Blue Skies

by Fleur McDonald

  He brought the stone to a standstill and checked the edge of the axe blade. Judging it sharp enough, he leaned it up against the door and went into their living quarters for a cup of tea.

  The quietness in the kitchen unnerved him, until he looked through the open doorway and saw Diane asleep in her cot and Grace dozing beside her. He went in and looked at the two people he loved most in the world, then touched Grace’s shoulder. She started as she woke, then smiled at him. He motioned for her to follow him and they went into the kitchen, where he wrapped her in his arms and asked, ‘Are you pregnant, my love?’

  She nodded, then buried her face in his chest.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ Michael said. He put his fingers under her chin and lifted her face.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Grace said, ‘but I feel so ill. So tired.’

  ‘Well, I’ll take you to Esperance tomorrow to see the doctor. I have business to attend to, and it’s important for you to make sure things are right.’

  Grace bustled over to the stove and lifted the heavy iron kettle onto the stove top then brought out tin pannikins from the makeshift cupboard and put them on the bench. She reached for the teapot and filled it with tea and put the condensed milk in front of Michael before turning back to him.

  ‘I would like that. I’m positive that all is well, but I didn’t feel this poorly with Diane.’

  Michael sat at the table and stirred the condensed milk into his tea and took a sip.

  ‘I have heard some news that bothers me,’ he said after a while. ‘It seems that Frank might be leaving town.’

  Grace looked shocked. ‘Surely not?’

  ‘I’ve heard that he is to resign and move to another posting.’

  The silence between them said it all. They knew how lucky they were to have a bank manager who had helped them without judgment. Another man might have started whispers among the townsfolk that Michael Greenfield and his wife were not all they seemed.

  Chapter 33

  ‘How about I come and stay with you for a couple of nights?’ Adrian suggested. ‘I can sleep on the couch or in the spare room. Maybe if I’m here you’ll get a good night’s sleep.’

  Amanda lay on the couch. The laundry basket taunted her from where it sat in the corner of the lounge room so she closed her eyes to block it out, along with Adrian’s agitation.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Ade, I’m just -’

  ‘Well, obviously you’re not fine,’ Adrian interrupted. ‘I’ve had a phone call from Jonno asking what the hell is going on with you and why I’m letting you get into the state you’re in. But you’ve hardly mentioned it to me. How can I fix something that I don’t know about?’ Adrian paced the floor angrily.

  Amanda sat up.‘I have been telling you – you haven’t been listening.’

  ‘What?’ Adrian turned to face her. ‘What are you talking about?’ he blustered.

  ‘I’ve told you about the noises and I told you about the lights. You told me not to be stupid. And you know what? I know that what I’m hearing is all just normal everyday stuff. I know I should be able to just head off to bed and sleep right through the night without any interruptions. I don’t know why I can’t and why I’m feeling the way I do. So back off on the why didn’t you tell me crap ’cos I don’t need it!’

  Amanda lay back again and there was silence for a while, then she felt the couch sink as Adrian sat down next to her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t like the idea of you rattling around in this house – on this farm – by yourself. It bothers me to think of you roaming the house at night and driving around the farm dog-tired. You might have an accident or . . . or . . . I don’t know. He was silent for a moment.

  ‘Look I’m sorry if you think I haven’t been taking enough notice of what you’re saying. I’ll head home now and grab a bag of overnight things, come back and cook you dinner. Then I’ll sleep in the spare room for a few nights. How does that sound?’

  ‘That sounds nice. Thank you,’ she said, after a pause.

  Adrian leaned over and kissed her cheek then pulled her into a hug. ‘Will you be okay while I’m gone?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Won’t be long,’ he said and disappeared out the door.

  Amanda lay there a bit longer with a sense of relief sweeping over her. She hadn’t wanted to ask Adrian to stay; that would be admitting how frightened and helpless she felt. But when he had offered, she had almost cried with gratitude.

