A Changing Land (31 page)

Catherine Jamieson was not a woman Maggie Macken conversed with. Indeed, on prior occasions when she could feign not having seen her approach, Maggie would fiddle with the contents of her handbag and cross the main street in the village of Tongue in order to avoid the older spinster. Today, however, no such escape seemed possible for as Maggie stepped from the curb, Mrs Jamieson followed. Maggie caught the woman's reflection in the window of the grocery store and saw the determined swing of her arms when she doubled back to the telephone booth. Attempting to give an air of an errand just remembered, Maggie scrambled in her purse for coins as she ducked in the pillar-box red door of the booth and dialled her sister in St Andrews. Maggie could usually rely on a string of complaints to issue forth from Faith with the subject, her sister's bank-teller husband, centring on ungratefulness. She listened as the telephone rang out and then stopped altogether. Damn. Unused coins fell into the change box. A sharp tap of knuckles sounded on the glass behind her.
Maggie wondered how obvious it would be if she chose to ignore her stalker and try another of her ever unhelpful sisters. Instead she took a deep breath and opened the door.

‘Why, Maggie Macken. I do believe you went out of your way to avoid me,' accused Mrs Jamieson with a wave of her finger. The woman had gone grey prematurely and Maggie patted her own brown hair as a lock of grey fell onto Mrs Jamieson's brow. ‘Well?'

Maggie pursed her lips and surveyed her antagonist with one unblinking stare – from the beige of the woman's sturdy walking shoes and paisley dress, to a face ruined by loneliness.

‘So you sent young Jim over for Sarah's money, I hear?'

Maggie began walking along the pavement in the direction of her car. She'd parked it next to the tourist walk with a mind to visit the ruin on the hill once her errands were completed. The fortress remained Jim's favourite spot and was the place where he'd first met Sarah Gordon. Wouldn't she obliterate that day if given the chance, Maggie thought. She'd not been to the ruin herself for many a year. But now there was a need for her to return there, to revisit the very spot where two lives were altered; hers and Jim's. History had repeated itself, for Jim's life had been thrown into chaos through chance, and hers through poverty.

Behind her Mrs Jamieson puffed to keep pace. ‘The village is agog with the millions he could inherit,' she called out. ‘I bet you're very pleased with yourself. Having been jilted by Ronald Gordon you now manage to get your haggis and eat it as well.'

Maggie crossed over the narrow road, passed the white facade of the pub, and walked towards her car. Why the fates interceded to have Sarah Gordon bedded down for the duration of her stay at this woman's B&B over two years ago was beyond her. ‘Whatever are you talking about, Catherine Jamieson?' Maggie could feel her cheeks burning.

‘Revenge. You didn't get the Australian you stole from me.'

Maggie opened the rear door of her car to place her bag of groceries on the cracked upholstery. ‘You lost him yourself,' Maggie said with controlled slowness. ‘You with your airs, why I'm sure you chased him away.'

Mrs Jamieson grabbed Maggie by the arm. ‘Ronald Gordon never would have stayed. If you'd truly listened when he spoke of his homeland, you would know that. Besides, he was already married.'

Maggie winced under the older woman's grip. She shook herself free. ‘He didn't ask you to go back to his famous property either though, did he?'

Catherine Jamieson gave her such a withering look Maggie felt as if she suffered from the plague. ‘He asked, Maggie Macken. But I could no sooner leave here than he could leave his blue haze.'

This was news quite unexpected. Maggie attempted to breathe evenly, but concentrating her thoughts in that department only made her more breathless.

‘You should have stopped Jim from going. It's not right to steal from others.'

Maggie collected herself. She was an upstanding citizen in Tongue, well married with a son and, very soon most likely, the Mackens would be richer than all their neighbours. ‘Steal? It is certainly not stealing. Besides it's you who decided to tell what lay hidden for years.'

‘Because your boy hankered after young Sarah when she visited and you did nothing to dissuade him. If he'd been my boy I would have told him to stay away. It wasn't seemly the way you let them keep company. Especially when you made no bones about the company you'd kept.'

‘Were it not for you, my boy would not be over there,' Maggie countered. ‘None of this would be happening. After all it was you with your “holier than thou” attitude who told what never should have been spoken.' Maggie wondered once again at the logic of
hiding a nasty mistake with a lie, especially when women such as Catherine Jamieson were probably shrewd enough to guess the difference. Still Maggie persisted with her argument. ‘Besides, it's the grand father who has left the will.' She fiddled with the car keys in her hand. Catherine Jamieson was still staring her down. ‘It's family business now and naught to do with you.'

