought hard to convince her to stay but Alice had been unusually stubborn, and Sam, to Olive’s frustration, had sided with the girl. In the end, Olive had agreed that she could leave, but only on the condition that she furthered her education at ag college.

  Through the primary years Olive had diligently taught Alice herself with Distance Education. With quiet pride she’d noticed that her own aptitude for maths had continued down the maternal line. Alice loved to read, too: novels, but also Sam’s history books with their black and white photos of bullock teams, timber cutters, drovers and packhorses. Newspapers, farming magazines and farm production guides were always whisked away to Alice’s room upon arrival.

  But then the time had come for high school. Olive remembered the night she’d argued with Sam about sending Alice away. ‘Alice must have a chance to make something of herself. She’s very clever, Sam.’

  Sam was strongly opposed to the idea. ‘She has that chance – here. Redstone is her future.’

  Olive had a trump card up her sleeve. ‘Lara insists. She’s going to pay all the fees. It may be that she wishes to get to know Alice after all when she’s in Brisbane. We can’t stand in the way of a mother’s wishes.’

  But Sam had made it clear that he was doubtful of this from the very first.

  Still, Olive got her way, and Alice had made the journey to Brisbane to start at the same reputable Catholic girls high school that Lara had attended. When she came home for her first Easter holidays, it seemed that Sam’s fears had been warranted. Alice had seen Lara, Conrad and their two young children only once during her term in the city and had suffered horribly from homesickness. Sam had spoken accusingly to Olive. ‘She’s pining. Looks like a little wilted flower.’

  Still, Olive had imagined that things would improve in time. Lara had loved boarding school and Olive was convinced that Alice would grow to like it too.

  Alice didn’t share all the details of her first term with her grandparents. She’d encountered the bullies before she’d found anyone she could call a friend. Subtle girl bullying. Quiet taunts and exclusion. The ringleader, daughter of the local member of parliament, was tall, beautiful, Jacinta Foster. She’d targeted Alice on the first day, sweetly commenting on her great ‘tan’. Alice had explained that her father was Aboriginal, to which Jacinta had responded by asking whether she’d been adopted by a civilised white family.

  By the end of the first week, having failed to ruffle Alice, Jacinta enlisted a gang of followers. Their secret conferences often involved glances towards Alice and a great deal of muffled tittering. While most of the other girls would have gladly been friendly with Alice, they were too afraid of attracting Jacinta’s disapproval and generally avoided the lonely country girl.

  It soon became obvious to all that Alice had brains. Mrs Parsons, her eccentric, middle-aged English teacher, clapped her hands in delight at reading Alice’s first essay on the themes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mr Ferrari, the handsome young maths teacher, took a special interest in Alice and began bringing her extra problems to solve each week.

  Jacinta, seething with envy, had intensified her mission to make Alice’s life a misery. One day, while the class was waiting for Mr Ferrari to arrive, she’d called across the room to one of her friends, ‘Hey, Bianca, what’s worse than a dumb Abo?’

  ‘What?’ Bianca giggled stupidly, before the punchline.

  ‘A smart Abo. Because they know they can get everything they want just by being black!’

  Poor Alice, whose entire world until now had been contained within the boundaries of Redstone and the calm, orderly ways of her grandparents, found herself utterly disorientated and bewildered by the ruthless teen social dynamics of the city boarding school.

  However, those high school years had toughened her, and she’d managed to keep her chin up and make the best of a bad deal. She’d been sent to learn, so learn she did. This attitude, and the promise of one day returning to her beloved Redstone, were the two secret weapons that carried her through, term by term of school and also the following years at ag college.

  Now Olive, using the benefit of hindsight, was filled with an uncharacteristic regret for the part she’d played in the decision to send Alice away for schooling. Her hopes that Lara would take the opportunity to get to know her daughter had amounted to nothing, and Lara’s continued indifference had been a source of secret sorrow to Olive over the years. In addition, Lara had never followed through on her promise to pay Alice’s school fees, and Sam and Olive had been too proud to ask for the money.

  The day of Alice’s return from ag college, some weeks ago now, Olive had searched the girl’s face and figure for some resemblance to her mother. Lara’s pretty features were there, in a darker shade. But not the eyes. And none of the essence.

  Sam had been right: Alice was nothing like Lara. The girl’s heart was truly embedded in this place, and had she been allowed to stay, Sam may have managed things a little better at Redstone.

  ‘What’s done is done,’ Olive said matter-of-factly, out loud, to reassure herself.

  Chapter 6

  Jeremy took the veranda stairs two at a time. He wolf-whistled at King Henry the Ninth on the way past and only avoided a scolding from Olive because the kettle was boiling and she didn’t hear. Just in time, Jeremy remembered to take off his boots; once inside, he started off on the right foot by commenting favourably on Olive’s cooking.

  ‘Oh ripper, shepherd’s pie!’ he exclaimed as Olive was serving up the meals. She didn’t acknowledge the comment, but he noticed her surreptitiously add another spoonful to his plate. Then, with his mouth full of his first forkload, he said thickly, ‘This is even better than Mum’s! But don’t let on to her I said that.’

  Olive sniffed haughtily in response. But shortly afterwards, apparently addressing Sam, she revealed the existence of vanilla rice pudding for dessert.

  ‘Fair dinkum?’ Jeremy said. ‘I’m liking this place more and more. Good company,’ winking at Alice, ‘and beaut tucker!’

  During dinner, Sam told Jeremy a bit about Redstone. He explained that the hundred-and-ten-thousand-acre area was divided into thirty-five paddocks of varying sizes and the country was a combination of gidg
ee scrub, cleared and virgin forest country, and small patches of brigalow. Among the distinctive features of Redstone were the stony ridges with red rocky outcrops from which the station had got its name. The back half of the property boasted an unusually high elevation for land in the western region, and bordered on two hundred thousand acres of national park where the land rose steeply in a mass of rocky outcrops that were visible for hundreds of kilometres around. It was the weathered remains of a volcanic mountain range.

  In years with good rainfall, the national park was full of springs where the solid rock forced groundwater to the surface. Some of the spectacular deep rock gorges that were born in the thickly vegetated park ran into Redstone. There were also some natural cliff boundaries along a section of the border. Every fortnight, Sam explained, three full days had to be spent checking waters and fences on Redstone.

  ‘I do the checking most of the time,’ he said. ‘Suitable job for a crippled-up old fella like me. My eyes are some of the only bits of me which still work.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘But just for this week, I’ll take you along so you can see the lie of the land. While we’re at it, you can get a bit of a feel for what needs doing.’

  ‘Righto, boss,’ said Jeremy, who had been listening attentively.

  ‘Fencing is a high priority in many of the paddocks. And we have six sets of yards, all of them old, so we’ll need to get stuck into fixing them this year. Then there’s the open bore drains which Alice hates, and seventeen windmills.’ Sam looked at the younger man apologetically. ‘Afraid they all need some attention too.’

  ‘Righto, Sam. Getting the picture. Good thing I’m a strapping young lad with plenty of go in me,’ Jeremy said brightly. Alice seemed surprised at his enthusiasm.

  Sam looked immensely relieved. Then, glancing at Alice, he went on, ‘If Jeremy comes checking with me the next few days, that will free you up to look at the books with Olive. She’s been hounding me for a while now to have an uninterrupted session with you in the office.’ He looked warily at his wife.