Stone Country

by Nicole Alexander

  Miners, graziers, labourers and hunters turned at his entrance. Ross didn’t hear the words of greeting or the offers to buy him a beer. His focus was on one man.

  Connor sat at a table near the window reading the newspaper. He looked up as Ross approached. Raising his hand in acknowledgement, the Scotsman called to the woman behind the bar and ordered Ross a drink.

  ‘Well then, I have news.’ He tapped a folder that sat on the table. ‘Holder’s solicitor is meeting us here. The place is to be sold. Holder’s died.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’ hissed Ross.

  There was no mistaking the uneasy look on Connor’s face. In another world, Ross may have said his piece and left but this was different. Since the beginning of their time in the Territory, he’d been troubled by Connor’s meddling, however he was the closest thing to a friend Ross had. Not since Alastair, or before the war when his childhood friends still spoke to him, had there been one person whom he’d trusted as much, who he believed understood the pressure placed on him by his family, and Connor knew he loved Maria. It made the man’s deceit so much worse.

  Slowly, Connor stood. ‘You’ve seen Mrs Reece?’

  ‘You knew I would find out about Maria,’ countered Ross.

  ‘Aye. Although I wasn’t aware until recently that they’d planned to marry so quickly,’ said Connor.

  Ross could barely believe what he was hearing. ‘And I suppose my father knew of Edward Carment’s interest.’

  Connor thrust his hands in his pockets. ‘I didnae tell your father. After what happened last year I doubted either of us would still be in the Territory. And now as far as he’s concerned you’re with Darcey.’

  A billowy middle-aged woman placed two beers on the table. ‘If you boys are going to argue take it outside, otherwise I expect the both of you to sit down and drink up.’

  ‘I’m leaving in a minute,’ replied Ross bluntly.

  ‘Good.’ The publican left them alone.

  ‘You knew how I felt about Maria,’ Ross continued once she’d gone.

  ‘That’s why it had to be done. You’d ruin yourself for her, Ross.’ Connor held up a hand, index finger and thumb barely an inch apart. ‘You came this close to that happening. I thanked the day Darcey turned up at Waybell, and then when I saw how well you two were getting on –’

  ‘I don’t want to see you again, Connor. Pack your bags and go back to Adelaide.’

  ‘Listen to me –’

  ‘Listen to you?’ Ross let out a mirthless laugh.

  ‘People can hear what we’re saying, lower your voice,’ cautioned Connor.

  ‘Listen to you?!’ Ross repeated, louder. ‘I’ll never listen to you again! Who would know what’s fact or fiction? I knew from the beginning that you were my father’s man. If you weren’t keeping watch on me, you were making sure your own position was never blackened. Bugger what I wanted in life.’

  ‘Hell, Ross, I’m your friend first and foremost.’

  ‘No you are not!’ yelled Ross. ‘You’ve never been my friend. You’re just like the rest of them. Trying to trap me into doing your bidding. Ensuring I adhere to what the family wants and never giving a thought to what I care about. Well, no more. Do you hear that, Connor Andrews? I’m not going to be controlled anymore. This is my life and I refuse to have people interfering in it.’

  Connor’s face was stormy. ‘I’m not falling out with you over a whore.’

  Ross rushed at him but the Scotsman was quick. He sidestepped to the left and punched Ross in the middle of the chest. Ross staggered backwards but held his ground and answered with a hard blow to Connor’s jaw. The Scotsman flinched and responded in kind. Ross dipped and weaved, avoiding the next strike but Connor didn’t miss on the following attempt. The watching crowd let out a collective groan. Ross hit him again and received a quick response. They stood, matching strike for strike. An intolerable anger fanned Ross’s need to cause pain, and he lost sight of the individual standing opposite him swaying gently under the force of each blow. There was only fury within him and a rush of resentment that found the briefest relief when his knuckles grew smeary with blood and snot. The strength of his blows forced Connor against the wall and still they persisted at each other. He was prepared to go on until he dropped from exhaustion if need be, until a stranger landed such a clout to the side of his head that Ross fell to the floor.