‘You shouldn't have done it. You didn't love Ronald.'

Maggie blinked. It was strange to think that this woman talking to her may once have been young, both in looks and spirit. Maggie cleared her throat, pressed her shoulders back a little. She reminded herself that she had nothing to prove to anyone, only her family to be considered. ‘Of course I loved him.'

The older woman looked at her, unconvinced, shuffled in her handbag for a tissue and pressed it against her nose. ‘More than your running? More than the running shoes your own poor mother heard you lament about daily? If I didn't know better, Maggie Macken, I'd say you were lying.' Mrs Jamieson turned smartly on her heels as if dismissing an unruly child.

Maggie watched Catherine Jamieson walk away. The town gossips said the woman had been jilted, or that her man had died; whether through accident or illness no one knew. What would those same gossips say if they ever discovered that the man in Catherine's heart was Ronald Gordon? That Catherine Jamieson never married because she loved a man she could not have? That type of love was something Maggie could not even begin to comprehend. No wonder the woman hated her.

Locking her car, Maggie walked towards the sign-posted trail. The locals had always been kind to her, believing her to be a young woman who'd been taken advantage of some twenty-eight years ago. This coupled with the fact that Maggie's pregnancy coincided with enough money to finally purchase a pair of running shoes only added to the glances of pity afforded to her by neighbours and townsfolk alike. Overnight she was transformed. Maggie Macken
was the promising local runner whose career was cut short by an unfortunate turn of events.

The track sloped downhill. Maggie slipped through wet grass and mud. In the distance, across the sea entrance, mountains rose enticingly. There was usually mist swirling about the peaks, while at the base the icy grip of the North Sea clutched at the rocky shoreline with each incoming wave. Maggie reached the bottom of the small valley and a pebble-strewn stream. She gasped as the cold water soaked immediately through her lace-ups and clucked her tongue at the stupidity of trying to negotiate an overgrown path in shoes meant for a morning's shopping. Scrambling over a wooden stile, she brushed rising flies from her face, hung her handbag over her shoulder and looked at the overgrown track leading uphill. Her feet were cold, her body hot and the sun was beginning to prickle her skin. She couldn't recall the distance to the ruin, nor whether the climb was a steep one. Maggie looked over her shoulder. Surely after all the years since she'd last climbed this track, hoping a young man followed, her memory wouldn't fail her. There were at least two further stiles to be crossed. And the track was a slippery one, but quite doable even when wearing questionable shoes. Maggie tucked her hair behind her ears, stamped her feet in the soft vegetation to increase her circulation, and walked on.

Hamish rode out towards a pinkish glare of heat and dust, refusing to look over his shoulder at the woman who had so wantonly provoked him. There was the tang of smoke in the dawn air, signalling bushfires to the south-east. Aborigines, he surmised, adjusting his arse in the saddle. He would need some of Lee's salve if he was to carry out his plan against Crawford. Age had made his backside sensitive to riding long distances. He turned his horse to the ridge and headed towards the creek, his gaze drawn every so often to the smoke hanging on the horizon. The Aborigines were adept at lighting fires to smoke out kangaroos, lizards and other campfire edibles. Hamish had observed the regeneration of trees and plants once these untended fires had burnt through the county, yet such fires on Wangallon were banned. In the heat of summer a conflagration could quickly ensue, destroying the valuable grasses so vital to his livestock's survival and Wangallon's prosperity. Of more concern was the danger to his beloved cattle and sheep. Hamish had been witness to the terrible sight of burnt sheep; the sweet
stench of lanolin and the horrific burns. He wished no such pain on any creature – friend or foe. Yet out east, as evidenced by the sting to his eyes this morning, there were no such constraints.

His mount picked his way past the ridge and stepped lightly across the paddock. As if aware of the coming heat, the horse moved quickly, sensing the opportunity for faster travel would be limited in only a matter of hours. In the tree line Hamish spotted smoke streaming into the sky. This, he knew by its position, was the black's camp. He scanned to the left and right of the smoke. Sure enough there it was, downstream of the camp, a second fire; his son's. Hamish touched his horse's flanks with the heels of his boots and they moved into a trot. He leant forward in the saddle, the movement of both horse and rider causing a breath of air to brush at his face. Soon they were racing towards the growing tree line, weaving between the great coolibah gums and brigalow trees dominating the approach to the creek. As the denseness of the woody plants increased, Hamish found himself forced to slow and he picked his way carefully across fallen timber and ground made uneven by previous floods and the burrowing of rabbits.