  She got up and looked at the clock – nearly five. Time for a drink. She pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge, opened it with expert ease and poured herself a glass.

  Back in the lounge she opened the photo album that never seemed to be far from her side and turned over to the page where her father was looking at her adoringly.

  Without warning she was racked with huge sobs that felt as if they were being ripped from her body. As the tears subsided she pulled the photo out of the plastic pocket and held it to her chest. ‘Mum, Dad,’ she whispered, ‘I miss you so much.’

  Amanda took another slug of wine and turned the photo over, trying to feel more of her parents’ presence, but there was nothing. The photo that she held in her hand was only a piece of paper.

  Through her tears, she could make out her mother’s faded handwriting. She wiped them away to read what was written there and then flicked it back over and looked at the image. Flick over, back again. Flick over, back again. Then she threw the photo to the ground and burst into another round of loud, noisy sobs.

  The date that was written on the back of the photo was not her birthday.

  ‘Look, Mandy, please – I really think you should see a doctor.’ Adrian stood at the kitchen bench two days later.

  The first night he’d said he hadn’t heard anything, but on the second he had heard the tin creaking and expanding. He’d heard an old fuel drum bang down at the shed and the moaning of the wind that seemed to come through a gap in the door – both things he could fix. But that was all he heard.

  ‘You know, you’ve been through so much in the past few years, maybe something just isn’t right in your brain. Oh hell! That came out wrong!’ Adrian backtracked quickly when Amanda glared at him. ‘I just mean you might need some help,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘Well thank you very much,’ Amanda said testily, and then she sighed.‘I’ve been wondering that too, but I didn’t want to admit it.’ She was silent for a minute, playing with her coffee cup, then said, ‘I’ll try and get a doctor’s appointment today.’

  ‘So, Amanda . . .’ The kindly doctor slipped his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose.‘What seems to be the problem? I haven’t seen you since your father died. You must be keeping very well.’

  Amanda shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘I’m not sure, Kevin. There’s been a few odd things happening and I’m not sure how to explain it. I just seem to be making too much out of everything. I know it sounds stupid, but a couple of my friends are concerned about me and I know there’s something not quite right. I think I haven’t done something and it turns out I have, or vice versa. I’m having trouble sleeping – and if I do sleep, I have nightmares. I’ve started sleeping with a light on and my dog in the bedroom. I get the sweats if something goes wrong and I start to shake. It doesn’t have to be a big problem – maybe a sheep jumps a fence when it shouldn’t; I just seem to go into meltdown. It’s got a lot worse over the past two months.’ She could feel her heart beating and wondered if Kevin could hear it – it was so loud, surely he could. Then she thought about what she had just said and suddenly felt self-conscious. ‘Ah, look Kevin, I know all this sounds really stupid. I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time. I’d better get going.’ Amanda rose from her chair but Kevin held out his hand and waved for her to sit down.

  ‘No, Amanda,’ he said gently. ‘It doesn’t sound stupid at all. And no, you’re not going crazy.’ He smiled and Amanda suddenly felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. ‘Te
ll me, do you think much about your parents’ deaths?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess I do. Not Mum’s so much . . . I mean, I think of the crash, but nothing else. Dad’s is a bit different. I often go down to the river and sit. I’m not sure why – to try and connect with him, or maybe even find a little piece of him, like his watch or pocket knife – something to say he really was there that night and it wasn’t just my imagination. I wonder if – well maybe if I hadn’t been so out of it I could’ve changed something.’ There was a silence and then she said, ‘I wonder if Dad might have jumped, you see. I realise now he wasn’t in a great state of mind before the flood.’

  Kevin nodded. ‘And the farm? Is that doing well?’

  Amanda’s mouth turned downwards, wondering what that had to do with anything. ‘Yeah, it’s going okay now. I had a hell of a time getting it up and going for the first two years or so, but the studs and higher lambing percentages have made a lot of difference to the cash flow.’ She shrugged.‘Why?’

