Absolution Creek (47 page)

‘Where’s that husband of yours?’ Cora shouted, her voice high-pitched.

‘Here,’ Sam replied tersely, appearing from the direction of the shed.

Excellent, Meg thought, backing away from their hostile tones.

Cora strode towards Sam. ‘Do you mind telling me what you think you’re doing allowing the purchasing of all that blasted material for the wool and haysheds?’

‘Hey, don’t yell at me, why don’t you query your precious manager?’

‘I would,’ Cora’s words were almost too controlled, ‘however, thanks to you he’s out for the count.’

‘Well, that’s not my fault. You want to do all of us a favour and get rid of Kendal. He’s just a troublemaker and you know it.’ Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away.

‘I’m talking to you.’

Sam turned immediately, his face inches from Cora’s. ‘Firstly, I’m not an employee, I’m your niece’s husband, and secondly, I don’t blame Harold for trying to fix things up around here. You’re tighter than a fish’s arsehole with money. Jeez, even your own house is falling down.’ Sam spread his arms wide, encompassing the land about him. ‘Quite frankly, Harold’s ideas are just plain common sense. You fell on your feet when you were left this place, Cora, so why don’t you look after it?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ Sam said firmly, ‘really. So do us all a favour and stop being so pig-headed.’

Having retreated to the laundry with the twins, Meg was relieved when there was a momentary pause in the row. Her aunt and husband were like the two old bulls she saw occasionally through the kitchen window, grudgingly meeting at the water trough but spending the rest of the day in separate corners of the paddock. Meg was starting to wonder if Absolution was big enough for both of them. In the distance there was a low rumble. She automatically looked heavenward. A few minutes later a low loader with a dozer on the back roared past the house and out through the house paddock gate in the direction of the creek.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Cora yelled as she half-ran back towards the utility. ‘I’m going to kill you men.’ The ignition spluttered and died. ‘Damn it all!’

‘Well, kill James Campbell first,’ Sam yelled back. ‘I don’t appreciate my wife being subjected to that oversexed vet of yours. Anyone would think he lives here too, he’s around here that much.’

Sam walked inside. Meg followed him, shuffling the twins into the sunroom on her way past and meeting Sam on his return from the bedroom with three rum bottles under his arm.

In the kitchen he opened the bottles and proceeded to pour the contents down the sink. Tossing the now empty bottles aside he accidently knocked the radio to the floor, smashing it. ‘Damn.’ He waggled a finger at her. ‘You’re my wife and I expect you to stay that way. I may not be the best husband, but you’ve not always been the supportive partner. You stay away from Campbell or I’ll clock him one, and then we’ll have to leave and go back and live with your bloody mother.’

Meg knew her mouth was open but try as she might she couldn’t seem to shut it. On his way out of the kitchen Sam grabbed Meg, pushed her against the cupboard and pressed his lips on hers. ‘And . . . and don’t forget it,’ he finished, striding from the room.

Arms dangling by her side, Meg was brought back to reality by a movement outside the kitchen window. Horse was pulling furiously against a tree, the lead wedged firmly between two branches. ‘Oh shit!’ she exclaimed.

Chapter 35

T
he Mankell homestead had an air of disuse hanging over it. A hallway leading from the missing front door divided the two living rooms and led to a walkway and large kitchen. Jack swiped at dust-thickened cobwebs. Raw tongue-and-groove pine walls and matching timber floorboards were a feature of the two large rooms, which stood opposite each other across the hall. A mirror image of one another, with a long row of broken or missing casement windows and a picture rail, their most impressive feature was matching ceilings of pressed metal.

Jack stared at the closely interlocked pattern of flowery embossed steel and gave a low whistle. ‘Well, will you look at that.’ In the middle of each ceiling was a circular decorative piece nearly twenty-four inches in diameter. The cornices and skirting sheets were of a Grecian design. ‘We’ve come up in the world. No shoddy timber ceilings in these rooms.’

‘It would look better painted white.’ Olive rubbed the door knob and oblong plate. ‘Brass,’ she explained, looking up to find Jack, Thomas and Squib all staring at her. ‘Well, embossed ceilings are meant to be painted not left raw like these.’

Two plain table lamps with fitted burners, partially burnt wicks and long glass chimneys were lying behind the door. ‘Good as new.’ Thomas held the lamps aloft. ‘Not even a crack.’

Jack nodded. ‘Looks like we’ll have to invest in some benzine for special occasions.’

The dusty hall extended into a walkway and a large kitchen. Squib inspected overturned crates and the heavy wooden table.

‘What happened to the floor?’ Olive scuffed at the hardened dirt. ‘Surely people don’t live like this.’ She squealed when a family of tiny field mice scampered from beneath a crumpled hessian bag on the dirt floor.

Squib folded the hessian bag, oblivious to a lizard clinging onto the woven material. ‘It’s tamped dirt, silly.’

Olive frowned, looking confused.

‘This place must be pretty old.’ Thomas prodded at a crumbling wall. ‘This looks like grass.’ He picked out a few tufts of straw. Dried dirt crumbled in his fingers. ‘It’s mud brick.’

Jack checked the fireplace. The brick innards looked usable and the flue in good condition. ‘It’s pretty modern, really.’

‘We had a hole in one kitchen wall in our cottage and we’d drag logs in through it for the fire,’ Squib explained. ‘Sure will be a lot of wood carrying here.’

‘Well, I think it’s positively archaic,’ Olive said snootily, wondering how she would cope cooking in such a basic kitchen. The most involvement she had ever had with meals was discussing menus on the rarest of occasions with her mother. Now she’d been relegated to skinning rabbits. At the thought of her parents, Olive’s eyes moistened.

