A Far Country

by John Fletcher

‘We’re going home,’ he said.

  They rode out into the yellow afternoon sunlight and headed south-west.

  BOOK THREE

  EAGLES

  Eagles are the largest and most powerful of raptors and ruthlessly dominate their territories. The females are usually much larger than the males.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Asta Matlock watched as Hector Gallagher brought the bleating, jostling mob off the hill towards the homestead. Around him the dogs circled, driving the sheep towards the shearing shed that had replaced the ramshackle framework of sawn boughs that Gavin and Ian had erected when they first set up the two runs.

  Hector trotted up. ‘We’ll be ready to start shearing in the morning.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘’Bout time. Blake started two days ago.’

  ‘So you have already told me.’

  You have told me twice, she thought, but would not give Hector the satisfaction of saying so.

  ‘This rate ’e’ll finish afore us.’

  Blake would certainly do his best. Two days either way would make no difference but Blake would always want to be first, determined to prove that a good man would always beat a woman.

  Asta saw no reason to give him that satisfaction if she could avoid it. ‘Then it is up to us to stop him, is it not?’

  Hector grinned. ‘We can try.’

  He would, too. After the wedding Hector had made the mistake of telling his son how to run Bungaree and Blake, fired up by a lifetime of beatings, had told him to go to hell. The two men had not spoken since.

  She went into the house. That was another change she had made, replacing the slab-built shack with this cottage. Hector had disapproved but Asta cared nothing for that.

  I am going to live the rest of my life here, she thought. I intend to do it in comfort.

  Or in as much comfort as was possible in this place.

  She poured water into a tin bath, stripped off her shirt and began to rinse the dust from her upper body. There was no water for baths; it was part of the price she had to pay for living here. She paid it willingly. Her attitude to the land had changed. She was determined that in this place she would build something of enduring value. It would give purpose to what would otherwise have been without purpose, the deaths of Edward and Gavin, the loss of Jason, if lost he were. Nothing else mattered.

  She towelled herself until her skin glowed, shook her sweaty shirt to free as much dust from it as possible, put it on again and began to cook her evening meal.

  At Bungaree, too, Alison was cooking supper. On the far side of the yard Blake was still working but would be coming in shortly. He would come in heavy-booted, he would sit at the rough table while she waited on him, he would shovel the food down. When he was finished he would go back outside to carry on working until he could work no longer, working with a passion that was frightening in its intensity. When at last he was finished he would blow out the lamp and come in, shutting the door on the swirling bugs, the darkness. He would sit for a while before collapsing into bed, he would sleep.

  Sometimes she slept, too. Even as she slept she would be conscious of him watching her.

  Waking or sleeping, it was the condition of her life. To Blake, marriage meant ownership. Even while he was working she knew he watched her. It seemed he wanted her to have no separate existence at all.

  Alison had relied on her father all her life; even, to a lesser degree, on her mother. Now her father was dead and Mary Matlock, daughter safely married, had fled back to the country outside Adelaide where she now owned a horse stud. Without either of them, Alison needed Blake’s strength to compensate for her own lack of confidence but she also needed room to breathe and this Blake denied her.

  Not until after the wedding did she realise how bitterly Blake had resented her friendship with Jason. He never knew—thank God—how far that friendship had gone but remained convinced she had married him only because Jason had gone away.

  It was foolishness. Whatever Alison might have done had Jason stayed, the fact remained that he had not. She had made her marriage willingly and wanted it to be a success yet even in their moments of passion Jason always stood between them. In Blake’s mind it was Jason’s body she embraced and not his own; his jealousy imprisoned her like a cage. She was frightened by its ferocity. All her life she had believed that indifference was the one thing she could not bear. Now there were times when she longed for it.

  There was nothing she could do. Jason had gone; she would probably never see him again. She told herself it was better so. I shall endure, she told herself. Each day, each night, hoping for better things.