  ‘Bear with me. What about friends? Do you go out much?’

  ‘Um, well not really. I go to Adrian’s dinner parties, occasionally out to tea. I’ve sort of befriended a girl in the merch store who comes fox shooting with me, but none of my good mates are in Esperance. They’re all in Sydney or Perth.’

  ‘So not really anyone your own age?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well I’d like you to think about all the things that have happened to you in the past – what is it, five years since your mum died? You’ve lost both parents and, if local gossip is to be believed, your farm was almost in the hands of the bank. So you’ve had to pull it back from the brink of financial ruin, you’ve had the stress of running the farm and trying to make a go of it all by yourself. Who have you had to talk to about your feelings? Your doubts, your ideas, your achievements?

  ‘Have you grieved for your parents? I would almost bet you haven’t. You’ve been too busy trying to make the farm profitable again.

  ‘You see, Amanda, doctors hear and see things in small country towns like this one. We know most of what is going on and I’ve been watching you from afar. You’re not going crazy or imagining things. There’s a name for what you’re experiencing and it can be treated.You have the classic symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.’

  Back in her kitchen, Amanda looked at the packet of antidepressants the doctor had given her, willing herself to push one of the white tablets out into her hand and into her mouth. Something stopped her.

  She wondered what her parents would think – and what about her grandfather? Michael must have been through so much as an early settler, but no signs of weakness came through in his diaries.

  The phone rang and, deliberately ignoring the packet of pills, she answered it with a bright and cheery, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Well, I must say you sound better than I expected,’ replied Hannah. ‘What’s going on? You’ve got my brother in a hell of a tizz!’

  ‘Hi, Hannah. Oh, don’t worry about Jonno, he’s got the wrong end of the stick,’ Amanda lied. ‘He’s just made a mountain out of a molehill. I’m fine! He caught me on a bad day.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Hannah, sounding doubtful. ‘That’s why he rang me in a panic saying you were going off the deep end.’

  ‘Bloody hell, who else did he ring? He gave Adrian the third degree too! Honestly, Hannah, I’m fine.’

  ‘Okay then, no worries – sorry I cared!’ Hannah sounded flippant.‘So what’s happening in your world?’

  They chatted for a few minutes and then Hannah said in a gentler tone,‘Mandy, I know you very well and your voice is giving you away. C’mon, spill the beans. What’s going on?’

  The tears welled again, and Amanda found it hard to speak. When she did, it all came out in a rush. The noises, the lights and everything else – though she left out the baby photo. She couldn’t deal with that just yet. ‘And you know, Han, it’s almost like something is happening, someone is trying to make all of this happen and scare the crap out of me. But obviously that can’t be the case, because the doctor says I’ve got this stupid bloody thing called post-traumatic stress disorder. What he says makes sense – that I’ve been so busy I haven’t allowed myself time to grieve, haven’t let myself go near those feelings, which is true. But oh, man, you wouldn’t believe how much I don’t want it to be true. But hey -’ she laughed grimly – ‘what’s worse? Post-traumatic stress or being crazy?

  ‘And the farm having money troubles when I came home after Mum died, well that was all pretty stressful but I got it sorted out. I wouldn’t have thought that still bothered me.

  ‘Dad’s death upsets me more than anything because I know now, looking back, that he wasn’t coping. Whether he had some sort of depression I wouldn’t know, but it’s likely – and, Hannah, I was so horrible to him! I didn’t have any understanding of what he was going through, I was just so driven to make sure Kyleena didn’t get sold that I didn’t give a toss about his feelings. You wouldn’t believe how ashamed I am of the way I acted back then.

  ‘I reckon he was just beginning to come out of it when he was killed. We’d started to have a quiet sort of relationship that was gradually getting better. I don’t know, it’s a bit hard to explain.

  ‘Now this bloody doctor wants to put me on antidepressants and that just doesn’t wash with me. Why can’t I cope with my life without them? I’m not weak.’