  Two men dragged Ross upright, constraining him, as a tight circle of drinkers looked on. A dark-suited man stepped forward from the crowd.

  ‘You’re Ross Grant?’

  Ross rubbed at his jaw. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Charles Pike, Mr Holder’s solicitor. I can’t in good conscience proceed with the sale of my client’s property to you, Mr Grant. Everyone is aware of Mr Holder’s unsuccessful attempts to have you stand trial for the attack on his person, and considering what I’ve just heard I think he had good cause. Mr Holder might be dead but I very much doubt he’d want to sell you anything.’

  Then the men holding Ross dragged him upstairs and dumped him in one of the rooms. He sat up, one hand on the floor to steady his balance as a brusque woman’s voice explained that the punches he’d received didn’t warrant the laying about he was currently enjoying.

  ‘Mr Andrews, on the other hand, is deserving of a bed,’ she continued. ‘He can stay here rent-free until he mends but you, Mr Grant, you can pay double. Get up,’ she demanded. ‘Connor Andrews is well thought of in Darwin, however you always were an unknown quantity and you’ve proved yourself such.’

  Piano music filtered into the room. A coverlet hung from a bed and Ross pulled himself upright, sitting on the groaning springs. The woman sat near a washstand, a ribbon of blue-yellow flame from a kerosene lantern throwing her bulky shadow on the wall. A thick arm held a pipe that she sucked on savagely, puffing smoke through her nostrils. He vaguely recalled her from the public bar. The door opened and one of the men who’d hauled him from the bar dropped his belongings on the floor. The room was small and cheaply furnished. It was not the accommodation he’d paid for.

  ‘There’s a bottle of rum on the table,’ she said. ‘I imagine you’re a drinker. If you weren’t when you arrived in the Territory, you will be by now.’

  Ross poured a nip of rum and swallowed. The liquid was harsh. Diagonally across from where he was slumped, stars showed through an open window. ‘Who hit me?’

  ‘My first husband was a boxing champion.’ She rubbed at her right hand. ‘He taught me a thing or two, which comes in handy when there are problem drinkers or men who aren’t right in the mind.’ She tapped her forehead for emphasis. ‘You have to use your noggin, love, before you revert to fisticuffs. The little Scotsman isn’t to blame for your poor choice in women.’

  Ross tipped more rum into a glass.

  ‘Not interested in how he fared, are you? Well, Connor’s damaged, but he’ll mend. You, on the other hand, are going to need more than rum and a good dose of castor oil to put you back together. No one can help you, lad, except you yourself. If you’re willing. Having a bit of fluff on the side is one thing, expecting something to come of it is just plain stupid. I should know, I’m on my third husband.’ She opened the door to the room. ‘By tomorrow the whole of Darwin will be dredging up last year’s story about the attack on poor Marcus Holder, and you’ll have made us front-page news again with the stink of adultery and slavery added to whet the Southerners’ appetites. Thanks for that. We have enough troubles with our image without no-hopers like you making things worse. You know trial by jury’s been abolished in Darwin except in cases of murder. The authorities said it was impossible to obtain a conviction against any Darwin citizen by a jury of his peers, but you know, I think they’d make an exception in your case. I’ll send up one of the lads with some food but I want you gone by morning.’

  Ross took a long swig from the bottle as the door clicked shut. The drink slid down his throat until the flask was nearly empty and a numbness replaced the throb of his skull. The
ceiling hung low and close, pulsating back and forth, matching each wave of air that passed through his lungs.

  Maria was married. He repeated the phrase again and again, reliving the months she’d spent at Waybell. There were so many images he could draw on but none so provocative as the last time they’d been together. He thought of their bodies that day. Entwined. Recalled the taste of her on his tongue. Were he back at Waybell now, he would press his mouth to the walls of his bedroom and she would be there, infused into the wood.

