Absolution Creek (44 page)

‘Sure you are. You’re her niece. And you’re one of us, so you know how things work. One day she might leave you the place and then you’ll have the opportunity to put a few things right. You’ll be able to make the decisions that Harold reckons should have been made years ago. He’s a smart man, my uncle. Real handy to have on a property. Besides, a woman like you, you’ve got rights. Cora Hamilton, why she ain’t got so many. Personally, I don’t know how she’s got away with it for so long.’

Meg wondered what her aunt had got away with. Having the audacity to manage the property when she was a woman? Or was she mismanaging it? Certainly the state of disrepair to the homestead was an obvious issue. Then there were her aunt’s two days of bed rest resulting in immediate changes to her instructions. Obviously the men didn’t agree with how she was running things as Harold had promptly ordered extra sheets of corrugated iron and lengths of timber, and booked a truck to deliver the goods when they arrived. There was also a dozer coming to push scrub along the creek in the hopes of eradicating some of the pig-nesting areas. Apparently Cora was yet to be informed of these developments.

Jill and Penny were arguing. They had made it partially back to the homestead when they had discovered some sun-weathered bones, which were now the subject of a furious debate about what animal they belonged to. Meg glanced in the direction of the girls, her mind spinning. First Kendal was blaming Sam, then he was talking about her aunt not belonging – not being one of them. It was bizarre. ‘I have to go, Kendal.’

Kendal’s filthy hands smeared the crisp white paper as he rolled a cigarette. He gave her a wink as she left.

Chapter 33

J
ack wiped at the sweat on his brow and heaved one end of the timber onto his shoulder. Thomas strained at the opposite end. ‘They tell me it’s a privilege to take the heaviest end,’ Jack joked as his brother finally hefted the length of wood up and onto one shoulder. They slid the timber onto the stack already filling the dray and, tugging at the horse reins, began walking their load back to the new house site. It had been a fortnight since Olive and Thomas’s arrival, and with Jack worrying about his brother losing interest or altering the length of his stay, his first priority was to cut all the timber they required.

‘Is everything all right with you, Thomas?’ Jack gave the brown horse a whack on the rump to keep moving.

‘Sure.’

‘You’ve been a touch quiet. Olive too. You didn’t have a blue or something?’

‘Nope, of course not.’ Thomas made a show of dusting his trousers.

‘You’d tell me if something was up?’ Jack persevered. It took nearly three days to meet Olive’s eyes after what had occurred in the lean-to. Having never seen a near-naked woman before, Jack was at a loss as to what he should do. He knew what he wanted to do, but the wanting and the doing were two different things, and what he thought to be the good part was religiously aligned with marriage. At least that was what he’d been educated to believe. On the other hand there hadn’t been a great deal spoken about nakedness in church, which is why he watched Olive undress. ‘It’s just that Olive seems different.’

‘Does she?’ Thomas picked at a piece of bark on one of the lengths of timber. ‘Didn’t notice.’ He tried not to think about the day in the boarding house when Olive made him promise not to tell Jack what McCoy had done to her. ‘Guess women can be a bit like that – changeable.’

‘Changeable,’ Jack repeated. Maybe it was the bush, or the many months apart, or the simple fact that his girl was used to better things. Whatever the reason, Olive wasn’t Olive. She was skinnier for one thing, and quiet. So quiet that at times she seemed nothing like the girl who had kissed him so blatantly the day of his father’s accident. ‘Maybe she’s homesick.’ He thought of her body illuminated by the slush lamp.

‘Probably. I mean it’s a bit different for her. I don’t know if I would have come all this way for you, Jack.’ He batted his eyelids.

‘Very funny.’

‘You’ll have to take her into town again, you know. Give her some civilising.’

‘I don’t have time for trips away, Thomas. Anyway, she saw Stringybark Point when you met up with Adams. She knows there are other women about.’

‘Saw it!’ Thomas laughed. ‘She asked one of the shopkeepers where the main street was when we were standing in it.’

They approached the house site from an easterly direction. It was a pretty spot, with a thick line of trees on the western and southern approaches protecting it from the blazing summer sun and any nasty southerlies that might sneak their way in during winter. Having moved camp from the lean-to at Thomas’s suggestion, the building of the house was progressing nicely. A couple of hundred yards away from the site, Olive and Squib rounded the corner of the partially built house. Squib, dressed in a cut-down version of one of Olive’s dresses and a shady straw hat, carried two dead rabbits. They were arguing. The horse halted automatically at the pile of timber.

‘You caught them. You skin them.’ Olive brushed her skirt. ‘Jack, if you persist in eating this game instead of providing some decent sheep meat then let the girl prepare it. I’m afraid I wasn’t brought up to butcher animals.’

‘She should learn,’ Squib argued, dropping the rabbits in the dirt. ‘I’m not her slave, so if
she
wants to eat
she
has to do her fair share.’ Having finally thrown away the crutches a couple of days previously, she limped to a sandy spot on the ground and sat down.

‘Don’t talk to me like that, young lady.’

‘Are you going to let the girl stay here?’ Thomas asked Jack quietly as the argument raged.

