Bella's Run (13 page)

‘She’d have no better mate than you, Aunty Maggie. Did you give her your famous camp-oven rabbito for tea?’

‘How could I do that when my favourite nephew wasn’t there to shoot, skin and de-bone it?’ Maggie’s voice was teasing and accusatorial at the same time. How did she manage to do that? She made him feel like a naughty school boy caught out by the Catholic Brothers all over again.

‘I’m sure you would have managed it. My guess is the lady poetry judge wouldn’t have managed watching you do it, though?’

Maggie grinned then affected rounded vowels. ‘Yars, I really could not stomach any bush cuisine tonight, thank you, Margaret. Surely you have some smoked salmon and basil pesto? Oh, and a little sour cream with some sun dried tomarrr-toes on top would be simply scrumptious.’

Will laughed. ‘That bad, is she?’

‘Yes, that bad.’

‘So what did you feed her?’

Maggie giggled, eyes crinkling in the corners. ‘I served up baked bean and cheese jaffles straight from the fire and she loved it. Asked me for the recipe and where she could buy one of those “contraptions” to cook them in.’

‘You really can pick them, Aunty.’

Maggie looked sad. ‘Yes, I know, love. My Hughie, God bless his soul, always said I was a dreadful judge of character. But she sounded okay on the phone. A bit up herself, but she seemed to know her stuff.’

‘You still miss Uncle Hughie, don’t you?’ said Will, a gentle but concerned note in his voice. ‘Even after twenty years.’

Maggie nodded and blinked hard before turning her attention to Wes and the fire. The silence floating around them stretched out. Will adored his spirited and fiercely independent aunt but he barely remembered her husband Hugh.

A vague image came to him of a large but stooped man sitting near the honey-coloured stone fireplace at the homestead at Tindarra, cleaning his pipe. As a boy Will had been fascinated by the brightly coloured, fluffy pipe cleaners the old bloke used to poke and prod at the tobacco encrusted in the pipe’s stem. Hughie had a knack of turning those pipe cleaners into twisted wire animals, in varying shades of blue, green and red, delighting the child at his knee. Will was sure he still had one at home somewhere, probably tucked away in an obsolete corner of the kitchen dresser. It was a shame the couple hadn’t been able to have kids.

Maggie still ran Hughie’s place down the road from his own, and Will understood why she had stayed in the valley after her husband died despite having no children to raise and keep her company. Tindarra had a tendril-like spirit that twined itself through your body and buried runners deep within the very marrow of your bones.

For Will, the valley, which wove a pattern into the landscape with its golden pastures, lush river flats and soaring hills of grey-blue trees, lifted his soul into the very heart of the rugged mountains and held him hostage with a yearning to be there.

On his trip up north with Macca he hadn’t been gone three weeks before he found himself desperately longing for home; yearning to feel the sweet rush of mountain air hitting his face as he stepped outside at sunrise, hungering for the deep-scented tangy smells of the bush that were normally only a breath away.

The loud crack of a tree limb falling onto glowing coals and Maggie’s soft voice murmuring at his shoulder brought his thoughts back to the Nunkeri Plains. The smell and feel of Tindarra receded from Will’s mind, leaving a sense of loss in their wake.

‘Yes, I still miss Hugh. Especially on nights like this. Hughie used to love the Stockmen’s Muster. He used to say, there was nowhere else you could find such a mix of generations – grandparents, parents, teenagers and kids – having so much fun. There’s something here for everyone.’ She frowned. ‘This was one of the few places he could come and really enjoy himself with his mates, after he came back from that damned war. These mountains were his saviour, you know.’ Maggie sounded wistful rather than angry. She looked over at old Wes as a roar of laughter came from the other side of the fire. ‘Wes misses Catherine too.’

They both stopped and looked across at the diminutive man, standing with his back to them, his body reflected in the fire’s light. Will could just make out the red baling twine trailing from the belt loops holding up Wes’s ‘best’ work trousers, a stained and torn pair of khaki drill pants that had seen better days.

