by Cathryn Hein
The week quickly fell into routine. Mornings Callie spent making half-hearted attempts to finish sorting the house but mostly delighting in Phantom’s presence. She let the pony wander where he liked, leading him out of the paddock each morning and letting him loose on the back lawn while Honk watched sulkily from a distance, and Morton neighed his jealousy. Callie stopped work often to come and chat or just observe, soaking up the precious time she had.
Phan may have been spoiled silly at the Jennings’, but Callie made his time at Glenmore horse nirvana. She bought bags of carrots and apples, bales of lucerne hay, a special pellet mix for aged horses. She oiled his hooves with an expensive proprietary hoof grease that Peter Taylor swore was the best on the market, and shampooed and conditioned him with showhorse products. Combed out his mane and tail until it flowed with silvery silkiness, only to find the next day that he’d rolled dust and manure through his coat and swished his tail back into tangles.
Despite Phantom’s age and outwardly placid nature, the mischievous horse Callie remembered from childhood still existed. On Wednesday morning, she wandered outside with a cup of tea and an apple to discover Phantom had pulled half her washing off the line and was wandering the backyard with a pair of her underpants caught over one ear. He proceeded to skitter about, tossing his head and prancing away from her, refusing to come near even when she pleadingly rattled a bucket of pellets. Frustrated, she left him, hoping the knickers would fall off, only for Matt to turn up at lunchtime and discover Phantom still wearing them. To make matters worse, the pony trotted happily to Matt’s side and let him laughingly pluck the knickers off and wave them about like a lacy pink flag.
Thursday proved almost as bad. Intent on finally clearing the house of some of the boxes she’d packed, Callie left the screen door propped open as she carted them to the Jumbuk to take to the Salvos. Returning from her second trip she walked inside to discover Phan standing as happy as Larry in the kitchen, the date slice she’d made that morning and left to cool on a rack now on the floor in pieces and Phan chewing blissfully. It took several minutes’ coaxing, the entire cake and two apples to get him outside again.
When she wasn’t doting on Phantom, providing an increasingly sooky Morton with some love, helping Lyndall, working, or exchanging banter with Matt, Callie wandered the house and farm deep in thought. Hope remained always at the forefront, along with her father’s words about blame.
When the letter had arrived at her flat in Airlie, it had all seemed so simple: get in, clear up, get out. Put the past behind forever. Now, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what Hope would want. But most of all, Callie couldn’t decide what she wanted for herself. Surely, like her finite days with Phan, these weeks were her time for farewell, to find solace in the past before leaving it behind for good? Staying would risk her turning into her mother, forever trapped in memory and loss. And that she couldn’t face.
Yet nor could Callie deny the pull of Glenmore. Or Matt.
Stay or go. Stay or go. The question nagged relentless, kept unanswered only by the objectives she’d yet to fulfil. But once they were all reached, there’d be no more putting it off.
Callie would have to decide.
‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ Callie said to Wal as she walked into his ward on Saturday afternoon. He did, too. The antibiotics had done their work. Wal’s skin had lost its greasy-grey pallor and instead of lying collapsed and weary, he had the bed pushed up so he could watch television and the ward goings on in between shooting daggers at poor, dying farty Arthur. A walker stood near the bed where the physical therapist had left it, a rubber-topped aluminium cane nearby.
‘Going home tomorrow,’ Wal replied, glee twinkling his eyes. ‘’Bout bloody time too. Quack said I could’ve been out already if it wasn’t for that little setback.’
‘That’s great news.’ Callie dumped the tatty photo album she carried on the guest’s chair and a copy of the Saturday Age on the end of his bed, and leaned in to kiss his bristled cheek – the first she’d given him since their argument about Nanna and her wishes for Glenmore. Wal’s crankiness and Callie’s wariness, combined with the deliberate brevity of her visits, hadn’t permitted much showing of affection. It was more a case of Callie marching in a few minutes before she was due at the Royal, uttering a polite ‘How are you?’ as she presented a newspaper, some fruit or whatever thing she decided might keep Wal entertained, followed by a bolt out the door. Today though, Callie clutched a secret. ‘Matt’ll be glad to have you back at Amberton. He doesn’t say, but I think he misses you.’
