But Audrey did come home, when Devon and I were in the paddock chipping stones to pass the time, and she walked out to meet us where we sat on a wind-smoothed mullock heap. I shaded my eyes against the sun and said, ‘I’ll never forgive Da for what he said to you.’
‘Harper, don’t be like that.’
She was just a silhouette to me, with shafts of sunlight spilling off her. ‘He was mean,’ I said. ‘He should have been glad to see you, but all he wanted to be was mean. He used to be kind, but now he never is. Ever since the day the shanty fell down he’s been mean, mean, mean.’
‘It didn’t happen like that,’ said Devon. He was chipping at a pebble that was shot through with colour and didn’t look up from this work. ‘You’re too young to remember. He’s always been mean – before the shanty, and after it. He’s always been a coward. The shanty just gave him something to blame for his being mean and cowardly. Now he’s only happy if he’s got a flask to cling to, and someone to make miserable.’
‘He went to the war, though,’ mused Audrey. ‘He must have been brave once.’
‘You know the story. He went to the war because he was afraid of Grandda.’
I was silent, recalling this was true. And felt sorry for my Da.
Audrey dipped a hand down the front of her dress and brought out a fold of notes. There were only four of them and they were only small, but they made my eyes bulge as if she’d performed some stupendous magic trick. She passed them to me, saying, ‘Take this, Harper, and hide it where Da won’t find it. He’ll waste the money I gave him, so give this to Mam. Just make sure that Da doesn’t see.’
I took the money and tucked it under me. The three of us sat with our faces in the breeze. Far off we could see the house with the dogs skulking by the door and the post of the clothes line blown over on the ground.
‘So you like working for Cable.’ Devon knocked a splinter from the stone and brushed the grit aside.
‘I have to make the best of it.’
‘Maybe.’ He polished the pebble with a licked finger. ‘But you don’t have to call him by his first name. It makes me feel sick to hear.’
Audrey sighed, putting her chin in her hands. ‘I have to do as he says, Devon. If I want to earn a living, that’s the way things must be. He tells me to call him Vandery, so I do. I eat my dinner at his table because he told me to, he says he likes a lady’s manners. He asks me to read to him and I can feel his eyes crawling over me but I read to him anyway. He makes me trim his hair and I need to stand close to do it, I can feel him breathing on my skin. He watches me and he uses every excuse to touch me or be touched by me and being shut in the same house with him repels me – but Harper can hide the money now, and I’ll keep my mind on that.’
I was confused, I didn’t understand what she was saying, I didn’t know why Devon snarled, ‘I’m going to kill him, I swear.’
‘Don’t. Promise me, Devon, stay away and mind your business. He’s a lonely man, and he doesn’t mean any harm. I can take care of myself, and we need the money.’
Devon stared at her and she stared at the house and I looked swiftly, stupidly, from one of them to the other, floundering beneath that glassy surface I had never quite broken through. Audrey said hoarsely, ‘Give the money to Mam when Da’s not home, Harper. I should go – I’ve got to go.’
But she didn’t go, she stayed toying the stones and warming in the breeze until we saw the jinker jambling up the hill with the man slouched in its seat and the whip clenched in one hand and the reins held taut in the other.
It wasn’t long after that, less than a fortnight I suppose, that we woke up and found Devon gone. The day previous he had ridden off on Champion and returned so late that Mam and Da were already sleeping and I was reading in bed. Mr Robertson’s girl Georgina had outgrown a batch of storybooks and passed them on to me to read, but mostly I looked at the pictures. There was one about the seaside and the drawings entranced me. I had never seen the ocean, I’d never even considered it before: there was no space for that much water in my head, for an entire unknown landscape. But whether perusing the pictures or whispering the words I wasn’t allowed to use candles at night for anything other than visiting the privy and when I heard the door swing I had snuffed the flame and hidden the book and lay with my hands over my nose and mouth, listening to the boards creak beneath Devon. He paused in the door of my bedroom and I clamped closed my eyes. ‘Harper,’ he said. ‘I know you’re awake.’
I had opened my eyes and peered at him. He was almost lost in the dimness but I could see his fair hair glint in the haze coming off the embers. ‘Where have you been, Devvy?’
‘Round and about. I saw Tin.’