  He was woken the next day by a figure in the doorway. Ross shielded his face from the sun’s glare. Lifting his head from the lumpy pillow he wiped at crusty dribble, stepping square into a plate of untouched meat and vegetables as he righted himself. The rum bottle fell to the floor and rolled towards the door. Connor stooped to pick it up, setting it on the washstand. His face was bruised and swollen, a busted lip and broken nose the most obvious injuries. He coughed, a spine-hacking noise that caused him to take a breath, bringing him to stillness.

  ‘What time is it?’ Ross ran his fingers through mussed hair.

  ‘Afternoon. I see you dinnae look much better than me.’ Connor placed a folder on the edge of the washstand, clearly not wanting to step further inside the room than necessary. His two front teeth were missing.

  ‘That’s the surveyor’s map of Holder’s station.’ He gestured to the paperwork. ‘The lawyer asked me to return it to you. He thought you might like it for a souvenir.’ Connor’s words were tight and inflexible. The lilting accent – usually all ferny glens, hills and burns – was gone, replaced by desolate moorlands.

  ‘Nothing like having a sense of humour.’ Ross lifted his fist, swollen to twice its size. Dried blood caked his skin. The fingers wouldn’t straighten. He raised the sash window a few more inches and stared out over the town. The view faced south, away from the water, taking in the neat framework of the city and the mass of trees that marked the division between progress and where he’d come from.

  By tomorrow, much of Darwin who’d previously only guessed at the truth of his relationship with Maria would know of his love for her. By the end of the week, Pine Creek and Katherine would be crawling with the news. The telegraphers would be busy. Not that it mattered. He’d taken care of himself for long enough to know how it was done and he wasn’t so useless as to be unemployable.

  ‘You should go back to the station. One of us has to be there,’ said Ross.

  ‘Aye and you?’ asked Connor.

  ‘Considering everything that’s happened, I’m sure you’ll understand that what I do is none of your damn business.’

  Outside, a wizened black man was standing on the corner. A passing horserider and two people walking in opposite directions were the extent of the traffic, until the noisy chug of the Sandfly locomotive, and the blast of her whistle, stung the air.

  ‘Where is she?’ asked Ross, still fixed on the street scene.

  ‘Dinnae do this. You have to let her go. She’s married, which is good for a girl like her. People said she was a prostitute in Chinatown. That she was bought up by an old concubine who taught her –’

  Ross faced Connor. ‘You knew how I felt about her.’ That was the cut of it. Connor’s treachery was absolute. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘At Hugh Carment’s station. I can’t do this anymore, Ross. You have a wife who cares for you, and whether you want to admit it or not, you care for Darcey as well. I’ll leave and head back to Adelaide if that’s what you prefer, but dinnae throw it all away.’

  ‘You can go back to Waybell, Connor,’ said Ross.

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ross held open the door. ‘You can go.’

  Connor left quietly, his boots muffled by the red carpeted runner that threaded its way to the end of the hallway and the largest room. The Scotsman moved slowly. He remained a wiry man unchanged by heat or damp, infuriatingly consistent in his approach to life. Ross waited until he entered the end room that had once been his on their arrival in 1919. He remembered that there was a view of the sea from that balcony and a writing desk positioned at the window with a cushioned cane chair. There was no way to explain Connor’s actions and no chance now to right what was wrong. Ross would never forgive him.

  He tore a strip from the bedsheet, poured water into the washstand and gradually eased out his damaged fingers in the cool liquid. He pressed down hard on the ceramic base, feeling the stretch of ligaments, and then wound the strip of linen around his hand. He tipped the remaining water over his head.

  Downstairs, the publican wiped the bar with a frayed cloth. She looked up as he approached, her brow creasing. ‘We have towels, you know.’

  Taking a wad of notes from his wallet, Ross sat them on the counter.

  She licked her thumb and flicked through the money. ‘That’s too much.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’d say that.’ Ross poured water from a pitcher on the bar and drank. His stomach was complaining. ‘It seems everyone wants their pound of flesh.’

  ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What do you want, Ross Grant?’

  Ross hoisted the swag on a shoulder. ‘To be left alone,’ he said.

