Out of Alice (17 page)

‘You've made good time,' she called. ‘Come in. How are you, Sara? And Becky, well, how nice to see you. I think Colin's round the back, Mr Ketch. He'll be here shortly, unless you want to take the vehicle round? You'll find him at the compound. It's where the cable is.'

‘Sounds like a plan.' Frank drove off and Sara crossed the ragged-­looking grass, smiling at her hostess. ‘You're looking well, Clemmy.'

‘I feel great.' Her lips made a comical little moue. ‘Right now, anyway. Might be a different story in a month or two. But come on up and have a seat. I've got cold lemonade, unless you'd rather have tea?'

‘Lemonade sounds perfect, and the more so because the storm just about wrecked our lemon tree. How was it here?'

‘Dreadful! It took the three of us a full day to clean up. We wound up sweeping the lawn.' She turned her head to the corner and yelled, startling her guests. ‘Nick, drink!'

An indistinct, ‘Coming,' answered her as she excused herself to fetch a covered jug, tinkling with ice, and a tray of glasses. The table wobbled a little as she set them down, and Sara saw that the floorboards were sunken and holed.

‘It's a dreadful old dump,' Clemmy said cheerfully. ‘It's the original station homestead and about forty years older, I believe, than anything in the district. But at least we're finally getting it painted.'

Painted by Nick, it seemed, for he appeared just then in a paint-spattered T-shirt and shorts, scrubbing at his hands with a much-stained cloth. He smiled at Sara. ‘Hello. I didn't expect to see you.'

‘Hello, Nick,' Sara said. ‘This is Becky. I thought you were building fences?'

Nick greeted the child. ‘Yeah, I was. Only a small one, though. Out back, round the vegie garden.'

‘What will be the vegie garden if it ever rains,' Clemmy corrected. ‘He's also helped re-roof the shed, and now he's painting the house, starting from the back. National park green, as you can see from his shirt.' She grinned. ‘Some of it makes it onto the walls.'

‘Not fair.' But he didn't seem to mind her teasing.

‘How's the photography coming?' she asked, accepting the chilled glass. She took a sip, and settled back into the wooden chair with a sigh. ‘Wonderful. Thanks, Clemmy.'

Nick beamed at her. ‘Yeah, great! I got some beauties of the dust storm rolling in behind the mill. And some moonscapes. I went out one night when the moon was full – you coulda read a newspaper by it it was that bright – and there were these horses. Brumbies, Colin said. Man, it was lovely. He's great, Colin! He's got an SLR too and some terrific slides. He's got his own darkroom! I never expected to find that out here.'

Sara was amused by his enthusiasm. ‘So all your wages will be going on developing costs?'

‘Pretty much,' Clemmy agreed. ‘But go on, Nick – don't be shy. Tell her about winning the competition.'

‘With one of your snaps? Congratulations. That's wonderful, Nick! What was the shot?' Sara asked.

He blushed and mumbled, ‘Oh, just a themed thing – they do that sometimes. I guess it makes it easier to judge, if all the entrants have to, you know, shoot on one subject. I won a hundred bucks anyway. And they published it.' Despite his embarrassment, the fact obviously pleased him.

‘Well done!' Sara said sincerely. ‘And what was the winning pic?'

Nick ducked his head to Clemmy's peal of laughter. ‘It was you, Sara! For a contest entitled
The Girl of My Dreams
. Maybe you ought to think about modelling as a career – the camera obviously likes you.'

It was Sara's turn to blush. Nick, scarlet cheeked, said hurriedly, ‘Of course, I never thought such a – I mean, well, it had to be a pic of a girl, didn't it, with a title like that? And you
are
very pretty,' he finished miserably. ‘You aren't mad at me, are you?' he asked, eyes on his paint-splattered sneakers.

‘I think you've paid me a great compliment,' Sara said, frowning at Clemmy's gleeful face. ‘But I'm sure winning was more about your talent than my looks. Did you hear about old Harry?'

‘Yes.' Clemmy nodded. ‘The new chap said something about him hurting his hand?'

Sara grimaced. ‘He was changing a tyre and the jack slipped. It was an awful mess. Len took him into town and brought Pearly out. Becky went in too.'

‘Yeah, and guess what, Mrs Marshall? Sam's coming home soon.' Becky stuck her tongue into the glass trying to capture the ice. ‘He's as skinny as a stick.'

