Journey to the Stone Country (12 page)

‘I’d better clean these fish,’ he said. ‘Before I get into trouble.’

‘I’ll finish the floor.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m going to have to buy some things before Monday. I’m not sure what I’ll need. Will I need a swag?’

‘Susan’s got everything,’ he said. ‘She’s gonna lend you a swag.’

She said, ‘So you already talked to Susan?’

‘She reckoned you’d probably go. She’s all set to put you on the payroll if you want.’

Annabelle laughed. ‘You two seem to know my mind better than I do.’

‘Well,’ he said, his manner a touch more serious. ‘Susan’s happy having you around. She was pretty down on things till you come up. She said not to say nothing to you, but I know she needs a partner in the business and you coming up here like this has got her hopes up. It’s getting too much for her on her own.’ He shrugged, ‘It won’t hurt to tell you, she’s wishing you’ll decide not to go back to that husband of yours.’

Annabelle looked away out the window. ‘Why aren’t you a partner in the business?’ she asked.

‘I’m representing my clan group on these surveys,’ he said. ‘The other clan groups wouldn’t deal with Susan if she had me on the payroll. They’d reckon she was just looking out for my mob. There’s politics stitched up in all of this. Susan lets it irritate her. But if she just settled back she’d see this is the way it’s always been up here between the clans. Everyone’s looking out for his own mob. No one’s never going to change that. She may as well ride with it.’

A white cat came and stood in the open kitchen door and gazed at them.

Bo said, ‘I’ll have something for you in a minute there, Mister White.’ He spoke as if he and the cat had already discussed the matter of titbits from the fish.

The cat meowed and arched its back against the doorframe, as if it heard its familiar name.

‘How do you know its name?’ Annabelle said. She went over and bent down and scratched the cat behind the ears.

‘These cats all got their names,’ Bo said, his manner playfully mysterious. He stood sharpening one of her mother’s kitchen knives on the steel, looking down at Annabelle and the cat. ‘I think he’s decided to adopt you,’ he said. ‘He must like the smell of Pine-O-Cleen.’

After lunch they went out onto the back verandah and sat in her parents’ old cane chairs overlooking the wildgrown garden. Bo smoked a cigarette. The cat came out with them and rubbed himself against the legs of their chairs then jumped off the verandah and disappeared into the garden.

Bo said lazily, ‘Look out birds, here comes Mister White.’

They sat there not speaking in the warm afternoon shade of the verandah, gazing out at the undergrowth below the coconuts and the mango trees where Mister White had disappeared. The captive cockatoo screeching next door, freight trains hooting to each other in the South Townsville yards.

Bo said, ‘Your people picked out a good spot here.’

‘It could easily feel like home,’ Annabelle said. They fell silent again. After a while she asked, ‘How old was your grandmother when she went to live at Ranna?’

Bo eased himself, the fibres of his chair creaking. He gestured over towards the southwest. ‘Grandma’s people come from that Suttor country where your folks had their run.’ He swivelled around and looked at her. ‘They ever tell you that?’

‘No,’ she said, and wondered if he would believe her. But it was true. What went on between her parents and the local Murri people was never spoken of in the house. Their relations had remained a mystery to her throughout her childhood.

‘Her mob used to camp out there at that redcliff by the chain of waterholes. She used to tell us them Rennies come over there and took her and her sister May down to Ranna when she was eight years old. They had her helping in the laundry at first. Then when she got a bit of age on her they promoted her up to the house to take care of them three girls. And their brother George, too, when he was about the place and not away buying bulls and bloodhorses or looking for new country out west. They was never still, them fellers. There was your granddad, George Bigges and my granddad, Iain Rennie. Them three was young men together and good friends. Rivals too. They liked to travel and visit each other. They thought nothing of riding down to Brisbane and back just to see a horse.’ Bo relit the stump of his cigarette, pursing his lips to get the last drag out of it, the fibres of his chair straining.

The cockatoo screeched and the trains hooted and every now and then a vehicle went by along Zamia Street.

