Heart of the Outback

by Lynne Wilding

  Francey stood and stretched. “Fine, that should give me enough time to finish my drawings. See you then.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Francey reined in her mare Astra, as the creek’s bank dropped away. Exhilarated from the ride she glanced back to where the outer homestead buildings were still visible. Les had told her not to let the buildings out of sight as it was easy to get lost on the property if one couldn’t recognise the landmarks. She loosened her hold on the reins and let the horse nibble at the moist grass beside the creek which had almost entirely dried up. On the opposite bank gnarled tree roots clung tenuously to the raw, red earth, showing clear signs of erosion. Her head tilted to one side as she surveyed the picture — such a hard, fierce, fascinating land.

  As she slipped from the saddle she took her camera with her. About five metres away stood a dead tree, greyish-white in colour with stark, leafless branches pointing skywards. She wanted to photograph it and with the sky a brilliant blue the backdrop would be perfect for the coloured roll of film in the camera.

  She walked around studying her subject from different angles, smiling to herself. The plans for the conference centre were finished and tomorrow, when Les flew CJ home from Brisbane, she’d know whether it appealed to him. Oddly, it was important to her that he liked what she had done even if he didn’t choose her design. In another burst of reflective thought, as she made ready for the shot, she admitted that over the last week she and CJ had had their moments.

  It hadn’t taken long for Francey to learn that all the people at Murrundi deferred to CJ’s wishes whether he was in the right or otherwise. And it was no wonder Shellie had a drinking problem — the man browbeat her whenever he was in the mood. Nothing she did seemed good enough. Even Natalie refused to push him too far and Les, well, he was too much the suave diplomat to get into a sticky situation with his boss, the man to whom he owed so much.

  Her first confrontation had come the day she’d wanted to go into the Isa to get some film processed. Over such a silly thing. Her beloved but worn-out VW had refused to start and the foreman, Mike Hunter, had told her the battery was flat. CJ suggested she drive his Rolls! What a temptation it had been to get behind the wheel of the luxurious vehicle. She almost couldn’t resist, but she had, partly because she’d been worried about putting a dent or a scratch on it. When she’d said no thank you CJ had become annoyed and to Francey’s astonishment, had stormed off to his study like a spoilt child. Les had whispered to her that she’d probably hurt his feelings — that CJ had his sensitive moments and having his generosity thrown back in his face had most probably offended him. Men! She had shaken her head in consternation. Who would ever understand them?

  The second difference of opinion had come about when she had finally stood up to CJ when he’d badgered Shellie about something and reduced her to tears. Through judicious storing of pieces of casual conversation, Francey had learned a little about Shellie’s life. A disastrous marriage which ended when her husband left her for another woman. A couple of affairs that had led nowhere and then, when Brenda deWitt-Ambrose’s cancer had worsened she had come to Murrundi to care for her and to run the homestead, then stayed on at CJ’s request.

  One evening Shellie had tippled too much and CJ, who drank rarely, lost his temper and threatened to put her into a detoxification ward. Shellie, befuddled, had been unable to respond coherently. Not Francey. She had jumped unasked into the fray and pointed out that maybe, if someone took the trouble to find out why Shellie drank to excess, they would be halfway to solving her problem.

  CJ hadn’t appreciated her honesty and had told her to mind her own business, that this was a family matter. Les, ever the peacemaker, had seized the moment and escorted Francey from the room and onto the verandah before a full scale row could erupt. For which the volatile Francey had given him a piece of her mind instead and retired, still fuming.

  The next morning at breakfast things had been frosty, a situation which had nothing to do with the cooler weather. After lunch CJ had called her into his office and they had debated the matter, sensitively and without anger. To her surprise he’d agreed with her about Shellie. He said she had pointed out something he had overlooked and that as soon as he could he would organise some counselling and treatment for her.

  After that, she and CJ had gotten on famously.

  Francey lined up her subject, steadied the camera on a fallen log and took three frames.