‘But at least he's getting better,' Clemmy said. ‘That's really good news.' She reached for the jug. ‘Here come the men.'

‘I'd better get back to it.' Nick crunched ice and set his glass down on the tray. ‘Nice seeing you again and – and thanks for being nice about it, Miss, er, Sara.'

‘I'm glad you won, Nick.' Then Colin was there, nodding to her, black beard like a defensive hedge through which his grey eyes peered. Frank accepted a glass and drank it off with gusty appreciation.

‘That sure hit the spot, thanks. We'd better get going. Helen'll worry if we don't beat the dark home.'

‘I'll give her a ring, tell her you've left,' Clemmy offered. Colin had moved to stand beside her, and Sara, turning to wave goodbye from the lawn, saw how her body leant towards his until they touched. He'd placed a protective hand on her shoulder, his dark beard brushing her blonde head. Seeing them like that gave Sara a momentary pang, making her wonder if she would ever feel that degree of closeness to another person.

It took most of the following week to get the bore equipped. A truck came out to deliver the stock tank and trough at the site, both of which had to be assembled once the pump-jack and diesel motor had been installed. Tanks, Sara learned, needed a mound ring before they could be bolted together, a process that seemed insane to her.

‘Won't it leak?'

‘No. There're rubber strips between the panels and you coat the join with a sealant,' Frank explained. ‘It'll hold. Just takes time, that's all. Then there's the pipes to the trough, and the trough itself'll need cementing in. We'll get there, just not tomorrow.'

The men camped out on the job and came home late Friday, to report the bore now equipped and working. They would start shifting stock across on Saturday, which would be another slow undertaking. The cattle were too weak to bustle and would walk better in the cool of the night. So they would leave late in the day, muster them as they came off the water and walk them as far as they could travel before pulling up. They would rest and feed them on the scrub already knocked down, then complete the trip – hopefully before the full heat of the following day struck.

‘That's the plan, anyway.' Len left the table to make his nightly call to Beth and Sam, and Frank wandered off to watch the news. Once the last plate was dried Helen joined him, while Sara chose a cane chair on the verandah where it was cooler and she could lie back and watch the stars. Becky was working on another scrapbook page. Tomorrow Sara would have to get her motivated again to finish Sam's map in time for his return. She gathered her hair off her neck and sighed with relief as the breeze touched her sweaty skin.

‘Hot?' Jack dropped into the chair beside her, his profile dimly outlined in the light leaking from the inner room.

‘When isn't it?' Sara sighed. ‘Nice out here, though. I'm getting to like the stars.'

‘They tend to keep things in proportion,' Jack agreed, glancing up. Dark stubble covered his jaw. He looked tired, she thought, but it was brutal work wrestling metal under the full power of the desert sun. Like Len's, Jack's shirt was stiff with dried sweat. ‘Makes you realise how insignificant we really are. At the end of the day, what's it all matter?'

Sara frowned. ‘But it has to, doesn't it? Life would be pointless otherwise.'

‘Maybe it's only humans that think it has to have a point.'

‘I'd like to believe it does. It's not like you to be pessimistic, Jack. What's up?' Sara enquired.

‘Ah, I dunno. Fed up, I suppose. Don't mind me. It's been a long few days and the drought . . . Jesus.' He ran a hand over his face, rasping the bristles. ‘This country makes you pay to the last ounce of sweat. I guess we all need our heads read or we wouldn't be out here. What about you? How's the memory coming?'

‘In bits and pieces.' She didn't want to talk about the flashback she had experienced during the dust storm. ‘Something else, though. I had another letter back today, from the registrar in Melbourne, and they've never heard of me either. Just like the Adelaide one. I'm beginning to wonder if Stella ever registered my birth.'

He turned his head, eyes in shadow, but she could feel his gaze ‘That might've been possible once but now, what, twenty-odd years back? It seems unlikely.'

‘Twenty-seven,' Sara corrected, ‘but thank you, sir.' She shrugged. ‘I still have a few states to go but I don't know . . . There was
some
sort of document. I saw her with it when I was married. She was supposed to give it to me then, but she never did.'

Jack grunted softly. ‘There's an obvious answer, not that it will help much. Would she have changed your name, and hers? Perhaps your father wasn't called Blake?'

‘I suppose it's possible, but why?'

‘Any number of reasons. Maybe he didn't die but left her. Maybe he, I dunno, robbed a bank or something, and she did it to protect you?'