‘Did you? How is he?’
‘He’s a savage. He nearly didn’t stop, though he knew it was only me. He bares his teeth like an animal does when it’s cornered. He’s just a wild thing now.’
He came forward, struck a match and lit the candle. I sat up on an elbow and blinked at him. His face was smudgy, his hair was in his eyes. He looked tired and his clothes were smirched but he stood straight and steady and from him came the strengthening smell of the horse’s sweat and hay. ‘You can have the light, if you want it,’ he said. ‘This is a big room, to be alone inside.’
‘I’m not afraid,’ I answered smartly. ‘I was reading a book. Have you ever seen the ocean, Devvy?’
‘No, I don’t reckon.’
‘I would like to see it.’
‘Well, maybe you will, one day.’
I smiled, rubbing my goosebumped arms. ‘I was reading a book,’ I repeated. ‘I’m not afraid.’
He nodded sombrely down at me. ‘That’s good. It’s good, that you’re brave. You shouldn’t let yourself be frightened, Harper. People who let themselves be frightened, they’re defeated before they’ve even tried. Being cowardly never changed anything. It’s being brave that makes the difference.’
I had frowned at him, suspecting he’d been drinking, speaking gibberish like he was. But when he bent and kissed my cheek I hadn’t sniffed alcohol and that puzzled me even more. In my experience, men only talked heart-sore blitherings when they’d been hitting the bottle. I should have asked him what he meant, but when he left the room I hadn’t stopped him. I had not liked it, him being strange.
And the next morning, he was gone. His bed hadn’t been slept in so perhaps he had only waited until I’d fallen asleep before crossing the threshold again. While he’d waited he had packed a swag with most of what he owned. Then he’d written and sealed a letter, leaving it in the pocket of Mam’s apron where Da wouldn’t find it but Mam’s hand would settle on it before she got the fire going. I woke to hear her calling him as loud as her voice could go. I hurried to see what was happening and found her in the yard, staring into the distance with her arms hung limp and the letter caught in her fingertips, kickering in the breeze. She didn’t look at me. ‘Devon’s gone,’ she said, and her voice was dead as stone. ‘Another one, gone.’
I took the letter and read it and then I was running through the grass for the animal shelter, snagging and tearing my nightdress as I dodged between the fence rails. Champion was not in the shelter and his saddle, rug, halter and bridle were gone. I ran to the peak of the highest mullock heap and scanned the paddock for the horse’s lanky form. ‘Devon!’ I wailed. ‘Champion! Here, horse! Champy! Devon!’
I yelled the words again, though I knew that doing so was childish. I knew Devon wouldn’t have lied. I gripped the hem of the nightdress and wiped my stinging eyes. I turned back toward Mam, who was standing like a statue in the soft swirling dust of the yard. She still wasn’t looking at me. I was the only one left to watch but she was looking out over the hill, to where the others had gone.
When Devon had left the house the day before, he had ridden Champion into town and sold the horse and the gear to the stock-agent. Doing so must have made him ache in every bone, for he had loved that creature. I remembered him once saying that Champ could understa
nd him and I wondered if, as he rode, he had explained things to the horse or whether he had been silent instead, keeping his friend in ignorance till the last. He had walked home in Champion’s hoofprints which were still visible on the empty road, and the length of the journey and the dragging chain on his heart were what made him so late getting home. He’d put the money from the sale into an envelope and then written the letter, scrawling Mam’s name when everything was done.
He had left in the dead of night so he would be well on his way by sunrise and no one would be around to stop him from doing what he intended to do. He was going to tramp the countryside, picking up whatever work he could find. He would go far from town, far from the scavenged haunts of the travelling salesmen, to places so remote that his chances must improve. Someone somewhere would employ him, maybe with a logging job, and give him a wage he could depend upon. In the meantime he wanted Audrey to stop housekeeping for Vandery Cable. We didn’t need her earnings now we had the money from Champion. We could make it last, Devon thought, long enough for him to find work and start sending money home. There were four crossed kisses at the bottom of the letter and a postscript warning us to keep the money hidden from Da. Mam flopped as if the earth was pulled from under her and, startling me, she cried.
Later that day we realised he’d taken one of the younger of the old dogs along with him and I was pleased to know it, pleased he wasn’t alone.