He found Luke by his campfire, squatting like a black in the dirt. Some feet away was a reasonably solid lean-to plastered with dry mud. Luke stood as he dismounted, pulled his hat low over his forehead even though the sun was yet to breach the creek. Hamish swatted at the morning flies, noting the empty mussel shells piled to one side of the fire. One of the blacks had brought him breakfast.

‘It would be helpful to tell someone of your whereabouts,' Hamish began, standing on the opposite side of the fire, his hands clasped behind his back.

Luke slurped at his freshly brewed tea, saying nothing. Hamish walked down to the edge of the creek.

‘I've decided to send Angus away to boarding school: The Kings School in Parramatta.' Hamish brushed at the flies. There was rain
coming for the air was humid. ‘I agreed with your grandmother for your sake,' Hamish began, recalling parts of the conversation he'd faintly overheard from the sanctity of his study. He wouldn't stand to have his plans ruined through petulance.

‘And how does being deprived of my inheritance benefit me?'

The brown water of the creek moved sluggishly onwards. Leaves and small twigs sailed past, caught on a deceptive current. ‘A shopkeeper's life is not something you would take to, lad.' Having a conversation with Luke had always been akin to having a tooth pulled.

Luke threw the remains of his tea in the fire. ‘Well that's something you have ensured I'll not know.' He picked tea leaves from his tongue, searched for his tobacco in the pockets of his trousers.

Hamish walked back towards him. ‘Look at you. You can't even spend a night inside Wangallon Homestead. Not for you the constraints of a ceiling and walls. I understand that, Luke, although occasionally it would not hurt you to sleep in your room, dine with me on a more regular basis. Wangallon is your home after all, and as a Gordon you have a name and position to do credit to.'

Luke was rolling tobacco in the palm of his hand. ‘It's never been my home. First it was yours. In the future it will belong to Angus. Surely I was entitled to something for myself.'

Fairness was not something Hamish had considered. ‘We're landowners. You have Wangallon.' The boy never loved Wangallon the way he should have. It was as if some strange process of osmosis occurred, transferring all the bitterness and melancholy of his mother into Luke's own veins so that it flowed unbridled through his body. Hamish watched as his eldest struck a match, lighting his cigarette. ‘It was your grandmother's decision.' Hamish was drawing tired of the subject. ‘The drive will have to be bought forward. I've business with the Crawfords that must be taken care of. Inform the men accordingly. Tonight you and I will be riding out for the big river. We leave at dusk so you best break camp and
move back to the homestead. We could be away for a number of nights so I'll leave the provisioning to you.'

Luke considered the man before him. He was tall, a bearish, barrel-chested man yet it was his imposing stare, a thousand yard stare, that made most men acquiesce to his demands. ‘I'll not be accompanying you, Father.'

‘This is not a subject for discussion, Luke,' Hamish answered sourly.

‘I agree,' Luke dragged on his cigarette, then poked the stub of it in the dirt. ‘It's not.'

‘The business with Crawford –'

‘Is your business. You seem to disregard my affairs so I'm reckoning it's time I repaid the favour.'

‘The cattle need to be moved at the end of the week. On the wan of the full moon.'

‘Look about you,' Luke countered. ‘There's been little rain, the grasses are drying, already the soil floats away on the breeze. To leave a month early could find the cattle starving on the route. We will be early for any rains further south.'

‘The steers must be out of this country by week's end otherwise a calamity will be upon us. Besides which, they are already being mustered up.'

‘So I'm figuring you have some plan of ill that makes you push this decision.'

‘They are my cattle and you work for me,' Hamish said angrily.

So there it was. One was expected to stay and work for the ongoing benefit of both the Gordons and Wangallon, even though he himself was considered no better than the other stockmen on the property. ‘Then I quit.' The words came out so suddenly that Luke was momentarily stunned by his own audacity. Both men glared at each other. Luke wondered only briefly at the repercussions of his statement. What did it matter? He'd decided not to return from this drive. He looked up at his father, at the man
that was like a foreign country to him. He admired him for what he'd accomplished during his life, however he never truly felt like his son, knew that he was unsure, still, if he even wanted to be Hamish Gordon's son for the man threw a long shadow and, so far, Luke had been unable to crawl free of it.

‘So be it,' Hamish finally responded. ‘I would never stand in the way of a man burdened by stupidity.' Hamish mounted his horse. ‘I don't expect to see you again.'