  Having taken the shots she had wanted to she remounted Astra and headed towards the homestead by way of the grassy knoll and the peppercorn tree. She hadn’t visited the Ambrose family cemetery and while reading headstones normally wasn’t her thing, curiosity made her want to know about the people who rested there.

  The small cemetery was lovingly tended. The grass had been freshly mown, though it didn’t grow much in the winter, and at the base of each headstone was a bunch of flowers from Murrundi’s garden. A one and a half metre high aluminium fence surrounded the plots to keep the hungry cattle out, though the green grass must have been a temptation to them. She tethered her horse and opened the gate. Five headstones. Percy Ambrose, Neville Ambrose, Brenda deWitt-Ambrose, Miles Ambrose and Richard Ambrose. Francey looked at Miles’ headstone — the figure of an angel rested atop the marble stone. Reading the inscription she saw that CJ had had a second son who had died at the age of three. She noted the age on Richard’s headstone — a year younger than herself. Too young to die and especially so horrifically. She remembered the photo of him in CJ’s study. He was a good-looking man with fair hair and green eyes. What a waste.

  “This is one place I didn’t expect you to be interested in.”

  Francey recognised Les Westcott’s voice before she turned to look at him.

  She smiled. “You know me, the perennial stickybeak. Just thought I’d take a look on my way back to the stables.” Then she remembered why his appearance had surprised her. “I thought you weren’t coming back till tomorrow?”

  “Oh, we finished the business early. CJ likes to be home, he’s not one for staying in big cities for too long.”

  She watched Les dismount and in three strides join her beside Richard’s grave. She pointed to Miles’ headstone. “Tell me about him.”

  “Shellie knows more about Miles than I do. I wasn’t here then. Poor Shellie, she seems to have spent half her life nursing sick people. Guess she had a vocation for it. First there was the grandfather. Percy took sick after they lost their cattle station, Amba Downs. And later on old Neville, CJ and Shellie’s father, couldn’t work because he’d been kicked in the spine by a horse. Damaged the nerves something awful according to Shellie. He ended up in a wheelchair and she nursed him till he died. Some say that’s what destroyed her marriage to Peter Kirkby. Now, Miles, he was four years younger than Richard. Brenda didn’t have him immunised and he contracted whooping cough. Shellie and Brenda nursed him around the clock but in the end couldn’t save him.”

  “Poor little thing.”

  “Yeah. CJ’s had his share of family sadness, you know.”

  “And Richard?”

  “That really rocked him, rocked all of us. Richard and I were the best of mates. Everyone loved Richard.” He glanced at Francey and wiggled his eyebrows. “He wasn’t a lot like CJ, had his mother’s nature. You know, more easygoing, and without the ruthless streak that’s made CJ a household name in Queensland. Half the people hate ‘the man with the golden touch’, the other half admire him for what he’s achieved. He’s found plenty of the population jobs when they didn’t have one but that hasn’t earned him their gratitude.”

  “CJ the philanthropist.” Francey’s smile widened, her blue-green eyes sparkling. “Somehow I’ve never seen him in that light. Was Richard capable of running CJ’s business interests?”

  “I think so. He’d have done it differently to the old man. Maybe he wouldn’t have made as much money as CJ, but everyone would have loved working for him.”

  “A nice thing for a boss to
aspire to, surely?” Personally, she hoped that one day if she ever had staff under her, that they would think well of her: consider that she was fair and just.

  “For some, yes.”

  Francey studied the headstones again. A whole family, together. It was nice, in a way, sentimental, perhaps to think that they were there, together till the end of time. Fitting, she decided.

  “I heard that you finished the conference centre proposal.”

  “It’s on CJ’s desk.”

  “Then you deserve some time off, before you go home. Myself, Hunter and a couple of the boys are doing a muster, moving part of the herd to better grass. We’ll be out a couple of days. I thought you might like to come along and see how it’s done. There’s a lot of riding involved but I think you can handle it.”