Jack shrugged his shoulders. ‘Adams will send the letter to the newspaper when he nears a town, although I had to push him to do it. Seems he thinks Squib would be better off here. Anyway, I gave a description, explained her story. So we’ll see who shows.’

‘You might have her for life.’

‘Then I guess there’ll be another mouth to feed. Besides, a bit of company won’t do Olive any harm.’

Squib was sitting in the dirt with her back to the dropped rabbits. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ Thomas looked at the skinny-hipped girl with the shoulder-length hair and berry-brown skin. ‘You like her, don’t you?’ He’d seen Jack look at Squib sometimes. Not the way he did at Olive. Thomas couldn’t explain it. It was the same, but different. In the city he didn’t think that a man like Jack, not yet in his twenties, would take a second look at a girl like her, but it seemed to Thomas that out in the bush everything changed. Squib was smart and easy to look at and she knew things that made Thomas feel stupid, even though he was older. He realised then that plenty of men out here would probably like a girl like her. ‘Well, Jack?’

‘Yeah, I guess I do.’

Thomas hesitated. ‘Not more than Olive?’

‘Jack, will you
do
something,’ Olive yelled in frustration. ‘Either she goes or I go.’

‘No one’s going anywhere,’ Jack answered calmly. ‘Squib, show Olive how to skin the first rabbit, and then she can do the second under your instruction.’

‘But, Jack –’

‘No buts, Olive. We’re in the bush now, so you’ll have to learn how to live here. Actually, you should count yourself lucky that you have Squib to show you how to do things.’

Together Jack and Thomas began unloading the long trunks. They felt rather than heard Olive’s approach.

‘I would appreciate it, Jack, if you didn’t talk to me that way in front of that girl. Your expectations are –’

Jack dropped the log on the ground. ‘For heaven’s sake, Olive. This isn’t Sydney. Much as you’d obviously like to play ladies out here, in the bush there simply isn’t a place for it.’

Olive looked to Thomas for assistance.

‘Everyone’s equal out here, Olive,’ Jack continued, ‘so everyone chips in and helps. Okay?’

‘
Are
we equal, Jack?’ Olive countered. ‘Are you sure you’re not favouring her?’

Jack lifted another length of timber.

‘Look at me!’ she continued. ‘What were you thinking bringing me out here to this godforsaken place?’ Olive gestured around them. The landscape was dull with browns and beige. ‘And then to expect me to work like a slave and put up with a common street urchin in this dust-filled wonderland of yours. Absolution Creek is no place for a woman, Jack.’ Olive walked away.

Jack tipped his hat back and scratched his forehead. ‘I’ve never heard her speak like that before. That was something I’d expect her mother to say.’

‘Well, that went well.’ Thomas slid the last length of timber from the dray. ‘You know she never sees you. You’re gone from sun up to sun down.’

‘I’m trying to make something for us here. I just don’t get what Olive expects of me.’

Thomas thought of Olive’s upbringing, of what she’d left behind. It was funny, although he was younger than his brother, he too had grown up since their father’s passing and Jack’s leaving of Sydney. Suddenly he was the head of the small household he shared with his sister, and he was beginning to understand why there was a rift between Jack and Olive.

‘Jack –’ he spread his arms wide ‘– you have this. This is your dream. But Olive has given up her entire life for you.’

‘And you don’t think that I haven’t given up anything, Thomas? Do you know how hard it’s been living up here for months on end, alone. Trying to learn how to manage a property with a handful of textbooks, worrying that any day I could be bitten by a snake, or drowned in the creek or attacked by blacks. Worse, I could be a failure and have to return to Sydney. Then where would I be? What would I do? Absolution Creek is my chance at a future. Olive knew that and she agreed to follow me, to be my wife.’

‘Jack,’ Thomas argued, ‘this is an adventure for you. It’s not for her.’

Squib appeared, patiently offering a water bag so that both men could slake their thirst. Once finished, Jack reached out and ruffled her hair. ‘You’ll show her how to skin those rabbits, won’t you?’

‘I guess,’ Squib reluctantly agreed.

‘Thanks.’ Jack’s smile was broad.

Thomas wiped his chin, and watched as Squib walked away. ‘I think she’s a bit old for that.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’ Jack counted the logs piled in the three triangular heaps on the ground.

The three Aboriginal men came out of nowhere. ‘You boss?’

Thomas automatically reached for Jack’s rifle in the front of the dray, only to find his hand stilled by his brother.

‘In case your aim is better than your judgement,’ Jack said evenly before approaching their visitors. He was aware of Olive rushing to Thomas’s side in fright, her leather shoes crackling the leaf litter. They’d grown close on the trip north. Maybe, Jack considered, a little too close. When Thomas finally left, Olive would miss him.

The Aboriginal men squatted beneath the shade of a belah tree. They were dressed in white man’s clothes, with thick leather belts, carbine rifles and wide-brimmed hats. The spokesman of the group spat tobacco through a grey-black beard.

‘You boss?’

‘I am. Jack Manning.’ He too squatted in the dirt.

‘This house when the wet comes, whoosh.’ The man flattened his palm against the ground and scraped the dirt clean.