Another covered walkway led a good twenty yards from the large kitchen to a square building ringed by an open veranda. Squib stepped carefully around missing and broken boards to investigate. There were four rooms, two on either side, with doors and a single broken shuttered window all opening out onto the veranda. A fifth room had been an obvious add-on to the opposite end of the building.

Jack fixed his elbow against the door and gave it a firm shove. ‘A bathroom and fully functional at that.’ A water pipe led from a bucket on the floor to a shower head. A hand pump positioned halfway up gave a creak of resistance under his hand.

Squib poked a finger in the plug hole of a white porcelain pedestal hand basin, wondering how Jack would ever fit into the galvanised hip bath.

‘So how is the water heated?’ Olive asked, noticing the hand basin didn’t appear to be connected to any pipes.

Squib stifled a giggle. Wait until she notices the lavatory, she thought with amusement. The small building of corrugated iron was a good sixty yards from the rear of the house.

They wandered back out. Parts of the bark roof were missing in the bedrooms, although a square of material, perhaps once a makeshift ceiling, hung from a corner of one of the rooms. Inside there was a broken wooden rocker and a large brass bed with three legs propped up against the wall. ‘Main bedroom,’ Jack guessed.

‘Fixable?’ Thomas asked.

Jack shook the bed, and dropped it down in a haze of dust and cobwebs. He pressed the springs. ‘Couple of candle crates for support and she’ll be good as new.’ He looked at Olive and smiled.

‘But we don’t know who’s slept in it,’ she complained.

‘Probably just as well,’ Thomas decided.

Next door a sapling had taken root, pressing its young body out through the window. ‘Can I have this room?’ Squib knelt on the dirt floor and began digging in a circle around the tree to form a trough. Jack squatted beside her, his hand measuring the circumference of the woody plant.

‘By its size it looks as if it’s been here for five or so years,’ Jack surmised. ‘Not that I’m an expert. See how it’s growing towards the light.’ Squib followed his hand as he drew an imaginary line towards the sunlight. The sapling was skewed sideways as if someone had given it a gigantic push in the direction of the open window. ‘This bit of a depression here –’ he scraped dirt from the cracked skirting board ‘– gave the tree a watering when it rained.’

‘And it’s still growing.’ Squib plucked at a leaf, resting a hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘It survived.’

‘Well, it found a home,’ Olive said rather impatiently.

‘Can this be my room, Jack, and can I keep the tree?’

Jack looked down at the crooked tree and the lost girl standing beside it. He could feel Olive’s eyes boring into the back of his head. ‘Sure you can.’

‘No expense spared here,’ Thomas joked as they walked back through the house to the hallway. In the adjoining room a pigeon flew through a broken window, the damaged ceiling revealing blue sky and wispy cloud.

Squib was humming. ‘Only a few floorboards need to be replaced here, Jack.’

‘Looks like they ran out of money.’ Jack examined the rotting boards. ‘Half the roof shingle, half bark; timber floorboards here and tamped dirt elsewhere. And a kitchen in the middle of the house. They didn’t give much thought to the chance of a fire.’

Squib gave three loud sneezes, rubbing her nose clean with the back of her hand.

‘It was a soldier settler’s block,’ Jack explained. ‘I suppose they couldn’t make a go of it.’

‘Or didn’t want to.’ Olive sniffed, sneezed and sniffed again. ‘Still, they made some improvements. The rest we’ll have to make do with, I suppose, until we can get the materials to spruce the place up a little.’

‘Money permitting,’ Jack warned. ‘I don’t want anyone getting too excited. The roof’s our priority.’

‘They must’ve planted the avenue of trees facing the west.’ Thomas tapped at a loose wall board. ‘That was a good idea. Well, time to unload the dray. If you sweep out your bedroom, Olive, we’ll get your room set up first.’

Olive gave a grateful smile.

Squib let Thomas walk ahead, dawdling behind in the hallway, certain Olive would complain immediately. Squib knew Olive didn’t want her to stay.

‘It’s not forever, Olive.’

‘Then why did you say she could have that bedroom, keep the tree?’

‘The tree will take care of itself. Come winter the wind will blast in and Squib will chop down the thing herself.’

‘And the room?’

‘What am I supposed to do? Make her sleep outside? Hope she runs away? She’d end up in an orphanage.’

‘Firstly, she’s not a child. She’s a young woman. And don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, Jack Manning. Secondly, she’s of an age where she could find gainful employment as a maid.’

Squib tip-toed along the hallway and flattened her back against a dusty wall.

Jack gave an indulgent sigh and took Olive’s hands. ‘Stop making everything so difficult.’

‘Do you know how long it’s been since you’ve held me, talked to me, Jack? It’s like I don’t exist out here. I feel like another task to be attended to at the end of your day.’ It was the first time she’d cried in front of him since her arrival from Sydney. It had crept up on her gradually, this feeling of her life not being her own anymore. McCoy had ruined her both physically and emotionally, and now Jack’s disinterest and the harshness of her new home ate at her daily.

Jack stroked Olive’s tear-stained face, and took her by the shoulders. ‘Once this place is tidied up a bit you won’t know yourself. Everything will be much better. And once we’re married –’

Squib cleared her throat and stepped into the kitchen. ‘Jack, Thomas needs a hand.’

Olive’s unblinking stare quite unnerved Squib, however she stood her ground as Jack left. ‘You can help me get some firewood, Olive.’ The older woman didn’t move. ‘Bush men expect their women to be a bit capable,’ Squib reminded her, ‘and you and I both know you’ve got some work to do.’