  Part Three

  1929

  Chapter 43

  Central Australia

  Not much pushed Ross onwards other than rage. He and Nugget travelled west and south. Paddled up rivers, walked rangy hills and skirted the Tanami Desert. Eight years had passed, and in that time he’d sunk bores on the Barkly, trapped wild horses and constructed so many fences in the south that he hazarded Australia was now cut in half. Miles and miles of boundary lines constructed for big-hatted men with lofty ideals such as those he’d once dreamed. With each post that split the earth, with each swing of the mallet, Ross killed off a little more of his life, hammering the past into the ground. When he stopped and thought of the broken world left behind, he’d step over the pile of cut poles waiting to be bedded and move on.

  He considered returning to Waybell, to the place of lost women, but hard labour became so ingrained in the hours that stretched out between dawn and the evening star that Ross now doubted he’d ever feel whole without the thrust of exhaustion and the uncertainty of what lay ahead. He sensed defeat in the prospect of going back and he speculated that life was better alone, that it would get better and, if not, he could exist with what he had.

  At last he was an explorer. Of lands already settled and tamed, of his own ability to survive. He rode with Afghan cameleers, led pack mules loaded with mail to red-crusted stations that treated him like a dignitary and went far enough south for white dots to reveal the sheep of his younger years.

  Ross had arrived at the Mount Wells Tin Mine nearly a year ago. He’d taken a dogleg west to avoid Pine Creek, and the mine was simply in his path when he came back from the south. The Chinese miners weren’t partial to his arrival. They may have been working for a company, however, with their kind having laid claim to the site some forty years earlier they’d dug, died and gone mad chasing the vein that dipped deep under the valley, and they weren’t inclined towards any outsiders entering their domain.

  There were few white men labouring there. Conditions were rough and the fever claimed many. Ross remained because the desire to move had been beaten out of him for a while. And when he considered leaving, there was really no fixed place he could think of to go.

  Unused to the business of keeping his thoughts hidden and his fists by his side, the first few months were painful and difficult. What struck him the most were the people. There were too many of them, living in tents and small timber structures. It was like entering a city, where some streets were safe and others not, but it was their city, where they wielded pickaxes by day and chatted at night, carried lumps of rock from the bowels of the earth and scooped up rice with their fingers. There was little choice for Ross: either he got along with these men or got out. So, he got along with them and by the time of his leaving, just prior to the wet, and ten pounds lighter in
weight, Ross had a higher regard for them than on arrival.

  Don Hart was a teamster, whose job was to haul supplies to and from the site. The boy, sixteen years of age, and thin and scraggly like a yard of pump water, nearly ran Ross over with a dray the first time they met. The second time, the boy bashed one of the workers over the head when he came across Ross and the man rolling around in the dirt.

  ‘What was that about?’ Hart asked, as the attacker ran away.

  ‘A book,’ Ross panted, wiping the blood from his chin. He held up the last of Alastair’s novels. ‘It’s called The Twelve Labours of Hercules,’ he explained.

  ‘Don’t look like there’s much reading left in it,’ the boy commented. ‘And you don’t look like you’d be much of a reader.’

  The book was dog-eared and missing a whole wedge of pages. ‘It’s the only thing I’ve got left.’ Ross stuffed the book inside his shirt.

  ‘Well then, you’d better hang on to it,’ the boy replied.

  Ross thought on those kindly words. Hart spoke as if he understood what it was to lose something dear.

  The boy was a curiosity. He had the eyes of an old man and was friendly to all, although he was no skilled driver. If there was a wheel to be broken, Hart’s navigation managed to find every rock and stump. Ross suggested the boy leave before Ping, the Chinese overseer, killed him and fed him to the pigs for the damage he’d caused. There were a few graves but not the number to match the deaths he’d heard about and fresh pork fetched a good price. Ross guessed it was natural that he and the teenager would leave together. Hart was like an old boot with a busted sole that you kept on mending. It would have been easier to buy another pair but somehow Ross couldn’t afford to throw the old shoes away.