A Waltz for Matilda (19 page)

She had never had so much — not just the things, but the feeling that there were people around who had loved her father, and who were there for her too.

And then she saw the Heenans’ cow.

It wandered up between the cliffs, its head down, as though it had no hope of greenery in this world of heat, seemingly unrelated to the barefoot boy who walked behind it with a stick.

Suddenly the cow lifted its head. It stared around at the shadowed grass, then took a few swift paces forward and bent to eat, crunching each inch of the blades at its feet.

The boy kept walking till he was on the verandah. ‘Present from Ma,’ he said. He turned to go again.

‘Wait!’ Matilda ran down the steps. ‘You can’t give me your cow! Don’t you need the milk?’

Billy looked at her scornfully. ‘She ain’t in milk. Not till her calf is born. We ain’t got the grass for her, down our way.’

‘Maybe she could … could visit here. You can have her back when it rains.’

‘Ain’t never gunna rain again. Not proper like. I want ter go to the city. Ma says there’s water comes outta taps there.’ He spoke as though it was an almost unbelievable wonder.

‘But it’s better here —’ She stopped. What was right for her mightn’t be right for him. Besides, he was no longer listening, just loping back down the track.

The cow didn’t even look up as he left.

Matilda paused again to nibble her pencil. Auntie Love was funny about the spring. She made Matilda sweep the sheep and cow dung and wallaby droppings away from the pool every evening with the big straw broom, and she wouldn’t let Matilda
dip the bucket in either, making her flick the water out into the bucket with her hand instead.

It took much longer to fill a bucket that way, but Matilda didn’t dare disobey, not when the old woman stared from the verandah.

She had got upset too when Mr Doo first started to dig the channel from the spring: she squatted in the shade of a tree and glared at the brothers as they worked. By the second day she seemed to accept the pool wasn’t being hurt.

Sometimes Matilda wondered if Auntie Love realised that Matilda owned the farm. She had tried to explain the land was hers now, but Auntie had just nodded, as though it didn’t matter at all.

Matilda put the pencil down. She’d have to sharpen it with a knife before she used it again.

Should she have mentioned eating goanna to Tommy? Maybe he’d think she had gone bonkers. She’d never have eaten goanna
even a few months ago. But once you had learned that potatolike things sat under what looked like dead bare ground, once you had picked tiny native cherries from shaggy, dry-looking trees, or the little dark fruit on the wiry bushes at the edges of the gullies that Auntie didn’t give a name to, once you’d seen how live sheep got turned into chops and legs of lamb or mutton and chutney sandwiches, you sort of forgot that ‘real’ food was bought from the corner shop.

There were other things she’d have liked to tell Tommy too. How she’d tried to make a rice pudding using Aunt Ann’s recipe with the rice Patricia had brought and how she and Auntie Love had tried a spoonful each then laughed, as though sweet, not-quite-cooked rice was the funniest thing they’d ever eaten.

How Mr Doo showed her how to use the hen droppings and the manure sweepings from the spring to scatter on the vegetables — she’d
never
have eaten a vegetable back in the city if she’d known what they were grown with.

But how could she explain to Tommy the peace of sitting on the verandah in the dusk with a woman who rarely spoke, twisting at grasses to make the striped containers that now held everything from their daily damper to her sewing?

It was so different from her life before, even more different from the life she had dreamed of with her father, the one with a white farm house and pink pigs.

Grief for Mum and Aunt Ann sometimes stabbed like a knife. The sadness for what she’d never have with her father was always there. But she was happy — free in a way she had never been before. Auntie Love might make whooshing gestures at her till she swept the pool each dusk, but she didn’t expect her to get up at the same time every morning; she didn’t even tell her when to go to bed or what to cook for dinner.

Matilda looked down at herself and grinned. What would Tommy think of a girl who wore her father’s trousers, tied up above the knee to make them shorter, and her father’s shirt and hat? It was impossible to collect wood and weed the vegetables in a skirt … well, not impossible, she supposed, as other women seemed to do it. But Auntie Love hadn’t even looked surprised when Matilda came out one morning dressed in the trousers.

She folded another piece of paper up to make an envelope, and sealed it with flour and water paste. She’d give it and a penny to Mr Sampson next Sunday, and he could give it to one of the men to take to town to post.