  She finished the supper and walked across to the door. ‘Blake …’ she called into the darkness, ‘tea’s ready.’

  Next day Alison decided to ride over to Whitby Downs. Nowadays it was something she seldom did. In the months after her father’s death she had made the journey often, the visits helping to carry her through that bad time, but gradually they had dwindled away.

  Asta is always so sure of everything, she had told herself.

  Too sure, was what she had meant. It was a quality she resented, desiring it so unavailingly in herself, but that was not the reason she had stopped going. Asta detested Blake and the knowledge created an awkward atmosphere between the two women, not because Asta was wrong to hate Blake but because in her heart Alison knew she was right. She had married a truculent bully who frightened her. That was the truth but it was something she would never admit: not to Asta, not to herself.

  Today, however, something had made her decide to go. We are neighbours, she told herself. We should see more of each other.

  As she rode she remembered the grotto on the cliffs where Asta had taken her the day Jason had saved them from the black warriors. She had never been back. It had merged into all the other memories that made up the lost paradise of childhood. Today was a day for fancies and she decided to revisit the place.

  It was not as she remembered it. There had been little rain recently and the trickle of water had been reduced to a patch of dampness, shielded beneath the canopy of rock. Lichen and a few straggly ferns still grew in the crevices of the cliff face but of the garlands Asta had laid on the stone altar not even the dried-up fragments remained; wind and time had swept them away long ago.

  There was nothing here. Alison stared about her. She had been happy in this place yet now loneliness oppressed her. She was alone, caught between a husband she feared and a woman she had thought would be her friend but was no longer. Yet needed to make a gesture, at least, to the past. Self-consciously she picked ferns from the crevice and laid them on the altar. She stood for a minute listening to the silence, to the barely comprehensible feelings of her heart, then turned and retraced her steps to the cliff top.

  When she arrived at Whitby Downs she rode up past the creek towards the cluster of buildings. There were strange horses in the paddock. Asta came running to meet her, the lines about her eyes and mouth clearly visible in the morning sunlight. Her eyes were red. Alison stared.

  ‘I was going to send word to you,’ Asta said, ‘I wanted you to be the first to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Jason.’

  Alarm: her hand flew to her lips, a pulse thumped in her body. She thought, Jason is dead. ‘What about him?’

  ‘He is here. Jason has come home.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Her first impression was that he was older. Dirty, too, as though he had ridden a long way without rest. Michael the black boy was with him, dressed in rough shirt and breeches as Jason was, but after the first smiling greeting her eyes were all for Jason.

  He has come home, her heart said, and the apprehension she had felt at the idea that he might one day come back was gone.

  He came across to her, took her hands in his. His touch made her feel faint. ‘A long time,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ There were scars that were new, an eyebrow bisected by a vertical line, some fresh gashes on his hand
s.

  ‘I hear that a lot has happened while I’ve been away.’ Smiling but with a shadow darkening his eyes. The life they faced, how different it was from the life that might have been.

  ‘Jason has been telling me his adventures.’

  There was an indulgent note in Asta’s voice that Alison had not heard for a long time.

  ‘You must tell me about them.’

  The barest nod. ‘How is … Blake?’

  ‘He is well.’

  Her husband’s shadow lay between them like a reproach: a threat, too, perhaps.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your father.’

  They were so polite with each other, like strangers. She remembered the peaceful movements of horses beyond the wooden partition as the straw sighed beneath her. She remembered lamp light flowing like golden oil over naked limbs, the soft brilliance of eyes and teeth, the smells and textures of love.

  I shall scream, she thought.

  Jason’s expression told her that he felt the same.

  She said to Asta, ‘Now Jason is back he will be able to help you at Whitby Downs.’

  ‘We have not discussed what Jason will do now he is back. Perhaps he is just paying us a visit before he disappears a second time.’ Now the note of indulgence was gone. In its place there was an edge in Asta’s voice; she had obviously not completely forgiven him for going off the first time.