  Hannah interrupted her flow.‘Okay, stop right there. First of all, taking antidepressants doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re strong enough to go and get help when you need it. Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, all of those sorts of things are just illnesses. The stressful and emotional times that you’ve been through have triggered a chemical imbalance in your brain – didn’t the doctor explain this to you?

  ‘Sometimes, the body needs some help to balance things out and those little pills actually do that. I know first hand. One of your really good mates has been on them and I bet you can’t guess who?’

  Amanda bit. ‘Who?’

  ‘Jonno.’

  ‘Jonno? Seriously? How come?’

  ‘He’s not on them now, but when we first started year twelve – you know how we were sent to boarding school for our final year? That was a hell of an upheaval for us. We had to try and fit in with groups that had already formed; make friends with people who already had friends and didn’t need to make more. A lot of these kids had been at boarding school together since year eight! And you know what it’s like when you’re seventeen: every funny look means someone’s laughing at you, every zit is twice as big as it actually is and no one needs a reason to give you a hard time.

  ‘Anyway, the other boys were a bit tough on him. Because Jonno was a bit quieter than them, didn’t play sport and liked reading, he didn’t fit in.

  ‘Being away from the farm didn’t help. I know he gives the impression that he’s really tough, but he’s very emotional. Things just got on top of him and he took tablets for about a year, then he was able to go off them. Slowly, of course – you can’t just drop them cold turkey – but look at him now. He’s fine. That’s why he was so concerned about you; he recognised the signs because he’s been there.

  ‘Now as for your dad, that’s a bit harder. You’re going to have to talk about this a bit more. One of the things about what you’re going through is that pills can make the physical symptoms go away, but talking is really important too. It’s how you resolve a lot of these dark, hidden feelings.’ She sighed. ‘Sorry, I’m sure I sound like a walking encyclopaedia, but it’s something I know a bit about.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ said Amanda, momentarily forgetting her own issues. ‘I mean, I love Jonno to pieces and nothing would affect my feelings for him, but . . . I just had no idea.’

  ‘Well, it’s been and gone, and if you deal with your problems the way Jonno did, you’ll be right in no time. Just don’t fight what’s going on: roll with it and get it sorted.’

  ‘I feel
like I should be able to cope with all this myself,’ Amanda confided.‘Like I shouldn’t need outside help. It’s almost like I’ve failed if I can’t manage to get through difficult times without relying on pills!’

  ‘I know. You’ll feel like that until you take control of your life. And it’s those tablets that’ll help.’

  They talked for a while longer and then Amanda said, ‘Well, I’d better go. I’m feeling a bit better – and I’ve got some pills to take.’

  ‘That’s my girl! You’re going to be fine.’

  ‘Thanks, Hannah.You’re brilliant!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Modest, too. I’m going to tell Adrian to stay home tonight. I think I’m going to be fine.’

  ‘Yeah, you will be. But listen, don’t rush things either. If you think you’ll be okay by yourself tonight then maybe wait until tomorrow to ask him not to stay. If you hurry it then you could put yourself back to where you started. Oh, and don’t drink while you’re on medication, okay?’

  ‘What are you? A frigging doctor?’

  Hannah laughed. ‘Listen, you can ring me any time. If it’s three o’clock in the morning, that’s fine. Just ring and if you don’t feel like talking to me, there’s a hotline you can call: beyond blue. They’re really great people.’

  ‘All right, Han. Talk to you soon.’

  ‘Mandy?’ Her friend paused. ‘Take care, okay?’

  Amanda hung up the phone and looked warily at the packet of pills in front of her. Then she pushed a tablet through the foil and swallowed it.

  Chapter 34

  ‘Adrian, I’ll be fine on my own, honestly – and Hannah will be here in a few days. Anyway, I’m sure you’re needed at Paringa.’

  ‘Well I’ve been back there every day, Mandy. And I’m happy staying here. I figure the more time we spend together you might come to like it and decide that you want me around all the time!’ He smiled at her.