A Waltz for Matilda (52 page)

The car braked silently almost at her feet. The driver looked out.

It was Tommy.

Her breath seemed to leave her.

He looked the same. He might just have bicycled up from town, instead of driving in the shiny car.

He should look older, she thought. Where is his grey hair? We are both so much older now.

And then she realised: he was only thirty-six. It was she who felt old at thirty-three, so much of her life spent as an adult instead of a child, bearing the responsibilities of others.

She forced herself to walk toward the car. No, he wasn’t quite the same. His face looked stronger, quieter, somehow more himself. The scar had faded, though it still pulled slightly at his mouth. But the smile was the same, the smile for her, another smile for the young girl who sat by his side.

Half her life had passed since she had last seen this man, but somehow she could feel the friendship was still there, the trust between them.

Where was his wife?

I don’t care, she thought. I will be friends with his wife too. But I won’t lose a friend again now.

The girl put her head out the window. She was about ten years old, red curls spilling out under her hat. ‘Is that Matilda? Really truly? The girl in the song?’

Tommy nodded at the girl. ‘That’s Matilda. Really truly. Say hello politely now.’

The girl scrambled out of the car, blue boots under a practical blue skirt. She curtseyed neatly, then beamed up at Matilda. This is a girl who is used to being loved, thought Matilda wistfully.

‘Good afternoon, Miss O’Halloran,’ she said, then added quickly, ‘We learned the song about your father at school. But I was the only one who knew about you!’

‘How did you know it was about me?’

‘Dad told me, of course. We stayed at the hotel in town last night. They know all about you too. I asked.’

Tommy was out of the car now. He looked at Matilda warily. ‘Matilda, this is Anna. My daughter.’

‘I’m glad to meet you, Anna.’

‘I’m glad to meet you too! I can play “Waltzing Matilda” on the piano, you know. With both hands!’

‘Can you really?’

‘Ahem.’ The chauffeur cleared his throat politely. ‘Shall I unload the luggage, sir?’

The girl looked at Matilda hopefully. ‘Can we stay? Dad wasn’t sure. Please? He said you have horses and dogs and lots of sheep, and I’ll see kangaroos.’

Her heart seemed to have stopped. She nodded in a daze to the chauffeur. ‘Please, take the suitcases inside. No, don’t go round the back.’ She smiled slightly. ‘Everyone uses the front door here.’

The chauffeur looked shocked. This was worse, it seemed, than riding in the back seat. He pulled open the hatch and carried up the first two cases, his back stiff with disapproval.

She looked at Tommy over Anna’s head. ‘There is a piano inside if you’d like to play it. It’s the first room on the right. Your father and I can hear it out here.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ She was gone in a flash of blue skirt and white petticoat, her boots stamping up the steps.

Matilda heard the clang as the piano was opened and the first bars of music. If she listened closely she could almost make out the tune.

‘She’s only been learning for a year,’ said Tommy apologetically.

Matilda smiled. ‘At least she’s enthusiastic.’

The girl began to sing.
‘Once a jolly swagman …’

‘I didn’t know you knew,’ she added quietly.

‘That the song was about your father? I guessed. It isn’t hard. The swaggie, three troopers, the squatter and a billabong. But they never mentioned you.’

‘No. The songs rarely mention the women.’

She started slowly toward the verandah, with him beside her. ‘Where’s her mother?’

‘She died,’ he said gently. ‘Anna’s brother too. Diphtheria. They both died a year ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She found that she meant it: sorrow for his loss; sorrow for what Anna must have felt; and sorrow for the pain that she herself had known as well.

‘I am too. We had been married over a year when I heard about James.’ He added, ‘Mary was … gentle.’

She smiled. ‘Not like me.’

‘No. Not like you.’

She led the way up onto the verandah. ‘I saw your photo in the paper, years ago. You both looked happy. I wanted to write to you, tell you I was glad for you, but I didn’t have your address.’

‘Matilda, I’m sorry. Sorry to vanish. Sorry I couldn’t fight for you or accept you as you were. I was hurt and I was angry. I thought you had married James, and by the time I knew you hadn’t …’ He hesitated. ‘I can’t say I am sorry I married Mary. I’m not. I wouldn’t have married her if you were still in my life. But it was a good marriage, and a loving one.’