When Wesley’s wife Catherine had been alive the Ogilvies had lived on their big station at Ben Bullen Hills, two hours by sealed road from Tindarra via Burrindal. Then Catherine had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It had been too far from help on that Ben Bullen mountaintop for an old woman battling for her life, so the couple had moved down to Tindarra, buying a disused school block with its small miner’s cottage in dire need of a spruce-up. Across the rough mountain bush tracks, it only took Wes about an hour to travel to Ben Bullen Hills from the Tindarra Valley, every second day.

‘Yeah, his place looks so sad and rundown now, since Catherine died,’ said Will quietly. ‘Remember how happy she was when you painted the old verandah yellow? I didn’t know they made paint that bright.’

Maggie chuckled and Will could see her eyes twinkling with the memory of her old and dearest friend. ‘Yes, I remember. I got the bloke in Narree to mix it specially. She wanted the same colour as the daffodils you and Wes planted under the old crab-apple trees. Said it would brighten her days whether it was summer, winter or when she was just plain sick and tired.’ Maggie’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. ‘I’m glad they came to us at Tindarra, Will. It was a good compromise. They would have been so alone up at Ben Bullen Hills, and Tindarra was closer to the doctor.’

‘Yeah. I have to say I really enjoy having another bloke in the valley too, someone to yarn with and crack a beer. I’ve learned a lot from old Wes, he’s a real man of the bush.’

Maggie nodded and shrugged her chequered shirt in closer to her body, swiping at her eyes surreptitiously with the rough edge. Will pretended he didn’t see, choosing to look towards the fire instead.

‘Well, William, I’ll be going. I was just taking myself off to bed. Needed to use the loos but they’re closed. I had to squat next to a log instead. Far too much information for a young bloke like you, I know.’ Maggie was grinning again now. ‘I heard Wes as I was on the way back to camp. Just wanted to come over and check he was okay.’

Will had once wondered if Aunty Maggie and old Wes would ever get their shit together and marry each other. They spent so much time arguing over this and that during their daily cuppa ritual, they were practically hitched already. Perhaps they still felt married to their late partners.

Maggie was talking, but Will only caught the end of it.

‘. . . I have to look after my neighbours, you know,’ she finished.

‘What about me? I’m your neighbour too.’

‘I reckon you’re capable of doing that yourself. And if you aren’t, I’m sure a certain niece of mine might be able to help you out.’ It was Maggie’s turn for a stir.

Will could feel heat suffusing his face.

Maggie went on, oblivious. ‘That’s if she’s here, of course. I forgot to ask Frank and Francine if Bella was home yet. She’s with Patty, isn’t she?’ She stopped. ‘Why, William, I do believe you’re blushing.’ Maggie smiled, a smug look patterned on her sweetheart face, her grey bun of hair flopping sideways as she leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Goodnight, William. You take care.’ She waggled her fingers and strode off, a cuddly bear decked out in a lady’s chequered bush coat.

Will shook his head. What had he told her when he came home from up north that gave that one away? How much did Maggie
know
? No, he corrected himself. How much had Maggie
guessed
?

Will took a look at his watch. It was a good hour since Macca had gone to find the beer tent and get some more rum. Suddenly a bloke he didn’t know appeared at his side.

‘Where’s your can, mate? Your drinking hand’s empty.’

‘A mate’s gone to get me one, but I don’t know where he’s bloody well disappeared to.’

‘Here, have this one on me.’ The bloke raised a matching black can in salute. ‘Here’s cheers, mate, the next round’s on you.’ He wandered off to the other side of the fire before Will could thank him.

Will could hear snatches of conversation about some girlie drinking match going on in a tent somewhere. Patty would have enjoyed that, he thought with a rueful grin. He wondered again when she and her mate were due home from Queensland. He’d really hoped they’d be here but he hadn’t seen Patty’s ute around. It stood out like a neon light – bright fire-engine red with the ‘Pat Me Tuffet’ bug deflector sitting in pride of place on the bonnet; the bullbar, back window and tailgate plastered with stickers from every B&S around.

