by Joy Dettman
Three months ago he thought he had it made. Three months ago he thought Rachael reminded him a little of Yvonne. Those Squire kids had been raised with too much of everything. Dave had never had enough of anything, and how the hell did a bloke who had nothing refuse manna from the gods when it was offered to him on a silver tray?
His family’s big old weatherboard house had burned to the ground while Dave was overseas. His mother gave up and died a year later and his father had taken to spending his days at Dolan’s hotel. Barely able to walk when he came home from the hospital in Melbourne, no father to greet him at the station, Dave found the old man sleeping it off in a two roomed servants’ hut. Then followed days of walking that neglected property, just walking. He couldn’t mount a horse, couldn’t shear a sheep, couldn’t dig a post hole. He had his army money, though, and ended up paying others to do what he could not. Then five years ago, he’d buried his father, and that land became his land. He wrote to the Returned Soldiers League about a loan. He was going to put in some fruit trees.
Word spread fast in Molliston. Tige, now the drunk local madman and hermit, hadn’t shaved or had a haircut since he came home. He lived in a humpy in Squire’s wood paddock, surviving on fish and rabbits and the few bob a week pension from the army, but he turned up on Dave’s doorstep ready to work, and working harder blind drunk than half sober – and the harder he worked, the harder he talked.
‘Bugger the priests and their God dream, mate,’ he’d say. ‘I’m living your dream, and nothing has felt so bloody right to me in a long time.’
They prepared the land and planted those trees, row upon row of them, and they walked those trees in spring, watching the green buds swell and burst free.
‘Wait until next year,’ they said.
Dave bought an old truck while he waited. Bill Morrison got it running. He bought a water pump to set up down by the river, and Tige came back again to dig trenches and lay half a mile of pipes. He camped with Dave that spring to watch the first sparse blossoms open, then wandered off for a month or two, causing what havoc he could, needing to retain his madman reputation, and thus his pension.
They shared the first apricot, picked a peach or two.
‘Just wait until next year, mate. If you can hang on here until next bloody year, you’ll have a crop. We’ll pick them together.’
Dave had hung on. He sold a few more sheep, paying the interest only on the loan, while watching the trees bud up again, smelling the first blossom. Then the weather turned on him and a gale blew in direct from the south pole, bringing hail as big as golf balls to whip his trees, bringing winds to snatch the remaining buds, howling around that hut for days, laughing at futile dreams.
He could see Tige now, standing out in that storm, shaking his fist at the sky and screaming, ‘You vindictive bastard. You’re jealous of a little man’s big dreams.’
He stayed the night, raved for most it, and at dawn when the rain abated, they walked those rows of battered trees together, Tige holding on to his hand like a little kid might. ‘I want you to know, mate, that it’s been a bloody pleasure sharing your dream, even if it was just a dream. I want you to remember that, mate.’
Then he walked back to Squire’s, took one of his father’s shotguns and blew himself out of his private hell.
Dave’s world started leaning to the left of centre the day Tige died. He went to church one day, maybe wanting to appease Tige’s vindictive god, or just searching for a crutch to stabilise his lean. He’d sold most of his stock, had no friend to talk to, no light to read by, and nothing to read anyway. He owed the grocer, the butcher, the baker, owed Bill from the garage, owed the interest on his loan. Unless God took pity on him and sent down some miracle, he was going to lose his grandfather’s land.
Nicholas Squire had approached him outside the church and invited him to dinner. Dave, in need of a decent meal, accepted the invitation.
In the next weeks he’d eaten a few decent meals there, taken Arthur walking, the crippled leading the blind, but the blind walking straighter, stronger. They were cousins, of similar age, had been boyhood friends until Arthur went off to college to become a gentleman. A great orator, Arthur, he’d wanted to go into politics. His speech was now a distorted confusion of sounds Dave could rarely decipher. Better not to speak to him, better to walk. Arthur never tired of walking.
