Matilda's Last Waltz (31 page)

If it's so damn good, she thought furiously, then why the hell didn't the whole bloody lot of them move over there? She kept her thoughts to herself, though. Until things improved around Churinga, she would have to encourage them to stay. They cost little to keep, but God almighty they were irritating.

‘One sack of sugar and flour now. Another when the mob's in from Wilga, plus some baccy.'

They stared at one another for a long moment of silence. Then Gabriel nodded.

The two young boys he brought with him were as nimble as Blue at herding, chasing and gathering in the strays. But the muster still took almost three days. Days where the sky grew dark with thick black clouds and distant thunder growled a promise of rain. Yet as one by one the pastures were emptied, each herd brought to the home paddock and fenced in before they went back for the next lot, the clouds held their precious cargo, scudding away on the hot, dry winds that rustled the grass and made the sheep nervous.

It was not yet dawn on the fourth day. Matilda had packed her saddle-bags with the things she would need for the coming few weeks, and with Lady saddled and ready, she stood by the fence and looked over the shifting woolly backs. Despite the lack of rain, Churinga grass had held out, and the fat, fleecy animals looked healthy and strong. Some of that tallow would be worked off in the coming trek to Wilga, but the quality of the wool was the important thing.

‘Storm coming, missus,' said Gabriel who was astride her gelding.

She looked up at the sky. The clouds were gathering again, the air electric as though sky and earth were giant fire sticks rubbing together. ‘Then let's go.' She signalled to the boys to open the gate.

Blue sank to his belly at her sharp whistle, moving swift and sure-footed over and around the mob as they poured into the paddock. With a nip here, a nudge there, a race over woolly backs to collar a Judas, he kept the mob tightly packed.

Matilda rode at the back of the mob with Gabriel, cajoling them forward, flicking the stock whip with consummate ease above their stupid heads, eating the dust of fifteen hundred sets of feet. The electricity in the air was making her tingle, lifting the hairs on her arms and at the back of her neck. Storm clouds gathered in layer upon ominous layer, blotting out the early sun, bringing pewter dullness to the day.

‘Dry storm, missus. Not good out here.'

Matilda nodded, the dread returning. She had to get to Wilga before it broke. There was nothing more terrifying than a dry storm and at the first crack of lightning she would lose control of the mob.

Bluey seemed to sense the urgency. He raced after a frightened ewe, chivvied a dawdler, and kept an eye on the Judas. He nipped and snarled, ran in circles and across their backs, hovered, belly in the dirt, until the right moment to head off a stray. It took all that day but finally, as the defeated sun disappeared behind the mountain, they reached the pastures of Wilga and the welcome sight of drovers coming to meet them. The sheep were finally herded into the small paddock behind the shearing shed, separated from the other three great mobs by the vast labyrinth of pens.

‘You can sort and grade them tomorrow,' said Tom. ‘Looks like the storm's about to hit.'

Matilda finished her counting and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I haven't lost any on the way. Good thing we came when we did.'

They looked up at the rolling waves of thunderous clouds. ‘Gonna be a fair cow,' Tom said grimly as he walked with her to the corral. Her two horses joined the others, their flanks twitching with apprehension at the approaching storm. ‘April's indoors. Come on. Time for tucker.'

April was perhaps three, maybe five years older than Matilda, her hands reddened from work, slender figure looking too frail to survive this heat as well as her pregnancy. She was drawn and obviously tired, her feet restlessly taking her in a never-ceasing round of table to stove, sink to table. The sleeves of her dress were rolled to her elbows, hair trailing pale damp wisps across her face where it had escaped the knot on top of her head.

‘Nice to see you again, Molly,' she said, her smile weary but welcoming. ‘I could certainly do with another pair of hands around here just now.'

Matilda looked away from the swollen belly. Sadness welled and she pushed it aside with remorseless determination. April had chosen to marry and have babies. They didn't fit into her own plans, so why feel anything but unshackled?