  Francey thought for a moment. Hadn’t CJ told Les about the Cooktown project? Or, maybe he’d been told not to mention it. A muster. Could be fun, and think of the story she’d be able to tell her parents and the O’Connors.

  “I thought you did that sort of thing with your helicopter.”

  “Sometimes we do. It’s more for large scale mustering where we round up strays over a wide area.”

  “I’d love to come.”

  “We’ll be roughing it,” he warned. “Sleeping out of doors in a sleeping bag. Plain fare food, no showers or toilets.”

  Francey thought for a moment. “Oh, I think I can handle that for a couple of days, but no more. Especially the toilet facilities part.”

  “Good. We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow.”

  Together they walked back to their horses and remounted.

  “I’ll race you to the big barn,” Francey challenged and was off.

  Les grinned. He didn’t care if she beat him though he knew his horse could beat Astra any day of the week. She was coming on the muster. At last he’d have some time with her, alone if he was lucky. Francey Spinetti was one woman he wanted to know a heck of a lot better and by the time they returned, he hoped he would.

  No more, Francey groaned to herself. Every muscle and every tissue, including some she didn’t know she had, in her body ached. The cattle, creatures she had once thought cute were dirty, smelly, obstinate four-legged beasts and to muster them one needed the patience of a saint. She glanced across at Mike and Les and wondered how they stood, or rather sat, eight to ten hours a day in the saddle. It was torture. And she would kill for a bath, any kind of bath.

  The first day out had been enjoyable, seeing the countryside, learning what they did. She hadn’t minded the riding, in fact she’d quite enjoyed it, but sleeping on the hard ground in a sleeping bag meant that the next day her muscles hadn’t rested properly. Despite that she’d gritted her teeth and vaulted into the saddle. Not for anything would she let these tough, outback guys know that she couldn’t hack it. The Spinetti pride was involved and she wouldn’t let the family down.

  At least they hadn’t expected her to go off chasing runaway steers, she just tagged along to oversee what the experienced stockmen were doing. She had taken some great action photos though, which was some consolation.

  Les moved his horse over to hers and they rode in perfect harmony.

  “Pretty tired, hey?”

  “No, I’m fine,” she retorted determinedly, gritting her teeth against the truth.

  He grinned. Her stubborn streak was as wide as CJ’s. “So, you’re enjoying it?”

  “Yes.” Her muscles weren’t enjoying it, she silently affirmed, but the rest of her was, and she had learned a lot about the outback country, about what it took to survive here. Les was a good teacher. He’d taken every opportunity possible to instruct her on bush lore, why they did this and why they did that. What they could do if they ran out of water, or if someone got bitten by a poisonous snake. Ugh! She didn’t want to think about that.

  Mike and the two other men, Lucky and Alan, were good company too, though they didn’t talk a lot. She had divined that men in the bush were, to use a clichè, the strong, silent type, mostly content to keep their own counsel. Mike had been a wheat farmer in western NSW but his farm had gone under when the banks raised their interest rate. His wife had left him and now he was alone. But, strangely, he seemed more stoic than bitter.

  She had learned some interesting aspects about Les’ background too, over long hours on the trail and nights during which the campfire was the only source of light in an otherwise ink-black world. He knew a little about astronomy and had tried to show her where the various star systems were. Stars. She smiled, thinking of the spectacular exhibition of millions of pin points of light in a velvet-black sky. So many of them, and they were so much more vivid in a country sky than in a city where street and house lights and pollution diffused the clarity.

  She knew that Les had been orphaned at the age of fourteen and had bummed around from town to town, scratching out an existence until he’d landed on CJ’s doorstep. From Shellie she’d learned that CJ had taken him in and given him a chance and had developed him over the years. He had earned two degrees by correspondence, one in animal husbandry and the other in business administration, had a pilot’s licence and now he was CJ’s right-hand man. The trouble shooter.