Annabelle said nothing. It was the first time anyone had spoken to her about these things. She felt the touch of her own unexplored past in the facts of Bo’s history. The waterhole by the redcliff where she and he had tumbled in the Suttor together as babies, his grandmother and her own mother sitting in the shade of the cliff on the bank looking on, telling each other their thoughts and caring for the children together. There was so much of her own past that she did not know. So much that was no more than a shadow for her. How had her own mother and Grandma Rennie been friends enough to share a picnic, and yet their friendship never been spoken of at Haddon Hill?

Bo flicked the dead butt of his cigarette into the undergrowth and took out his packet of Drum. ‘By the time she was fifteen Grandma was one of them. And easily the prettiest. I seen her photo. She was wearing a becoming gown, with pearls at her throat. May, her sister, was jealous of her getting promoted up to being one of them and never got over resenting it. Iain Rennie was supposed to be courting the eldest Bigges girl, Katherine. But she was stern-faced like all them Bigges women and Iain Rennie’s glance soon slid over onto Grandma.’ He waved his hand at the house. ‘There used to be a photograph hung over the stove in the kitchen at Verbena when I was a kid. Them three Bigges girls and Grandma taking tea on the verandah at the Ranna homestead, May wearing a pinafore, standing holding a tray in the shadow of the doorway behind them. I can just imagine what May was thinking. Your old granddad and Iain Rennie in their dark suits and stand-up collars posted behind the girls’ chairs. Iain Rennie touching the back of Katherine Bigges’ chair but his gaze on Grandma.’ Bo leaned forward and lit the fresh cigarette and he drew in the smoke and coughed and sat back. ‘Grandma used to take that photo down from above the stove of an evening and we’d all crowd around her at the kitchen table over there at Verbena and she’d tell us stories of Ranna Station in them old days and how she lived like a young lady and learned to play the piano and speak French and how Iain Rennie courted her just the way a gentleman should court a young lady.’ He fell silent after the rush of words, breathing and drawing on his cigarette. ‘And she fell in love with him and stayed in love with him for the rest of her life.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know what happened to that photo. That boy of May’s probably got hold of it like he got hold of everything else. It was George Bigges took it. He took photographs on glass plates of all the stations and people in the district.’ He turned and looked at her. ‘Your folks would have had some of his photographs over there at Haddon Hill. I’m sure of that. Grandma reckoned he was never without his camera when he was travelling. He always had a packhorse with him to carry his photographic equipment. You ever see any of them photos?’

‘If there were any I can’t remember them,’ she said. ‘I’d love to see them if they exist. There could be some here, I suppose, among mum and dad’s things. I’m sure there weren’t any framed on the wall at Haddon Hill. I’d remember. I’ll ask Elizabeth.’

‘Yeah, Elizabeth’ll know for sure. There’s boxes of George’s glass plates down there at Ranna to this day, unless old Nellie took them with her. And I don’t believe she would have done that. She left everything else behind.’ He sat thinking, smoking his cigarette and gazing out into the garden. ‘Iain Rennie was thirty-two and Grandma was sixteen when they was married. George Bigges give Grandma that photograph as a wedding present and she always cherished it. Before Iain Rennie proposed to Grandma he rode out to the Suttor country and found her mother camped with their mob along Serpentine Creek, which you would know from riding that way with your dad after cattle when you was a kid. And Iain Rennie asked that old Jangga lady for her daughter’s hand in marriage. You hear a lot of different things said about the old Murris, but they always knew what was coming to them and nothing never surprised them. Grandma’s mother hadn’t seen her daughter for seven or eight years but she give her consent as if it was nothing unusual and Iain Rennie started back for Ranna that same evening. And that was my granddad, Iain Ban Rennie, who they named me after. He was known to be a morally stalwart man and someone to be reckoned with if you should decide to go up against him. It never mattered to Iain Rennie if you was a Murri or a white man, or whatever you was. He treated all men with the same respect. A lesser man than him would have got in trouble for it, but Iain Rennie never did get into trouble, except with your granddad, because he had a way of making people see his point of view and they were inclined to accept it. I never met him. He was killed off his horse before I was born. But I would like to have met him. Sometimes I feel like I did meet him and that he knew me. Which is a funny thing but it’s true. He’s one man I would know if I ever met him and I don’t think either of us would be at all surprised to see the other but we’d just sit down and have a smoke and a yarn together.’ Bo laughed and looked at her. ‘You know what I mean? You ever feel like that about someone you never met?’