It was late September when Dave’s teetering world finally leaned too far and flipped over on its back. He’d gone to church, hoping for a free meal. Nicholas was waiting for him, alone. They sat together in the Squire pew that day, and he asked Dave to follow him home.
No sign of his wife or the girls, Arthur out walking with his companion, Squire had taken Dave to the library, closed the door and put the proposal to him – a young wife, a new house and a child, of Squire blood.
‘I’m not marriage material, Nicholas. I thought the old man would have made you aware of that.’
A hand brushed aside Dave’s protest. ‘There is more to a marriage than what may, or may not, take place in the marital bed, Dave. Don’t refuse without due consideration.’ Dave was shaking his head, turning away, when Nicholas played the ace he always kept tucked up his sleeve.
‘I have a new truck on order, a Dodge. They are a remarkable vehicle. It would be yours and Rachael’s.’
A new Dodge truck? A man would almost sell his soul for a modern truck. ‘She’d never agree to it, Nicholas. She’s a seventeen year old kid.’
‘Eighteen in December. More than old enough to wed.’
‘She’s been on with that youngest Reichenberg kid for years. Let her marry him.’
‘You’re joking, of course. Will you at least consider –?’
‘I think you need to consider where I’ve been, Nicholas, then consider what it is you’re asking me to do. I can’t deny I’d like that truck – and I’d like to help you out, but I couldn’t raise one of old Joe Reichenberg’s grandkids. I can’t. I’m sorry.’
Can’t was a word not included in Nicholas Squire’s vocabulary. He poured two small whiskies. ‘We appear to have lost Arthur’s son. God alone knows where his mother has taken him. Olivia and I want the infant Rachael is carrying, and we want to see her wed to a good man.’ He sighed, sipped from his glass, lifting his eyes to his visitor. ‘She’s fond of you, Dave. I believe you are fond of her.’
‘Your daughters are both beautiful kids.’
‘Before making this approach, Olivia and I spoke to Rachael. She has been made aware of your . . . limitation.’
‘Is young Reichenberg prepared to marry her?’
‘We are discussing my daughter and a child of the Squire blood – your own blood, Dave. We are discussing my daughter’s reputation, and her sister’s chance of making a good marriage – which we will not discuss in the same breath as German scum. The child will be your child. It will be born in Melbourne and the date on the birth certificate adjusted.’ He had it all worked out. All he needed was a father’s name on that certificate. ‘We would also make some arrangement regarding your loan. I believe you are experiencing some financial difficulties at the moment.’
Were there no secrets in this bloody town? Dave emptied his whisky glass, accepted a second drink. Here was the answer to his money worries. Wasn’t saying ‘no’ to Squire’s proposal like saying no to first prize in the lottery? That girl had got herself into a fix. She must have known there was no way Nicholas would allow her to marry a German. What did a girl do in that situation? Most parents would have packed her off to the city, had the kid adopted, but Squire wasn’t most parents. He’d chased Arthur’s wife to England, trying to reclaim young Raymond. He wasn’t going to let one drop of Squire blood get away if he could help it.
It would be blue eyed and blonde. Couldn’t help but be, Rachael being a blue-eyed blonde. Dave’s own eyes were blue-grey. Babies all looked much the same, didn’t they? Who was going to argue if he claimed it? Only those who knew he couldn’t father a child. Tige had known, but T
ige was gone. Len Larkin and a few of the returned blokes might have known. Dr Hunter knew, not that he’d be broadcasting it.
‘Does the Reichenberg kid know she’s in the family way?’
‘I can’t be certain on that point. She’s been in her room since we learned of the child, and that is where she will remain until she’s wed.’
Rachael had known Dave all her life. He was a second cousin, or some sort of a cousin – their grandmothers had been sisters, the only daughters of old Molly Squire.
‘I can’t see that an eighteen year old kid would agree to that sort of marriage, or if I’m prepared to agree to it, Nicholas, but if you can give me a day or two…’
‘Certainly. Sleep on it, Dave. Of course we’d want it done as soon as possible.’