Wilga homestead was bigger than Churinga, sprawling across the crest of a low hill, its verandahs looking out over the creeks and home pastures. Wilga trees gave shade to the men's barracks, and box and coolibah lined the creek banks. Like Churinga, there were no trees too near the house. Too much of a fire hazard.

April poured hot water from the kettle into a tin bowl, and handed Matilda a scrap of towel and a bar of homemade soap. ‘Have a wash and a bit of a rest, Moll. Tucker won't be for a while.'

Matilda's room was at the far eastern end of the house. It looked out towards the stock pens, was small and cramped with heavy furniture and a vast brass bed. But it smelled wonderfully of beeswax polish and the floor had been recently swept with fresh wood shavings. She listened to the sound of the children playing in the yard. How many did Tom have now? she wondered. Four, or was it five?

She shrugged, caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and stared in horrified fascination. Was this brown-skinned, wild-haired woman really her? She hadn't realised how much she'd grown, how thin she was, or how old the lines around her eyes made her look. If the hair was a shade darker, the eyes a little bluer, she could have been looking at the ghost of Mary Thomas.

With a rueful grimace she eyed the flannel trousers she'd cut down to fit. They were stained and worn, tied at the knees and ankles with bowyangs, the strips of 'roo-hide a necessary addition to stop creepy crawlies from climbing up her legs. The grey shirt had once been blue but had been bleached by the sun and too many washes in lye soap.

She sighed. Mary Thomas had liked to wear the rough, easy clothes of the drover, but hers had always been immaculately clean and mended, not like these disreputable rags.

She thought of April and her neat cotton dress, and remembered how Tom had said she should put on a dress and go to the parties and dances. Grimacing, she stripped off the soiled clothes and began to wash. It had been a long time since she'd bothered to dress up, and now she probably never would. She had chosen her way of life, and if that made her more like a man, then so much the better. Women had it too tough anyway, and she meant to survive.

Matilda had fallen asleep on the feather mattress when the tucker bell was rung. She hurried to join the others in the kitchen. It was daunting to eat in company, to be the focus of six pairs of eyes that followed every move she made.

The four children, all boys, had not inherited the pale yellow hair and gentle face of April but the stormy black brows and Irish green eyes of their father.

‘The men arrive day after tomorrow,' said Tom, shovelling in stew and following it up with a chunk of bread. ‘Should get around to yours sometime around the middle of next month.'

Matilda nodded, her mouth too full to speak. After living on cold mutton and damper bread for months, she didn't want to waste time talking.

‘April's almost finished clearing out the barracks. You can help with the stock pens, or in the cookhouse. It's up to you.'

Matilda glanced at April's wan face and decided that although she'd have preferred working in the pens, she was needed more in the cookhouse and barracks. They would need scouring and the beds repairing. The shearers would bring their own cook, but Wilga had a lot of men working for them and there were always vegetables to prepare and bread to make. Then there were the children to watch over. April couldn't possibly be left to shoulder that on her own.

‘How you off for water, Moll? Got enough in the tanks to see you right if we don't get rain?'

She pushed back her plate and began to roll a cigarette. She was sated. ‘Yeah. Those tanks are about the only thing Dad kept in good order,' she said dryly. ‘We've got the bore head, of course, but the river's down to a trickle.'

‘Your grandad was wise to put up all those tanks. I put an extra couple on just before the rains two years back but we're lucky here with the creeks and the rivers. The artesian well waters the fields, but it's too full of minerals and doesn't help the house any.'

A deep, ominous rumble silenced them and all eyes turned to the windows.

The world and every living thing in it held its breath, suspended in terrible expectancy. Endless seconds followed, dragging out the suspense, filling each of them with dread. The younger children crept from the table to burrow into the folds of April's apron like small, timid creatures.

Her face was white, eyes round and unblinking. ‘It's all right,' she said mechanically. ‘We've got a conductor. It can't touch us.' She shivered. ‘Please God, it can't touch us,' she added in a whisper.