Annabelle could not think of anyone in her own life to match with Bo’s feelings for the grandfather he had never met. ‘You make me feel a bit like that about Grandma Rennie, talking about her now the way you are,’ she said. ‘She was always a kind of legend in our lives around Mount Coolon when we were kids and I feel I half know her anyway.’

‘Well that is exactly what I mean,’ Bo said. ‘She’d know you if she met you and she’d make you welcome, like she and Iain made everyone welcome. Their marriage was accepted without a word of dissent in Mount Coolon and around the district, except for your granddad, like I told you. He never spoke to Iain Rennie again. But he was the only one to hold out against them. Everyone else always treated Iain and Grandma Rennie no different to anybody else. And that went for us kids too. That’s the way it was over there at Verbena. When Iain was killed off his horse and Grandma and her sister May inherited the place, them agents and store people in town just went on dealing with Grandma like she was any other station owner. I don’t think any of them would have been game to go up against her anyway. She was just like Iain in that. She had a way with her that made people act respectfully towards her, like she was expecting it from them.’

Annabelle said, ‘Why was my grandfather so different, do you think?’

‘Well I don’t think he
was
all that different to most people in them days. He just never made an exception for Iain and Grandma. It was the others around Mount Coolon agreeing to be exceptional that made him look different if you ask me. But I don’t know why. Like I told you down there at Burranbah, us kids was frightened of him. And I think we was frightened of him because of the way Grandma made us feel about him as much as anything he ever did. I don’t remember him ever getting close enough to belt any of us. But he and Grandma must have known something the rest of us never heard about.’ Bo fell silent, interrogating his memory of Annabelle’s grandfather sitting his horse under the yellowbox tree outside the garden fence at Verbena while her father was inside drinking tea and dealing with Grandma Rennie for the Verbena steers. He shook his head, ‘I don’t know what it was. It was never explained to us. But it was something, I know that.’ He sat thinking. ‘Grandma and Iain Rennie was married in the Presbyterian church in Mount Coolon. Every pew in that church was filled with a mixture of Jangga and European people. Even the sergeant of police was there. I don’t think that ever happened before or since. It must have been some occasion. We never got sick of hearing Grandma tell us about it.’ He chuckled throatily, ‘That Katherine Bigges was so disappointed she went away to the coast and become a schoolteacher in Bowen. She died there eventually. And never was married. None of them three Bigges girls was ever married. I believe the whole clan of them Bigges has finally died out altogether.’ He looked at Annabelle. ‘It looks like I’m telling you about my people.’ He grinned. ‘I don’t usually say too much, but you’re gonna find that hard to believe.’ He stayed twisted around in the chair looking at her.

She said, ‘You’re telling me a lot I never heard, about my mother and grandfather too. I hope you’re not going to stop?’

‘Telling you now is the next best thing to you meeting my grandmother face to face. I believe you two would have got along pretty special. She met Elizabeth a few times but I don’t think they ever hit it off.’

‘Elizabeth was closer to granddad than I was.’