Dave refused lunch and drove his crate on wheels home, where he wandered his land, one minute telling himself he was crazy even giving the idea head room, and the next telling himself it could be the miracle he’d been praying for to save his grandfather’s land. Son-in-law of Nicholas Squire. A wife, a child – maybe in a couple of years he could get Rachael to agree to adopting a few more kids. A new Dodge truck might get him carrying work for the cannery. A new house, something fine standing where the old house had stood. No loan to pay off.
He didn’t sleep on it. He didn’t sleep a wink. Near dawn, he bathed, shaved, dressed in his old suit, and by nine he was back at Squire’s. Nicholas took him to a bedroom where Rachael, pale and subdued, sat before the dressing table, brushing her hair. Her eyes met his in the mirror.
‘Your father tells me you’re needing to get married, Rae.’ Not much of a marriage proposal.
‘He’s needing it, not me, Dave.’
‘That’s pretty much the answer I expected…’
She stood, turned, looked directly at him. ‘This isn’t about what I want, or what you may think you want. It’s about what he wants. You win again, Father.’
Not much of an acceptance.
Once the door was closed and the key returned to Nicholas’s pocket, he extended his hand, shook Dave’s. ‘We’ll do it Friday evening – if that is convenient? We don’t want to turn this thing into a town circus. A week’s honeymoon in Melbourne, perhaps, then a small reception when you return.’
It wasn’t much of a wedding. Dave preferred not to remember it, or the photographer Nicholas brought over from Willama. Following the short ceremony, Rachael returned to her room and Nicholas paced his library until after midnight, laying down the ground rules.
The next morning the family left at seven, driving over the bridge and continuing south on Bridge Road, which was the most direct route to Melbourne. A lot of back roads serviced a lot of properties out that way now, and a few small towns. They boarded the train at a place thirty miles south and while the women said their goodbyes, Nicholas gave his final instructions.
‘Olivia has a recalcitrant sister, a teacher, who unfortunately never wed. She has interfered in family matters before, and I prefer to keep her and her unconventional attitudes away from my daughters. Should Rachael express a desire to visit her aunt, I’d suggest you refuse. Keep her busy. She enjoys the city stores, and both she and her sister are obsessed by the cinema.’ He offered the train tickets and three ten pound notes – more cash than Dave had seen in many a day. ‘I’ve given Rachael no spending money. Until she settles down to marriage, I’d suggest you handle all cash transactions. We have accounts with some of the larger stores. The hotel account has been taken care of.’
Rachael slept for much of the trip. They arrived at Spencer Street in the early afternoon and took a cab to the Windsor Hotel, where they were shown to a room with a double bed.
Dave’s hip was killing him – all he wanted was a flat floor to lie on – but Rachael took the key from Dave’s hand and returned it to the porter. ‘This will not be at all suitable,’ she said, her tone imperious, and for the first time Dave saw something of Nicholas in his daughter. They were moved into a twin room.
Be firm, Nicholas had said, firm but gentle. Breaking a woman to marriage was like breaking a filly to the saddle. Perhaps Rachael had been standing outside that library door, listening to her father’s instruction. She’d been firm, but gentle.
After lunch and a pain powder, he took her to the cinema, and to another one that evening, then he slept the night with the key beneath his pillow. They went to the beach and rode the trams on Sunday, and on the Monday morning he took her shopping – or she took him.
She liked spending money, bought two pair of shoes without bothering to try them on. She bought two shirts for him, then a ready-made jacket, and when he protested, she lifted a finger to her lips. He wanted to return to the hotel, but she headed around a corner, so he followed her into a dark and narrow shop where she was greeted like royalty by Nicholas’s tailor. He had a stock of partially made-up suits, so she ordered one and charged it to Nicholas’s account. ‘We’ll pick it up on Wednesday morning,’ she said.
No argument from the old fellow. ‘Will the gentleman be requiring shoes, perhaps a shirt and tie to match, Miss Squire?’
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘You’ve got to stop this, Rae.’
‘Why? He thinks his money can buy him anything, Dave. So let it buy you a new suit.’