The next day Da rode the Osbornes’ mule to town to try to buy Champion back. Nothing would console Mam but that the horse should be ours again and I was astonished when Da agreed. ‘The boy shouldn’t have done it,’ he paced about, muttering. ‘There was no need for this, no need at all.’ He had an expression on his face as if he’d been drenched in water.
But Champion could not be bought back, though I soundly believe Da tried. The agent had sold the horse on already. Devon had been making inquiries; he’d heard there was a cattle drive skirting town. He’d asked the dealer if the stockmen would be interested in a solid beast like Champion. The dealer had reckoned they might be, so he bought the horse from Devon and took him over to the campsite that evening. Champion had been sold for the second time in a day and the drovers, with Devon’s pet carrying their packs across his speckled shoulders, were now miles gone.
Mam and I sat with bowed heads while we listened to this story. The tale was tangled like a moth in a web and I think, looking back, that Devon intended it that way. He wanted Champ to be so irretrievable that he could spare himself from hoping.
The money he had put in the envelope was lying crumpled on the table and Da stared at it dismally. ‘It’s blood money, this,’ he said, and pushed it away. My lip was trembling, thinking of Champion. He had always been noble and beautiful, the most beautiful thing we ever owned. I hoped the drovers would look after him, treat him kindly, scratch between his ears where he liked it, remember he was ageing and not make him carry too weighty a load.
Mam said raspily, ‘We must bring Audrey home, Court.’
Da nodded gravely, said, ‘That is what he wanted.’
But Audrey, when Da travelled out to collect her, smiled tenderly. ‘You sound as if Devon has died,’ she told him. ‘Devon isn’t dead, and my leaving here isn’t his dying wish. Plenty of young men have struck out to find work, Da – there’s no need to be so miserable.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t his dying wish, but it must have almost killed him selling that horse. He did it so you could come home.’
Audrey sighed, leaning against the veranda’s ornate railing-post. She was not wearing an apron or anything that would make her look the housemaid. ‘Devon never thinks things through properly,’ she said, a little tetchily. ‘So many men are on the road, searching for work. What if he doesn’t find anything for months? What if he has to wander from house to house, bartering for scraps? He won’t be sending anything home while he’s doing that, and the money from Champion will dwindle away. We’ll have nothing again, like we had before. I don’t want that. I don’t want Mam and Harper going hungry. I don’t want the neighbours looking out for us. You don’t want it either, Da. The sensible thing is for me to stay here until Devon finds something secure.’
‘But Cable pays you almost nothing, anyway –’
‘He’s going to pay me more, now,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll be able to give you more, at the end of this month.’
‘What your daughter says is sense, Flute.’ It was Cable’s voice, making Audrey and Da wheel. He was standing in the doorway smoking a thin cigar, more like a lord than a farmer. ‘Even you must be capable of seeing that. Just because you get a puddle of money doesn’t mean you should earth in the stream.’
Da had scraped his hat from his head and clutched it tightly. ‘It was what Devon wanted, Mr Cable. I’m only telling her what Devon wanted.’
‘He wants his sister to give up learning a reliable occupation. He wants her to be helpless, forever at the mercy of others to get whatever she needs. That appears to me to be what Devon wants for her.’
‘I see your point, sir,’ Da conceded. ‘But I’m just telling Audrey –’
‘Besides,’ Cable added, blowing a feather of smoke, ‘I don’t reckon you can afford much, Flute, when it comes to weddings. A bride can’t wear a floursack, and you can’t feed guests on thin air. Young Godwin hasn’t much to show for himself, so your daughter’s in need of every shilling.’
Da swung with confusion to Audrey, and Audrey blushed purple. ‘You’re marrying Izzy Godwin?’
She mumbled and twisted. ‘Maybe one day. One day I might.’
Cable was grinning vastly. He flipped the dregs of his cigar spinning over the railing. ‘So you see, Flute,’ he chortled, ‘Audrey can’t possibly leave now.’
Mam and I listened stunned to this tale, both of us truly dumbfounded. I knew, without knowing how I knew it or recalling when I came to learn it, that Izzy did not love Audrey as much as she loved him, and that Audrey had the pitiable habit of believing otherwise. Mam’s eyes were wide with surprise: she asked, ‘Did Audrey say Izzy’s agreeable to this?’