‘I hear you been spending a lot of time with the lad.’
‘Not really.’ Callie gathered up the album, pulled the chair close to the bed and sat down, album resting on her knees. ‘He just comes around at lunch mainly. Although yesterday he said he was going to help me fix the guttering.’ She frowned. ‘He probably won’t have time now with you coming home. You’ll need him close to look after you.’ Her face turned bright. ‘Doesn’t matter. I’m sure I’ll manage on my own. Can’t be that hard.’
‘Never you mind about me, missy, I can take care of myself just fine. I’ll make sure the lad helps out.’ Wal’s gaze settled on the photo album, wrinkled mouth working in and out as he contemplated its meaning. ‘What’s that you got there?’
Callie smoothed a palm over the faded cover. ‘Just something of Nanna’s I found.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘It’s a photo album. I thought you might like to see some of the pictures.’ She met his gaze. ‘I found a really interesting one toward the end.’
Wal’s mouth puttering ceased. Caution crept across his face. ‘That so?’
‘Yep.’ Callie rolled in her lips to stop from smiling. ‘It’s one of you and Nanna together.’
‘Plenty of them about,’ mumbled Wal, eyes darting away.
She reached over and covered his hand with her own. ‘You loved her, didn’t you?’
‘She was a good woman, Maggie.’
‘And you loved her.’
Wal’s chin jutted. ‘Friends, we were. Good friends.’
‘Yes, and you loved her and that’s why you care so much about what happens to Glenmore. And me. Because she cared.’
Her statement hung. Wal’s gaze remained averted, his body tense, hand curled tight beneath hers. Callie didn’t mind. She hadn’t expected him to tell her the truth. She didn’t need it anyway. The photo radiated all she needed know.
Releasing his hand, she opened the album and turned to the page in question, smiling as she grazed her palm over the protective plastic film.
It wasn’t an intimate photograph. The size and quality suggested it’d most likely been snapped for the Dargate and District Times or one of the rural newspapers. There was no sign of touching, no hand-holding or pressing together of shoulders. Simply a snap of two people smiling at one another as they leaned on a saleyard fence, sharing a look they thought was private but which in a shutter-click had been stilled and condensed into a single powerful portrait.
Another time and Callie would have missed it, but she’d been seized by the familiar look on Wal’s face. Pulse rising, she’d studied the picture closer, recognising the softness around his eyes, the longing they held. A mirror of the expression that his great-nephew had worn only yesterday, and other days previously. An expression she still wasn’t sure she could accept.
‘Look,’ she said, dragging the chair closer so she could balance the album on the bed edge. ‘See the way you’re looking at her.’
Wal stared, the wrinkles around his mouth puckering as his lips fell inward. His eyes drooped as sadness and love fought for ascension. He traced his finger over Maggie’s happy face before snatching it away and setting his features, as though the show of intimacy had never occurred.
‘Like I said, good woman.’
‘She was,’ said Callie. Then she smiled and leaned forward to hug him tightly. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what
?’
‘For caring for her.’
Wal laid two awkward pats on Callie’s back. ‘Good woman.’
Although whether he meant Callie or her nanna, she didn’t know.
As Callie predicted, with Wal home, Matt’s free time became limited. Matt grumbled that the old man was ruining his love life until Callie pointed out that he didn’t actually have one – not one she was aware of. Matt merely regarded her steadily and said he did, it just didn’t involve any sex. Yet.
Despite the cravings of her body, Callie wasn’t convinced it ever would. Time was sliding by. Of the goals she’d set herself, one had already been achieved and the others progressing. Wal was home and on the mend. With Phantom’s trusty help, Lyndall was making excellent headway. On the house front, Callie had managed to strip the kitchen of everything except the essentials and those items she couldn’t bear to part with. Some boxes had already been deposited at the Salvation Army collection depot in Dargate, others remained stacked in the machinery shed on a makeshift pallet while Callie decided their fate. Of the rooms remaining, only the two hardest to tackle were left, a chore she was determined to labour through during the coming week.