‘Ha! Chance would be a fine thing,' Sara snorted. ‘Stella never thought of anyone but herself.'

‘Maybe she was protecting herself then, but a kid with a different name would be a dead giveaway.'

‘If that's the case, I'm never going to know.' Sara said, discouraged. ‘If the other letters draw a blank too, it's a better than even bet that you're right.'

‘There is another possibility,' Jack said slowly. ‘This car crash you remember —'

‘The one I
don't
remember, you mean,' she said. ‘But yes, what of it?'

‘Well, what if, apart from causing your amnesia, your brother died in it and your father, say, was driving? If that happened and your parents split up over it – and God knows the guilt he'd have to feel would be terrible – mightn't that warrant a name change? I mean, something like that's bound to end up in court and in the media.'

‘I suppose it's possible,' Sara admitted. ‘But it just doesn't sound like Stella. For one thing she'd have to have cared about us – and she didn't. Not me, anyway. And if she
did
love Ben, well, why didn't I ever hear about it? Believe me, Jack, if there'd been a stick like that to beat me with she'd have used it.'

He fell silent and she let her breath out in a soft sigh, turning her head to study his profile. ‘Enough about my problems. What's really wrong?'

He gave what might have been a wry laugh. ‘You know me so well already, eh? After what, a month?'

‘A bit over two.' Alarm touched her, making her heart thump. ‘There's not – is it something about Sam? They aren't stopping his treatment, are they?' That, she knew, was shorthand for sending incurable patients home to die.

‘No – no, of course not. Does Len act like that's the case? It's nothing. Well, only Marilyn. My wife,' he qualified. ‘I had a letter from her solicitor. She wants a divorce.'

‘I see,' Sara said slowly. ‘Then you still love her?'

‘No. What we had, it's long over. In fact, I dunno why I care, only I see Beth and Len together, and with all their troubles they're happy. And even after forty years of struggle Mum and Dad still love each other. But I couldn't . . . ' He sighed. ‘It just makes things a bit clearer than you like, that's all.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘That you've failed,' he said roughly. ‘That instead of the wife and family you thought you'd have by now, you're still living out of a swag with no one to come home to. It's a lonely life out here when you're on your own. It's one of the reasons there're so many grog artists in the bush.'

‘It's grief, Jack. I felt the same when I left Roger, only I carried a bucket of guilt for it too. We grieve for all sorts of things other than death, you know. I think it's healthy, something you have to do before you can move on. Yes, it's failure of a kind, but we all make mistakes. Don't you see? If you
didn't
feel anything now, it would make a complete sham of your marriage. Even if you were only briefly happy, you have to care that it's over.'

‘Obviously you did,' he said to the stars beyond the roof edge.

‘Oh, yes, desperately. Because it was all my fault. I married Roger not for love but because I needed him. I married him from pure self-interest to have somebody, anybody really, of my own. That's the truth of it. He was my emotional life raft. I didn't care what his needs were, he was just there to fulfil mine. When I finally realised, I walked away and it broke his heart. It was a wicked thing to do. He was such a boy! Such an open-hearted, decent person. You know that saying, as honest as the day? That was Roger, not a mean bone in his body. He really loved me, you see, but I couldn't love him back. I was too selfish for that.'

‘He didn't know about your past, then?'

‘No more than I could help,' Sara admitted. ‘He met Stella once, at the registry office. I always made excuses for not taking him home. She was working, we didn't do family dinners, we didn't get on. It was my fault he didn't know how screwed up I was.'

‘He didn't want to know,' Jack corrected. ‘I was the same. Looking back I ask myself why I couldn't see what was so plain to Beth and Mum. Even Len tried to tell me Marilyn wasn't the type to settle in the bush, but would I listen? Like hell! I truly believed I was the luckiest man alive. It was only when I learned she'd married me to get me to sell up that the blinkers came off.'

Sara laughed a little sadly. ‘Love blinds, they say. Well, the poets tell us so. Maybe we should protect ourselves by reading more poetry?'

Jack levered himself up and yawned, arms doubled, stance wide against the stars. ‘Maybe I should go to bed. It's not a chance I'm likely to get tomorrow night. Goodnight, Sara, and thanks. It was good to talk to you.'

‘Goodnight, Jack. Sleep well.'