‘I’m glad.’ She was glad that she meant that too. She sat in one of the verandah chairs.

He sat in the one next to her. ‘I remember these chairs.’

‘The ones my father made. I brought them from Moura when I came here.’

‘I went to Moura first. They said at the hotel that you own Drinkwater now, but I didn’t know you had moved here.’

‘You were looking for me?’

‘I was looking for you.’

She nodded at the car. ‘Did you make that?’

He laughed, leaning back. ‘No. I made my money in radios. The ones the poor blighters are using in the trenches now, in fact.’

‘So you’re rich?’

‘I’m rich. I gather so are you.’

‘Yes.’

He looked at her, seriously again. The piano pounded from inside, though the girl had stopped singing. Matilda wondered if the tune she was playing was still ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

‘Why have you come now?’

‘I thought you might need help. I keep in touch with some of my old mates from here. I know it’s hard on most farms now. So many men gone to the army.’

‘Just as you always came to help me before?’

He flushed. ‘Not that you always needed it. And I couldn’t for a while. It wouldn’t have been fair to Mary.’

‘But now you can?’

‘Now I can.’

He had waited a year out of respect for the woman who had been his wife. She found that she was glad of that too. This was the Tommy she had known: the bone-deep integrity. Tommy who was true to his friends, and true to his wife, as well.

She sat back, staring at her acres, almost empty of sheep. Saplings were growing again, olive heads taller than the grass.

‘No, I don’t need help. Not that sort of help, anyway.’ She met his eyes. He was still Tommy. The one person in all the world, she thought, who will always tell me the whole truth, even if it hurt. Why had she never realised that friendship was the deepest kind of love? ‘But I would still like you to stay.’

‘For how long?’ His voice was cautious.

She smiled, knowing this time that she had to say it for him. ‘Forever, if you want to.’ Tommy would never tell her she was beautiful. Never say sweet words that might come from a novel.

‘You never danced with me,’ she said suddenly. ‘Never. Not even once.’

‘I don’t dance.’ He met her eyes. ‘You didn’t understand, back then. I never asked you because I didn’t dare.’

He lifted his scarred hand. The scar had faded like the one on his face, though the fingers were still slightly twisted.

‘So you left?’

‘Tommy Thompson couldn’t compete with a James Drinkwater.’

‘Matilda O’Halloran couldn’t compete with electric generators in a city.’

He stared at her. ‘Electric generators are portable, you know. There is nothing I can do in the city I can’t do here, with a bit of money to lubricate things.’

It was like the first shaft of sunlight gleaming along the river. Suddenly she saw what marriage might be like: not two people sharing one life, managing a farm together, but two lives, linked by love and trust.

He was still looking at her. ‘Matilda, would you really have chosen me instead if I’d stayed?’

She looked at her hands, then back at him. She would tell the truth too. The whole truth, just as she always had. ‘I don’t know. You never gave me a chance to find out.’

He hesitated. She could see he was choosing his words with care. ‘Maybe if you’d chosen me, we mightn’t have been happy. Not then. I had to be your protector in those days. I was Mary’s protector too.’

‘And I’ve never been someone to be shut up in a cage, even a loving one?’ She smiled. ‘But things are different for Mr T. Thompson, inventor and businessman? I kept your photo,’ she added. ‘It was the only thing I had of you. Except the car, of
course … do you know it still runs? Well, almost. And the stock troughs and — and everything really.’

She stood up, then held out her hand to him. ‘Will you dance with me now?’

He looked startled. ‘“Waltzing Matilda”?’

‘Exactly that,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘I may not dance, but I know that tune isn’t a waltz.’

She laughed. ‘I don’t think you can tell the difference when Anna plays it.’

‘True.’ He took her hand in his, then put his other hand on her waist, looking into her eyes. ‘Darling Matilda. I’ve been driving the last twenty miles trying to talk to Anna and all the while thinking: what if she sends me packing? Should I have brought you flowers, a basket of fruit?’

‘Just you will do. And Anna.’

‘That’s what I hoped. Will you waltz with me, Matilda?’

She felt like soaring with the cockatoos over her acres, yelling happiness to the world. But a waltz would do to start with.