Plus she’d made a discovery, one with the potential to solve her Honk issue. Closer inspection of Glenmore’s paperwork had revealed that the house and home paddock were on separate titles to the rest of the farm. She could sell the farm, while retaining the house and home paddock as a rental, guard goose included, with the income funnelled directly to the Hope Foundation.
All goals achieved, just as she’d planned, and with their fulfilment, the freedom to leave.
Except early Wednesday morning, as she led Phan down to MacLeans Bay to soothe his old legs in the lapping salt water, lightweight rod and tackle box in one hand, Callie fretted whether it would be that easy. Whether she could drive away without looking back, without fear that she’d done something terribly wrong. That she’d forsaken happiness and the chance of love for a dead person and a debt that didn’t need repaying.
Fishing didn’t have the placatory effect that she’d hoped, although Phan delighted in his paddle, bashing his hooves at the waves and flicking Callie with water. Beyond the tide mark, she’d let him off his lead to roll, the horse squirming his back over the squeaky sand, legs kicking as he rubbed one side and flipped over to the other. They’d sauntered back to Glenmore, Callie chattering all the way to cover the ache in her chest, too aware that her time with him was finite. As it was with Glenmore.
The ache dissipated when she reached the back of the home paddock and spotted Matt’s ute in the drive. Wingbeats of excitement lifted her stomach and her pulse skipped in anticipation. Unnecessary urgency lengthened her stride.
She finally spied him at the front of the house. Matt stood on a convertible ladder of the type that could be adjusted into a scaffold, head tilted back as he peered at the gutters, rattled brackets and tapped timber.
‘Have you developed some handyman fetish or something?’ Callie asked as she led Phan toward him. ‘Or are you on the run from Wal?’
‘Not on the run. Wal ordered me over. Anyway, I’ve heard some women find handymen sexy. Thought I’d give it a try.’
Callie halted as Matt climbed down, thinking there might be some truth in the sexy tradie statement. He’d dressed in work clothes: a pair of fawn, multi-pocketed cotton drill pants and a long-sleeved blue shirt with the cuffs rolled up. The trousers wrapped his thighs and hips perfectly, the shirt style accentuating his shoulders. A few darkish hairs sprouted between the V of his collar. The sight of them made her fingers twitch.
She dug them into Phantom’s mane instead. ‘How is he today?’
‘The same. Frustrated. Dreading the physio. Doing more than he’s meant to.’
‘Can’t keep an old farmer down.’
‘No.’ Matt eyed her rod and tackle box. ‘Catch anything?’
‘Not really. Some slimy rock cod that I threw back. I missed the tide so was just fishing for the hell of it. Phan enjoyed himself though.’
‘He’s going to miss you.’
Callie dropped her arm until it circled the pony’s neck and hugged him close. ‘Not as much as I’m going to miss him.’ Hug over, she indicated the roof. ‘So, Mister Handyman, what’s your verdict?’
‘Put it this way, you’d better hope we don’t have a downpour any time soon. I don’t think they’d cope.’
Callie agreed. The guttering had held the water when she’d filled it during the fire, but only just, and the weight of it had taken its toll. Sections that had previously run straight now sagged heavily where the brackets had pulled away from the eaves.
‘It’s not the timber though, is it? I had a poke around yesterday but it all seemed pretty solid. Not that I have any idea what I’m looking at.’
‘I’m not sure I do either but I can take a good guess at things,’ said Matt, picking up the scaffold and moving it to the other side of the front door. ‘So far I’d say it’s just the bracketing that needs replacing. Maybe the odd bit of gutter. Nothing too serious.’
‘So I should have it sorted in a few days then?’
He hesitated before answering, ‘Probably.’
Callie knew what he was thinking. She’d been contemplating it herself all morning. But now she’d had an idea.