  Les ran Murrundi Downs, he did all the lead up work when CJ embarked on a new venture, he dealt with the media and the politicians and he was the only person who knew all the complexities of the Ambrose empire. That, potentially, made him powerful. And through watching CJ operate, he had built up an impressive portfolio of shares and small properties. Good husband material, her father would have said. She chuckled to herself. She missed him and her mum, missed their laughter and their volatility and their caring.

  “We’ve done well. Picked up over a hundred strays,” Les told her. “We’ll head back tomorrow and should be at Murrundi by late afternoon. Guess you’re anxious to know what CJ thought of your plans?”

  “I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t,” she said tongue-in-cheek. Which was the truth. Secretly she was pleased with the way the plans had worked out. She had taken a great deal of care over the aesthetics, making sure the conference centre’s architectural style fitted in with the surrounding landscape. Several visits to two building supply companies in the Isa had shown her what type of materials would work best with the landscape and she was confident, after making sure that the plans complied with the building regulations of the local council, that there wouldn’t be any problems in that regard.

  She admitted too, deep down, that she would be bitterly disappointed, no matter how fair-minded she tried to be, if CJ didn’t choose her design.

  That night they camped beside a half dried up billabong located too far inland to attract crocodiles. Much of the surrounding ground was marshy, with thin, tall reeds but there was enough open space near the water to pitch camp. Francey’s task was to fetch firewood and while she did this Mike whipped up a damper to go with the plain fare meal of tinned frankfurts, beans and sun-dried tomatoes.

  After a long day in the saddle all were hungry enough to scrape their enamel plates clean and drain every drop of coffee from their mugs. Lucky produced a harmonica and began to practise his repertoire of country and western tunes, while Alan and Mike cleared up and set the sleeping bags out around the campfire. Five of them watched a wintry sun set quickly over the western range and then the camp was thrown into almost complete darkness. Within an hour everyone except Les and Francey had retired to their sleeping bags and the sounds of gentle snoring and snuffling mingled with the night noises of the creatures of the marsh: bull frogs, bird calls and the periodic rustling of the reeds as nocturnal creatures sought their evening meals.

  Les glanced across at Francey who was poking the fire with a stick and laying a few extra branches on it. The fire light lit up her features, adding extra dimension and depth to the high planes of her cheeks and the luminosity of her eyes. His throat tightened and for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything to say. Just being with her, watching her, listening to her talk with t
he guys and seeing her enjoy the whole experience was enough.

  He knew she was unconsciously casting a spell over him, and he treasured the fact that she’d relaxed and told him a few things about herself. About that bastard Bryan, and her embryonic relationship with her boss. He frowned. That could be real competition. A man from her world, the life and things she was used to. But not since Nancy had he felt anything so strong for a woman and so he dismissed the doubts before they overtook him.

  Oh, there had been other women. Hookers, high-class callgirls on occasion and in the odd foreign city, but lately he’d been considering a few things. He was getting on. He’d be thirty-seven in six months time. Time to settle down, find a good stepmother for his son. For a while he’d hoped it might have been Natalie. They’d known each other for so long, it would have been a perfect match and gained CJ’s approval. But Natalie was a bitch of the first order. She had led him on, let him believe he had a chance and then she’d gone and rubbed his nose in her rejection of him. A muscle at the side of his jaw tightened. Bitch. He’d never forgive her. He didn’t care when she’d told him she preferred women, she had deliberately led him on, given him hope … laughed at him!

  Francey Spinetti wasn’t like Natalie. As he gazed at her through half hooded lids he had a gut feeling about that. Ambitious though, he admitted, she wanted a career, and that might be a problem. Still, he shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, he’d attack that problem when he came to it. First things first. Get her interested in him, not just as an acquaintance, but as someone she might be attracted to.

  Les looked up and saw that a three-quarter moon had come up. Soon it would light up the billabong. He stood and stretched, then casually strolled down to the water’s edge. In silence he willed her to follow him, but would she? Minutes later he heard footsteps crunch on the sandy perimeter of the billabong.