Inside the girl began to sing the song again. Suddenly it was as though other voices joined her, the whisper of the river, the laughter of the wind. Matilda wondered what Anna would think about a cave and a wall of hands upon a rock.

Matilda put her other hand onto Tommy’s shoulder. He felt as warm as the hills, and as solid. ‘Let’s waltz.’

A Waltz for Matilda
is fiction, put together from historical facts. There was a swagman and a billabong. I have known women like Matilda, her Aunt Ann and Auntie Love: the women who helped create our history but are so often forgotten by it. The drought, the strikes, the campaigns for federation and new laws were much as I have described them here. Most of all the land and its lore are based on the land that is my home. Like Matilda, I have watched it and loved it, seen its changes and been part of its endless generosity.

In one respect, though, I have departed from historical record. The episode that inspired the song ‘Waltzing Matilda’ happened in Queensland. While I have carefully not mentioned where this book is set, it isn’t Queensland. This book is a love song to a nation, but also to a land. The land in this book is the one I know.

This is why I have deliberately not specified which ‘city’ Matilda travels from. It could be one of many. Nor have I given the exact date of the referendum that led to Federation, as they
took place at different times in different states. This is a book about a nation, not one state.

‘Waltzing Matilda’ is Australia’s national song — though not its national anthem — but few Australians know that it commemorates a real event: the death of a shearer who was suspected of burning down a shearing shed in the shearers’ strike of the 1890s.

‘Waltzing Matilda’ was written by Banjo Paterson, a poet who helped make the bush and the outback seem romantic to people in the city.

Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson, CBE (1864–1941) grew up on his family’s property beyond Yass, New South Wales (his nickname ‘Banjo’ came from one of his father’s favourite horses). Although he was born on a farm and loved the bush and wrote about it, he mostly lived in the city, working as a solicitor. His first book of ballads,
The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses,
was published in 1895 and became a smash-hit.

In 1895 Paterson also went to stay with the Macpherson family on their property, Dagworth Station, just over sixty miles north-west of the town of Winton in Queensland. He and Bob Macpherson rode around the station and Paterson heard the story of how the Macphersons’ shearing shed had just been burned — and how a swagman-shearer who was believed to have been part of the disturbance, ‘Frenchy’ Hoffmeister, had been found dead at a nearby camp.

Inspired, Paterson wrote the words of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Christina Macpherson provided the music, based on a tune she’d heard at the Warrnambool country races (probably the old
Scottish tune ‘Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigie-Lea’). Soon everyone in the Winton district was singing the song and, not long after, most of Australia was too. But as with the women in this book, Christina Macpherson’s contribution to what became our national song has mostly been forgotten.

Soon there were several versions of the song being sung, long before the song was first published in 1903. That first printed version is slightly different from the song I learnt as a child, and both versions have been included in this book to acknowledge the many versions that were around, even by 1910.

‘Waltzing Matilda’ came to symbolise the ways the new nation of Australia thought of itself: courageous, contemptuous of authority and with our hearts in the bush. The fact that most Australians lived in cities and towns, even back in those days, and preferred safe jobs to wandering the bush, didn’t matter then and doesn’t seem to now.

I have always loved the song, but for many years have wondered at parts of it. How could the swaggie grab a jumbuck and force it into his tucker bag? I was once a sheep farmer, and remember vividly being dragged on my stomach along a road by a stroppy ram as I gripped onto its leg. Trust me: it is very hard to catch a ram, unless you have it pinned in a yard. Sheep have four legs to pull away from you, and can easily overbalance a human with only two.

But a poddy — a sheep that has been orphaned and brought up by humans — is easily caught, in fact can be hard to get away from.

And what of the squatter and the troopers? The history of the time suggests they must have
planned
to arrest the swaggie — distances were large, and it’s an enormous coincidence that so many troopers just happened by that billabong.

Where did the poddy come from? Perhaps they had planted the sheep, to tempt the man into grabbing it. Who was the squatter? And how did the world know what happened, there at that billabong, over a hundred years ago? Did one of the troopers tell the story in guilt and shame? I suspect that Banjo Paterson wrote about a frame-up — and that he and his listeners back then knew it. Nowadays the real significance of the song has been partly lost.