‘Good,’ she said, grinning at him. ‘Because once that’s done I can start on painting it.’
‘It?’
‘The house. If I’m going to rent it out I can’t leave it like it is, can I?’
The worry fled his expression. He stepped close, palmed one of her plaits and slid his hand down its length, hand coming to rest lightly on her collarbone. ‘Painting the house. That could take a while.’
Never had such an innocuous statement sounded so sensual, so filled with promise. Her skin goosebumped, little dimples of exhilaration extending across her arms and shoulders, creeping to her chest.
‘It could.’
‘Not a job you should tackle alone.’
Her breath turned shallow. ‘I can manage.’
‘It’ll be easier with two.’
‘You have Amberton, Wal.’
‘Neither of which are as sexy as you.’ He let his fingers spread, thumb brushing the sensitive skin of her throat. Aware of the thin fabric of her singlet, she moved her arm to cover her breasts, feigning a scratch of her arm. It didn’t conceal enough. He followed the movement, lips parting slightly.
Matt’s gaze hovered on her mouth before meeting her eyes. ‘Have you any idea how much I want to kiss you?’
If his desire was anywhere near hers, then Callie had every idea. She didn’t want to just kiss him either. She wanted sex. Giggly, roll-about, passionate, fun sex. With him. Right there, right now. And the consequences could go jump.
‘I have Phan,’ she said, wincing at the lameness of her excuse.
‘So?’
‘He needs a drink and a hose down.’
His thumb continued its sensuous stroke. ‘Afraid you won’t be able to stop?’
She nodded.
Matt leaned in close to her ear, the touch of his breath on her skin like a caress. ‘Me too.’
Callie swallowed, hard. She had to break this up. Now, before she caved in and subjected poor Phan to a human sex education lesson.
Stepping back, she pointed dumbly toward the yard. ‘In that case I should go and . . . you know.’
‘Yeah. And I should get on with this. Though I’m not sure I’ll be much good. Bit hard to concentrate.’ He peered down at himself, Callie following suit. The front of his trousers bulged with an impressive erection.
Her mouth parted, brain scrambling with it. This wasn’t in her plans. Not this invasion of lust. If leaving seemed difficult before, it was even worse now.
‘Matt, this is—’ She frowned, too muddled to work out what she wanted to say. ‘You’re making it worse.’
‘Maybe that’s the point.’
She shook her head. Nudgin
g Phan, who’d dozed off, she began to lead him away. At the end of the house she stopped and regarded Matt over her shoulder. ‘I’m still planning to leave, you know that.’
‘I know.’
‘So why keep pushing?’
‘Because you’re sexy and funny and strong and fragile and frustrating.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m nuts about you. Can’t help it. And if I get hurt, I get hurt.’
‘And what about me?’
Matt’s gaze intensified. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What if I get hurt?’
‘That won’t happen. Not while I’m around.’
But as Callie led Phantom away, she wasn’t so sure. Every choice she faced promised pain. The question was which one would damage her heart the most – losing Glenmore or the man she was beginning to love? And what would letting down Hope and her parents cost her? Whichever way she looked, a price had to be paid.
She took a few more steps and halted, thinking. If whatever path she took ended in pain, maybe she should stop stressing about the endpoint and consider having some fun on the journey instead.
Callie looked over her shoulder again. Matt stood with his legs apart scratching his scarred jaw, watching. A great hunk of fun just waiting for the go-ahead.
All she had to do was say yes.
Seventeen
On his return to Amberton, Matt found Wal on the back verandah, Dolly panting and obedient by his side, the two remaining pups at his feet, heads angled up like attentive fluffy schoolchildren. Though Matt had tried his hardest, and so had Wal by all accounts, homes for the last pups remained elusive.
‘Well?’ he asked, the moment Matt appeared on the path.
‘Looks like only minor repairs. Brackets mainly. Should be done in a few days.’
Wal grunted and leaned on his cane. The walker stood nearby, probably left over from the physio’s visit, but Wal hated the contraption. A cane had some dignity, the walker gave him none.