Sara waited till the echo of his boots had faded, then sought her own bed, to spend a night broken by restless dreams of Roger that morphed into a search through an impenetrable garden. It was bounded by a high wall, over which thorny brambles spread. There was no way out and its growth made progress in any direction all but impossible. She woke warm and unrested in the grey light, at the rooster's first crow, to find that the fan had stopped moving because the station's electricity had failed.

In the kitchen Helen was philosophical. ‘Lighting plants break down,' she said. ‘First things first: don't, on
any
account, open the freezer. The washing will have to wait and Becky won't have her on-air lesson. I'll ask Len what we can do about lights. Maybe there's an old pressure lamp somewhere, or candles.'

‘But Jack will have it fixed before tonight, won't he?' Sara asked.

‘That depends on the problem.' Helen tipped chops into the pan. ‘If it's a matter of parts, maybe not. Frank's filling the canvas cooler with drinking water, and we can shift a table onto the verandah for meals. You can phone the school, explain about Becky's lesson.'

‘Yes.' Sara, having put out the cutlery, moved automatically towards the fridge for butter, milk and jam, just stopping herself before she touched the door. ‘What can I do to help now?'

‘The eggs should be ready. Maybe you could drain them?' Helen suggested. ‘I've boiled all we had. They'll do for lunches. Then you could have a look in the linen chest. I'm sure I saw a length of flannel among Beth's sewing material. It'll do to make a cooler for the butter. Come midday the inside of that fridge will be hotter than the kitchen.'

‘Okay.' With the eggs seen to, Sara was halfway to the door when she halted. ‘I've just thought, what about Len? Won't he need Jack to go with the cattle?'

Filling the teapot, Helen paused to nod. ‘The best laid plans . . . Let's see what the problem is first. Oh, God, there's the milk too.'

Sara glimpsed Jack and Becky coming through the garden gate with the milk as Helen spoke. ‘I'd forgotten that. Well, if it goes sour I suppose the chooks will just have to benefit.'

Breakfast was a hasty meal, the men eager to get into the engine shed and the two women to finish up in the kitchen. Early as it was, with the sun's rays just laying long fingers of shadow across the lawn – already grown through its involuntary top-dressing – the air was quite warm. Sara fiddled with the louvres in the window above the sink, dismayed to think what midday would be like. It had been hot from the day she arrived but the constantly turning fans in the house had taken the edge off it. Without them the place would be an oven.

By smoko, taken at a table on the front verandah, the worst was known. The problem, Jack explained, lay with the generator not the diesel. It needed a new part, which a phone call to the Alice had ascertained would have to be ordered. Their best estimate for getting it in was two days if they could locate it in Adelaide and longer if they had to send to Melbourne for it. In the meantime he would have to strip the genny back and check over the rest of it to find out if the solar array had been affected.

‘Might've blown the lot,' he warned. ‘Something shorts out, everything can go.'

Len looked glum. ‘How long's that gonna take?'

‘Might be done by tomorrow.' He hesitated. ‘Thing is, I do it now, and save time, or when the part gets here. Either way it's got to be checked. You reckon you and Dad can handle the stock job without me?'

‘Looks like we'll have to. ‘Is there much in the freezer, Helen?'

‘It's a little over half full. It should hold a couple of days if it's not opened. No longer, though.'

‘Right.' He wiped sweat from his face. ‘We'll have to forget the vehicle then and use the bikes. Means we can't carry much, unless . . .' His gaze dwelled on his mother-in-law. ‘I don't suppose you could come out with us?'

‘No,' she said firmly. ‘It's not fair to leave Sara to manage here without power. And I'm not at all sure, Len, that I want Frank out in the heat on a bike. Certainly not without a back-up vehicle. Can't you borrow somebody from Wintergreen to give you a hand?'

He frowned. ‘There's nobody but Bungy. Besides —'

‘I can drive,' Sara said.

All four of them looked at her and she coloured self-­consciously. ‘Of course I don't know anything about cows, but if you just want a driver, and someone to boil the billy, then I'm your man – girl – woman,' she finished.

Jack said, ‘What's your car, an automatic?'

Sara put up her chin. ‘It's a manual. I
can
change gears, you know.'

Len's frown had vanished. ‘And you wouldn't mind? Then thanks, Sara. It would truly be a big help.'

Becky, who had been listening, fixed the table's occupants with a challenging stare. ‘If Sara's going, then I am too.'

‘Well.' Len looked to Helen. ‘What do you think?'