‘Yes she was. And maybe that explains it.’ He sat thinking. ‘Grandma was only twenty-eight when Iain was killed off his horse. She was broken hearted. She buried him in that virgin bendee scrub way up Verbena Creek, near them playgrounds of the old people. I know the spot. If you and me ever go up that way I’ll show it to you. She used to disappear for a day or two every now and then when I was a kid. We knew she’d gone up there to camp alongside Iain. She’d sing to him and to the old people. There wasn’t no distinctions for her. She always told us, what’s good for one is good for everyone. And she’d share out the good things accordingly with whoever come along. I followed her up there one time when I was ten or eleven. I kept well clear of her, and I dry camped at night without a fire. She knew I was tracking her, but she never doubled back and reproached me. So I reckoned she must’ve wanted me to follow her so I’d see where she’d buried my granddad. Then I’d know where to bury her when the time come for me to do it. Which was not something we ever talked about but it was understood and agreed upon between us.’ He fell silent. ‘They loved that country and they loved each other. My old feller named me after him and I don’t think there was anyone my dad admired more than his own dad. I learned most of what I know about horses and cattle from my dad. He was a very quiet man, a little bit solemn some people said. He wasn’t big to look at and he rode a clean type of piebald pony that he bred up himself on Verbena specially for that scrub country. I heard him reprimand a couple of fellers there one time for speaking out of turn in Grandma’s presence. They come up to the house and apologised afterwards. But I never in all the years I knew him saw him do any violence. I don’t think he needed to in order to make his point. I don’t believe I ever heard him raise his voice to a man or to a child or to a horse. He’d just give you that sideways look of his and you’d know you got it wrong and you’d curse your own self for being so stupid. But he never said nothing. When me and Dougald was working cattle with him he expected us to go along without ever speaking. We’d go for days, rain and fine weather, without saying nothing, the three of us. Just look across and see what the other feller was lining up to do and we’d get that little action of the hand from dad that would tell us everything. That was our sign language in the scrubs. We’d slip through that creaking bendee like moon shadows, our ponies looking out for signs just the same as us, stepping lightly as if we was visitors. I can see my dad’s fingers angling out right now letting me know there was cattle camped up ahead of us and that we was to leave them and go on around and come back later in the evening to pick them up when they was ready to move to water. He never liked to move a beast against the way it naturally wanted to move. There was never no rip tear and bust with dad. He always waited his time, and he moved when it was the time to move, not too soon and not too late. So things was always going sweetly when you was with dad in the scrub and a lot of fellers never understood why that was, because he never seemed to be doing much of anything and we’d be gathering up the cattle all the same. You got the feeling the cattle was waiting for us to come through and find them. But me and Dougald understood him and we tried to be as like him as it was possible to be. I had some of it, but Dougald got it better than me. And dad seen that. But he never said nothing about it to neither of us. So me and Dougald stayed friends and I worked for him after Dougald started contract mustering on his own when my dad no longer had a use for us. I’d see Dougald doing things just the way dad used to do them. He’d talk with his hands. Let you know he was gonna ride on ahead and you was to pull up for lunchcamp in a stand of sandalwood, and then he’d circle around and come up on you a while later. He’d step down off his horse and you’d know he’d seen something, but he’d just squat by the fire and stick his quart in the ashes and he’d have finished his tea and lunch about the same time as the rest of us. He was just the way dad was. He never liked to disturb nothing on the way through. Leave it just the way it was. So it looks like a big turn around for Dougald to people who don’t know him the way he’s giving his support to this Ranna Dam, but it’s his decision and it’s not something he’s gonna discuss with Susan. Which she don’t understand. I always had the feeling with my dad and Dougald Gnapun that they was doin their talking inside their heads and that things was talkin right back to them. I remember one night we was camped in them Leichhardt Ranges in that wild broken country up the head of Pandanus Creek. It was a cold miserable camp too. We’d had rain for a week and no hope of getting home and dry for days yet. Everything was so wet we’d been building our dinner fires in ants’ nests with a bit of dry stuff we carried with us. I was sitting across the fire from Dougald. The scrubs as black as pitch and just that glow of the ants’ nest oven on his face. I looked into his eyes and I seen he wasn’t with us. I’d only seen that look once before in the eyes of an old Murri woman in Mount Coolon they used to call Panya. It give me a scare to see it in Dougald’s eyes, I can tell you. But Dougald was away that night with the old people and I knew it. I never said nothing the next day and he didn’t neither. I believe he give the knack of it to that boy of his, Arner. He’s got it, that boy. There’s some direct thing from the old people in him. You can feel it. He’s not with us fellers.’ Bo laughed and hauled himself upright in the chair. ‘This your old dad’s chair?’ he asked, as if he had finished with storytelling.