Maybe he held his head a little higher when he walked with her on his arm to the dining room in that new suit, new shoes, new shirt, tie and socks. This was her world, and at her side it could become his world. He started dreaming big that night, started planning a life spent in decent suits and shoes. He saw her in his new house, saw half a dozen kids playing in his orchard. Knowing Squire’s attitude to blood, he wouldn’t consider orphanage kids his grandchildren, though the reverse might apply in Dave’s own case: he might accept Joe Reichenberg’s grandson as his own if he had half a dozen orphanage kids also calling him Dad.
On Thursday, the last day of their honeymoon, she didn’t leave the hotel. She became silent, checked at the reception desk for messages all day. ‘I’m expecting a message from my aunt,’ she said. The message didn’t arrive. On Friday they caught the night train home.
It was a long, slow trip, with passengers getting on and off at every station. The train got in to Molliston late, but Nicholas was waiting to take them to the big house, where he’d assembled forty-odd guests, his and Olivia’s friends from out of town, in the main, but a few of the better class locals and a couple of Rachael’s friends. Dave’s friends were all dead, other than Len Larkin, who, had he been invited, wouldn’t have come.
When Dave’s grandmother was alive, that big house had been his second home, so the wheel had turned and his life was back on track. After a painkilling powder and a couple of drinks, Dave began to feel he belonged there, and when they called for a speech, he took Rachael’s hand and made his speech: ‘My wife and I,’ he said, ‘my wife and I…’
A good night, a good party and a good sleep, though the next day wasn’t so good. His truck hadn’t arrived but his house was already rising, and why the hell it had been started while he was away, he did not know. He’d wanted it set on the old site. He’d wanted something with character. Squire had hired a mob from Willama and they were throwing up a modern three bedroom box of a thing, fifty feet from where the old house had stood and only ten feet from the hut, with the shed blocking off any view of his fruit trees. Nothing he could do about it. The frame was up, the roof going on. Maybe that was the moment he began to realise he’d given control over his life into Squire’s hands.
He spent two nights at the big house, he and Rachael supposedly sharing a twin room. She didn’t sleep in the second bed; she crept up to her old bedroom – or he hoped she’d gone to her old room.
With the house still overrun by guests, on Sunday morning he made his stand, said that he and his wife would be moving home to his property. That afternoon they drove across the river to the hut he called home. It had undergone a radical cleaning by the Johnsons and now boasted floor mats,
two single beds and two sitting-room chairs. Rachael took a quick glance through the door, then backed out.
‘This will not be suitable,’ she said, but with a smile.
He smiled too. ‘It’s not much, Rae, but it’s comfortable. It’s got a good stove, an ice chest. You can have the bedroom. I’ll move the second bed into the kitchen. Just look on it as a camping-out holiday until the house is ready.’
‘He’d love to see me camping in your hut, Dave, but I promise you now, he’s not going to win that one.’
‘You’re my wife, and a wife lives in whatever her husband can provide, doesn’t she? At the moment, this is all I can provide so this is where we live,’ he said, putting his foot down, pulling gently on those reins. He picked up her case and carried it inside, set about lighting the stove. When he came outside to fill the kettle, she’d gone.
Around eight that night, Nicholas brought her back. He said she’d walked down to the swimming bend and swum across, but a worm of doubt started crawling in Dave’s head. There were a lot of hours between four and eight.
‘We’re going to set down a few ground rules here, Rae, and my first one is that you don’t go near Reichenberg’s place. You don’t talk to that boy, even if you run head on into him in the street. You don’t notice him working in the paddock as we drive by.’
‘I walked straight down to the bend and swam home. I did not go to Chris’s house, or meet with him outside the house,’ she said. ‘And my first rule is, I don’t sleep in that hut, and my second, I don’t intend explaining my every action.’
Then she took off again, in the dark, towards the river, with Dave limping behind her. He didn’t see her dive in but he heard her, and found two pairs of her shoes lying where she’d left them on the bank. He’d thought that river would keep her on his side.