Thinking of Patty brought that other girl to mind. Isabella Francine Vermaelon, Auntie Maggie’s niece from the verdant irrigated, dairy country in the valleys of Narree. She was the reason he slammed down the bonnet on the old girl with her buggered water pump and climbed into Macca’s ute, the reason why he hadn’t been able to think straight since coming home from up north.

Yep, if those girls were here, Will was sure he’d know about it. He wouldn’t have been able to stay away from Bella even if he tried.

Chapter 13

Bella and Patty slammed a high five, as a nasal and slightly high-pitched voice came from the centre of the watching crowd. ‘Let’s throw a bit of water around and get some mud happening here. Always love seeing anything with good tits have a wrestle. Roll on, girls, let it rip. Where’s the water, guys?’ Eddie Murray was panting with desire.

He’d seen the write-up on the Nunkeri Muster in a city newspaper during the week. Ever since, his nights had been filled with wet dreams straight from
Penthouse
; mobs of curvaceous country girls spilling creamy bosoms, romping with him in piles of hay. And by God he was getting his money’s worth. No hay but plenty of bosoms.

A merchant banker by day and connoisseur of anything sinful at night, Eddie was on the hunt for sex. During the week he’d visited R.M. Williams and kitted himself out in what the sales lady assured him was the
right
gear. Preening himself in front of the dressing-room mirror, he’d reckoned he cut a fine figure in his bush clobber. His black Italian Fiorelli suit lay scrunched on the dressing-room floor and the soft leather moccasins, which had minutes before been wrapped around his knobbly feet, had been kicked into a corner while their country cousins took centre stage. He admired the way the two-inch Cuban heels on the tooled cowboy boots made his stocky legs look much longer.

The five-hour drive up from Melbourne to this arse end of the world had been worth it. The show was even better than he’d imagined. He
so
wanted to bury his head in those heaving knockers being thrown around on the ground. The redhead wasn’t bad, but the blonde was hot.

He jumped up to try to see over the broad set of shoulders, emblazoned with the word ‘Wrangler’, moving across in front of his eyes.

Still on the ground, Bella could feel the sudden hostility rolling through the air. The crowd parted like Moses cleaving the Red Sea and the man who’d spoken now stood on his own, grinning, trying to catch the eye of one of the blokes he called ‘guys’ – blokes who thought a ‘guy’ was a pansy, a poofter, someone who batted for the other side.

Bella rolled off Patty and moved to her feet in one fluid movement, then stuck out a hand to haul her mate up beside her. She didn’t recognise the bloke who’d spoken, clearly visible now that Macca had moved out of the way. In his brand-new moleskins that still wore the creases of their packaging, he stood apart from the well-worn, rumpled-looking people around him. She took in the new R.M.’s and the pristine hat that needed a good dousing of sweat, dirt, blood and grease. He stood out like a cheap neon sign blinking, ‘Can I be a country boy too?’

And man, was he short! He must’ve had the moleskins custom made, or they were three-quarter pants faking it long.

Eddie Murray had always prided himself on his quick mind and innate ability to read a situation before an actual event occurred. It was what had made him a very wealthy man, a mover and shaker in the finance industry. When he noticed the hum of conversation from the crowd had gone silent he looked around and realised he was standing alone. With belated clarity Eddie knew he’d read
this
situation wrong. What he’d been watching was in fact country
fun
, not erotic bawdiness.

He’d buggered up big-time here, and some of the guys were
fucking huge.
Particularly the bloke who’d moved out to face him.

He shrunk back into his new clothes, making his fivefoot-five frame look even smaller, and set his mind to self-preservation; namely, finding a fast-track way to the exit in one piece. Before he could even begin to formulate a plan, the silence erupted into jeers.

Macca planted himself in front of the girls, shoulders hunched over in his cobalt-blue work shirt, farmer’s fists clenched. The veins in his hands stood out like knotted cords looking for something close by to throttle. With his feet planted firmly hip-width apart and his face a boiling red, Macca resembled a protective bull set to charge.