  ‘That depends whether there’s a place for us here,’ he said.

  ‘Why should there not be?’

  ‘Things are different now. Alison is married and Blake is running Bungaree. Maybe he won’t want me around.’

  ‘Blake does not decide what happens at Whitby Downs,’ Asta told him. ‘There is a place for you here as long as you want it.’

  ‘What’s he come back for?’ Blake asked.

  ‘It’s his home,’ Alison said. ‘Where else should he come?’

  ‘Why leave, then? If it’s his home?’

  ‘Because of Michael.’

  He glared suspiciously. ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  Quickly she shook her head. ‘I know nothing.’

  ‘Make sure you don’t.’ He took her arm, smiling. Her skin crawled. ‘I wouldn’t like to think you wasn’t tellin’ me everything.’

  She tried to laugh. ‘What could I know? I’ve had no more contact with him than you have.’

  His fingers moved over her skin: a caress or possibly a threat. ‘Keep it that way.’ He laughed and released her; she breathed more easily. ‘Though what Asta’s goin’ to do with him now he’s here God only knows.’

  ‘She said he’ll help her on the run.’

  Blake’s lip curled. ‘For all he knows about sheep.’

  Three months passed without trouble. Blake and Jason saw little of each other and when they did the meetings passed without incident. For the most part Mura kept out of the way, disappearing for days into the bush to re-establish contact with what was left of his people.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he told Jason after one of these episodes. ‘When I talk to them about the things I’ve seen and done, they don’t even try to understand. We’ve nothing in common any more.’

  Without a proper job Jason, too, felt out of place but did what he could to make the best of things; he took wool to Adelaide, sold it for a good price. On the return trip he delivered a load of mining equipment to Kapunda.

  The town had grown. The number of stone buildings had increased and there were several hotels where before there had been only the Miners Arms. Jason had hoped to see Stefan Lang but the Langs were away. Instead he saw Joshua Penrose. They went for a drink at the Sir John Franklin, one of the new hotels.

  ‘Haven’t found no copper over your part of the world yet?’ The Cornishman emptied his glass.

  ‘Far as I know no-one’s looked.’

  ‘Never know what you might find if you don’t look.’ Penrose eyed Jason keenly. ‘You find copper, I’m the man’ll get her out of the ground for you.’

  ‘I would have thought you had your hands full here.’

  Penrose looked wistful. ‘Be out of here like a shot if I could. Things aren’t what they used to be. Finding copper and developing the seam, that’s what I d’ like about mining. In Kapunda I’d say we’ve found just about everything there is to find. Nowadays tes a case of digging her out and selling her. Tes just business now and I’ve never had no interest in that. Not too keen about the people I got to do business with, either,’ he added. ‘Mrs Matlock tell you I come over to see her?’

  ‘She mentioned it,’ Jason said.

  ‘Handsome woman, Mrs Matlock,’ Penrose said approvingly, a man who appreciated a good-looking woman. ‘I got a lot of admiration for her.’

  ‘Well, she’s unattached,’ Jason said. ‘Except to her sheep run. She’s pretty attached to that.’

  ‘I don’t have no interest in sheep. You find copper and I’ll be over,’ Penrose told him. ‘Then we’ll see.’

  When he got back to Whitby Downs Jason told Asta what Penrose had said. ‘Sounds like he may have fallen out with the Langs,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Lang is a very hard man,’ Asta told him. ‘I would not be at all surprised if Joshua had fallen out with him.’

  Joshua, Jason noted. Well, well.

  ‘He spoke well of you, though. Maybe you’ll find him turning up here, one of these days.’

  Asta laughed. ‘I don’t think so. Joshua Penrose is like you, he’s no farmer.’

  ‘He said he’ll come if we find copper. But you’re right. I’m no farmer, never will be. I’ve been thinking about it. Maybe it would be better if I moved on, too.’