The crash rocked the house, tore the sky apart and spilled its fury. Blue flares of forked light streaked through the lowering clouds, turning night into a day brighter than any of them had seen before. Electricity cracked like a stock whip, lashing from one cloud to another, ripping the heavens apart as if possessed. The earth trembled as thunder crashed and rebounded off the iron roof. Jagged blue and yellow seared the hills and paddocks, touched the sentinel finger of a lone tree in the middle of a distant pasture, and sizzled a demonic halo around the bark before dying. The storm echoed in their heads and rang in their ears. Blinded them with its light, deafened them with the sheer weight of its force.

‘Got to check the stock,' yelled Tom.

‘I'll come with you,' Matilda yelled back.

They stood on the porch and watched the awesome display of nature's pent-up fury, knowing there would be no rain, no remission for the parched earth and tinder-dry trees. The air was so thick Matilda could hardly breathe, the electricity making her hair dance and weave, spark if she tried to tame it. They hurried to the pens where the other men were already checking the fences and gates. The sheep rolled their eyes and bleated, but they were tightly packed with nowhere to go.

Matilda ran across the yard to the paddock. The horses shied, pawing the air, their manes flying, tails stiff with fear. No one could catch them and after a fruitless chase Tom and Matilda decided they would have to take their chances. The dogs howled and whined in their kennels, the cattle lowed and sought shelter by hugging the earth. It was as if the whole world was writhing in agony.

The storm went on all through the night and into the next day. Thunder crashed, clouds stripped the sun, and lightning slivers burned blue fire through the sky. They became immune to the noise, the children creeping to the window to watch in awed silence. But none of them could voice the fear they all felt. One blade of grass could be struck, one hollow tree, dead and forgotten in the midst of a pasture, could attract the lightning bolt that would begin as a tiny blue flame and spread in seconds.

The shearers arrived along with the extra jackaroos, drovers and tar boys. Work in the cookhouse became a ceaseless succession of meals, of bread and mutton, cakes and pies, anything to take their minds off the storm. The sweat ran down Matilda's ribs, plastering her clothes to her skin as the barometer crept up to a hundred and twenty degrees. The kitchen sweltered, and although she was used to the hard work of the fields, she was drained by the end of the day and filled with admiration for April. Eight months pregnant and with over eighty people to feed, she never stopped and never complained.

At the end of the second night the winds came. They coiled the earth into spirals, barrelling across the ground, knocking down anything in their path. There was no way of fighting the willy willies. You just had to pray they didn't grow into tornadoes and come your way.

Tom watched from the verandah as they swept over his fields, ripped trees and fence posts from the ground and tossed them like matchsticks to the four corners of Wilga. Great tunnels of wind kicked up the earth, raced in one direction then turned in another, each giving birth to smaller ones, which whipped up the shallow water in the creeks and spewed it out in the spinning, ceaseless vortex. Roofs clattered and flapped, the wall of the machine shop tilted and swayed then collapsed with a crash against one of the empty stock pens. Shutters slammed and the air was full of choking dust.

But the winds blew the storm away and by noon on the third day the land was quiet. The people of Wilga emerged like ship-wrecked survivors to assess the damage.

The willow trees by the river had survived, their long, pliant branches bending towards the stony bed where only pools of murky water remained. The ghost gum at the end of the nearest pasture had split. It lay on the ground, its silver trunk cloven in two branches clawing fruitlessly skyward. Two of the six precious water tanks had blown over and were the first thing to be repaired. Corrugated iron roofs needed replacing, the machine shed to be demolished and rebuilt. Luckily it hadn't crushed any of the animals in the pen, just given them a scare and made them more jumpy than usual.

One of the stockmen returned from mending fences, his face grim and dirty after his long ride. ‘Found five cows, Tom. Sorry, mate. Must have got the full brunt of the wind. They was miles away from their grazing. Dead as doornails.'

Tom nodded was resignation. ‘At least it wasn't more. And the mobs are right, despite the shed almost falling on 'em.'

Matilda fretted about Churinga as she and April returned to the broiling kitchen. The devastation wrought on Wilga could quickly be repaired with so many willing hands, but what if Churinga had been wiped out? The tanks spilled, the house and sheds ripped from the earth? With stoic determination she put her worries aside. Her mob was safe – she could survive.