‘Why wouldn’t he be, Thora? He could do worse. Audrey’s a good girl – sensible, too. She’s always been sensible. That’s sense, about waiting until Devon gets a job before chucking in her own.’
Mam shook her head. ‘What I mean is, I’ve never thought of Izzy Godwin as the marrying kind.’
Da wasn’t listening. His gaze had rambled over to me and his hand came up to ruffle my hair, something he hadn’t done in years. ‘Chicken,’ he said, ‘that dress you’re wearing is tatty, and you’re breaking out of the seams. It’s time you had a new one.’
‘Don’t waste the money, Da,’ I said cautiously. ‘We have to remember not to waste it, don’t we? We should be careful about what we buy.’
He burst out laughing. ‘Did you hear that, Thora?’ he cried. ‘What’s made you into such a worrying old woman, Harper?’
I glanced at Mam, who was staring vacantly through the open window. Da was chuckling and flicking me on the nose. I felt a touch of giddy madness, a bee buzzing in my brain. I didn’t know, any more, when I should be happy. I’d forgotten, I realised, when was the proper time to smile.
SO BEGAN MY LIFE as an only child and the boredom grated upon me until I would rush up the rise of a mullock heap with the dogs swarming around me and lift my chin and howl, setting all the dogs for miles arguing and raging and the birds exploding into the air like gunshot, bounding with bare feet over stones that jabbed the soles and hurt so much that I saw stars, doing all this just to get some commotion into my existence, some reaction to my being alive. We had chickens again and for the first time we owned a milking cow, but my home that hot summer had had the aliveness skimmed from it. Wherever I stood there was land sloping in every direction, so much land I could never see the end of it, but sometimes I felt I was living in a tiny crate and that the air oozing through the breathing-holes was never enough to let me satisfactorily fill my lungs.
I put the money Audrey had given me into a jar and buried it in the brown earth near the creek, marking the place with a stone. Audrey had told me to give it to Mam, but I didn’t. I wanted to save it until we needed it badly, and every day I thought I saw that occasion stalking closer. Mam and Da had gone to town with the money from Champion and brought home the chickens and the strawberry cow; for me they had sandals and a dress, the first I’d ever owned that hadn’t been owned by someone before. My blood had chilled at the sight of the cow, my guts jerked like they’d been hooked. We didn’t need a dairy cow, it being cheap to buy milk by the pail, and her price had wasted over half the money. Mam seemed pleased to own her – she seemed as proud as Da. I saw a stingy redness behind my eyes and ran to the creek, where I had used rocks to dam a shady pool. The water was deep enough to soak me and it was the only place in my world that was cool. I sat still while a marchfly drilled its probe into my ankle, sucking back tears in an agony of worry that my Mam had followed the dark path taken by my Da. That was the summer I was twelve years old.
Audrey came home at the end of her second month working for Cable: I had been eager to see her through the weeks leading up to her visit but on the day itself I was in an irate temper, my brains banging wrathfully at my skull, and I squirmed with aggravation as she talked about life on the hog farm. Her duties were lighter now that Cable had dismissed his station-hand, who was accused of being too fond of the silver. The man’s departure left only Audrey and Cable on the property, along with the pigs. She was raising a runt and its neediness filled the hours. The piglet interested me but not very much, and I wandered into the yard. The heat hit like a swung plank and I stood there with my scalp burning, surly and sluggish and fuming. I wanted to ask about the daydream wedding and then laugh like a crow when Audrey’s smile was wiped away. I wanted the weather to break and storm. I wanted not to be angry, I wanted my whole life to begin again. I kicked at the dirt and snarled and the dogs in the shade dropped their ears and blinked appeasingly at me. I would stay in this place forever and every hour would be the same. My brothers and sister had escaped, having made that leap of courage, but I never, ever would. I did not think I lacked courage but I suspected there was no far side for me to land on, were I to try a leaping too. I was left behind unwanted, there was no need or use for me. I felt my fury turning like a whirligig, full of muck and broken litter. Why did you have me? I wanted to demand of Mam. Why raise me, feed me, keep me, if my life was going to be lived in a cage?
Thursday's Child Page 13