The letters to Tommy were the only things she had spent money on, except a reel of cotton from Ahmed the peddler who took his wagon from house to house every year. The cow was giving milk now, and Auntie Love had showed her how to milk it — her left hand still wasn’t strong enough to do it herself. Auntie Love showed her how to let the cream rise and whip it to make butter too.

One of the hens had gone broody soon after it arrived. Now there were five tiny yellow chickens running out in the chookyard. The other hen gave an egg almost every day. With the free vegetables and fruit from Mr Doo, and the meat and flour and sugar from Mr Sampson, they had more to eat than they needed.

Even the fences were made without nails: they just cut a square out for the next bit of wood to fit into.

She walked outside, and sat on a chair on the verandah, next to the sleeping Auntie Love. It was too hot to weed yet. She looked down the track toward the break in the cliffs.

It would be nice if someone suddenly came to visit them … Mr Doo and Patricia, maybe, or Mr Gotobed, or even Mrs
Ellsmore, who had been so kind. But Mrs Ellsmore might be shocked at the unpainted, wood-shingled house, and anyway she suspected that Mrs Ellsmore and Florence had already gone back to town, and that the boys had gone back to their boarding school.

She was glad the boys had gone. Perhaps there would be no more shooting parties now. Despite what Gotobed had said about wild blacks she didn’t think they could be so dangerous, not if Auntie Love had lived with them.

She drew in a deep breath. All right, she was a little bit bored. But she was proud too. The new garden, the fruit trees brought carefully wrapped in old newspaper, and already showing new shoots. She even had a sheep.

Matilda looked over at Mrs Dawkins, then ran over to the railing. ‘Auntie! Auntie! Look!’

Auntie Love opened her eyes. Matilda heard the old woman chuckle as she ran down the steps, Hey You at her heels.

Mrs Dawkins stood munching at a tussock. Two small white heads nudged their noses beneath her, wriggling their tails in the air. ‘She’s had lambs!’

Soft and snowy, the first things she had ever seen out here that were exactly like her book. ‘Real lambs!’

Hey You barked, then dropped onto his stomach, as though checking that the lambs weren’t about to invade the house and his territory.

Auntie laughed again, sharing the joy or amused at Matilda’s enthusiasm. Matilda danced back up the steps. ‘We should do something to celebrate! Make pikelets … except we don’t have any jam left.’

Auntie Love pushed herself to her feet. They were still bare — Matilda had offered her Mum’s other pair of shoes, but though
Auntie Love had taken them, she had never worn them. Matilda had found Hey You chewing one beneath Auntie’s chair. It had hurt seeing Mum’s shoe in bits, but she hadn’t taken it from the dog. She had given the shoes to Auntie Love, after all. And besides, the one shoe left was no good to anyone.

Now Auntie limped inside, and took a bucket from its hook on the wall and a long-handled wooden spoon. She gestured to Matilda to help her down the steps. She used a stick when she got around by herself now, but when she walked with Matilda she expected to have a shoulder as a crutch.

Matilda put an arm around her. The old woman was as thin and light as before, seemingly existing on tea and damper. Even on their ‘fresh meat’ days she waved away the offer of chops or mutton roast from above the fire.

Down the steps, one at a time, so Auntie could favour her good leg, then up behind the house, following Auntie’s gestures.

‘Baa!’ Matilda glanced round as Mrs Dawkins decided to join them, her twin lambs trotting at her side.

Auntie stopped, which meant Matilda stopped too. ‘What’s wrong?’

The old woman shook her head. She put a hand behind her ears, then touched her eyes. ‘You want me to listen? Look?’

Auntie nodded.

Matilda shrugged. There was nothing to hear, except the wind, high up above the ridges, a low moan like someone was crying in the sky. Nothing to see … or rather a lot to see: the cliffs, the gum trees waving up on top, an eagle trying to balance on the wind. But somehow she didn’t think Auntie meant any of those.

Then she saw it — a flicker past her nose. And then another. And another …

Bees.

She glanced up to see Auntie look at her with approval, before sliding down to sit on the ground. She flapped her hand in the direction the bees were going.

Matilda looked at her incredulously. ‘You want me to follow the bees?’