  The idea of his going so soon troubled Asta. ‘Why should you do that?’

  Jason looked evasive. ‘You said it yourself. Running sheep isn’t something I want to do for the rest of my life and there’s not much else to do around here.’

  ‘We are not talking about the rest of your life.’ Asta looked at him, knowing that he was hiding something. ‘What is the real reason you want to leave?’

  ‘I think there’ll be trouble if I don’t.’

  ‘Between you and Blake?’

  ‘Between Blake and Alison.’

  ‘Blake is a jealous man, that is true. But if you give him no cause …’

  He was silent.

  ‘But where would you go?’

  ‘Mining’s what I fancy,’ he said. ‘I’ll go anywhere there’s a mine.’

  ‘Back to Burra Burra?’

  ‘Maybe not there.’

  ‘You never told me why you left in the first place.’

  ‘There was trouble.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  He hesitated but did so, in the end.

  ‘Attempted murder?’ She was horrified.

  ‘That’s what they called it. It was just a fight, really.’

  ‘With a man over his wife. You certainly choose your women.’ But was more concerned about another aspect of his story. ‘Burra Burra is not far away. Do they know you come from this part of the world?’

  ‘They don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘You never told the woman?’

  ‘I never told anyone.’

  Her eyes probed his; satisfied, she nodded. ‘I suppose that is why no-one has come looking for you.’

  ‘Why should they bother? All her husband wanted was to get rid of me. He won’t care what happens to me now I’m gone.’

  ‘You broke out of gaol. That means the troopers are also involved. Make sure Blake doesn’t find out what happened,’ she instructed him. ‘You have said nothing to Alison?’

  ‘You surely don’t think Alison—’

  ‘Alison has also changed.’

  ‘She would never betray me.’

  ‘Why not? You betrayed her.’

  Jason was indignant. ‘I’d have said it was the other way round. We had an understanding, then she went off and married Blake.’

  ‘An understanding?’ Asta’s mouth was filled wi
th contempt. ‘You expect her to wait for you forever? Without a word? Over a year she waited. I watched her. I saw the hope die. After her father was killed, she needed someone and you weren’t here for her any more.’

  He didn’t want to hear about it; didn’t want to believe that he might have been the cause of what had happened. ‘That doesn’t mean she’d say anything to Blake, of all people.’

  ‘Blake is her husband. Now you are back, perhaps she feels guilty about her old feelings.’ She stared at him. ‘You knew Alison was married. You knew that Ian was dead and Blake was running Bungaree. You are not a man of the land and never will be. Why come back at all? You said yourself it may cause trouble.’

  ‘It is home,’ he said, not looking at her.

  They both knew the real reason. He might talk about leaving but as long as he had breath he would never give up hope of Alison, married or not.

  She smiled. ‘Good. Then stay here, at least for a time.’

  She will hold him here, she thought, if I arrange things right.

  ‘The thing I’d like to know,’ Blake said for the hundredth time, ‘is why he’s come back at all.’

  At Bungaree night had descended over the silent countryside. In the fireplace the flames flared as the booming wind drew them up the chimney.

  ‘It is his home,’ Alison said.

  ‘Home?’ Blake repeated derisively. ‘This place ain’t never bin his home.’ For a minute he did not speak. ‘Why do you reckon he’s here?’ he asked eventually.

  It was a dangerous question. ‘Where else should he go after he left the mine?’

  ‘Why leave the mine at all? He’s a lot more interested in mining than he is in sheep. He’s running away from somen, that’s what. Or else he’s come back here to look for somen, or someone.’ The leaping flames dazzled her eyes as he took her chin in strong fingers and twisted her face to look upwards at him. ‘Which do you think it is?’

  His voice was still soft but she could sense danger in his glaring eyes. She had always known he was a violent man yet too much subservience might be as dangerous as too little. She risked a straight answer. ‘I’m not responsible for what Jason does.’