Novels 01 Blue Skies (14 page)

Chapter 32
1940

Grace was cooking on the wood stove that Michael
had fitted into the kitchen at the end of the shed
they had built after Diane was born. Her cheeks were
red from the heat that the iron doors threw out, and
trying to keep little Di away was a never-ending task.

She banged the iron pot into the oven and slammed
the door shut. She could hear Diane calling and, with
a sigh, went to collect her from the enclosed playpen.
She heaved the small girl onto her hip and went
outside to tend to the vegetable garden. Even though
she knew she was pregnant again, she had yet to
tell Michael, but she suspected that he had guessed.
This morning he’d been more solicitous than usual,
helping with Diane and lifting the heavy pots and
pans from the stove to the sink.

He was just as tired as she was, clearing more
land and focusing on this year’s crop of both oats
and wheat as well as, for the first time, a bigger wool
clip. She had helped with the finances by selling the
excess garden produce – cauliflowers, potatoes and
cabbages – to passing travellers.

She lifted Diane over the wire fence into the
garden and climbed over herself. Diane raced
to her favourite place under the shade of a large
plum tree and climbed into the swing that Michael
had hung there to help keep her occupied while
Grace worked.

‘Oooh, look, Mummy.’ Diane pointed with a fat
finger to an earwig that was climbing the trunk of
the plum tree.

‘Don’t touch that, Di. Bitey,’ Grace said.

‘Bi-tee.’ Diane tried to imitate the word she had
heard then clapped her hands and laughed. Grace,
despite her weariness, couldn’t help but laugh too.

‘Clever girl! You copied Mummy.’ She turned back
to the broccoli and pulled back the leaves. There were
grubs in them and she needed to find them all so
they didn’t wreck the buds that were forming.

An hour later, Diane showed signs of fatigue and
Grace’s back was hurting, so she lifted the little girl
back over the fence and held her hand as they walked
back to the three-room shed. She could hear Michael
banging around in the workshop and she thought
it strange that he hadn’t come out to let them know
he was back from the paddock. He was probably just
mending something, she reasoned as she went into
the small bedroom that was Diane’s.

Diane’s bed was pushed up against one wall and
covered in netting so nothing could get into it. Twice
this year already Grace had killed a snake in the
bedroom, and she had taken to sitting in the room
while her toddler slept, frightened that if a snake got
in without her seeing it might find its way into the
cot. Only a year ago the Porters had lost a child to a
snake bite and Michael’s dog, Bowy, had succumbed
to the same fate not long after they had moved into
the shed.

As she laid Diane down, the little girl clung to her
shoulder. ‘No, Mummy. No go!’

‘Shh, my precious. It’s time to sleep. Shall I sing you
a song?’

‘Nong! Nong!’ Diane let go and lay down while
her mother started to sing in a sweet, clear voice
and stroke her hair. Not five minutes later, Diane
was asleep.

Grace looked down at this little miracle, the dark
wisps of hair falling over her forehead and her dark
eyelashes caressing her cheeks as she slept. At two,
she was an active child who loved her mummy and
daddy. She would come with them during the day
and help pick stumps or ride in the tractor next
to Michael.

Her tottering gate made Michael laugh and she
would squeal with delight as he walked through the
door at night and try to run to him with her arms up.

How lucky she was, Grace thought. Lucky that
Edward had been close by when Charles attacked
her, lucky that her parents and Michael’s had sent
her to Australia. And how lucky she was to have
such a kind and generous husband. Rocking in
the chair, watching Diane sleep, Grace felt her own
eyes close.

In the workshop, Michael was sharpening his axe.
The grinding noise of the steel on stone helped
distract him from the news that he’d heard on the
grapevine.

It seemed Mr O’Connor had resigned from the
bank and was leaving Esperance. Michael was particularly
sad about this news, as he had come to regard
Frank as a friend and confidant. Michael knew that
he would miss him. On top of this, he also worried
about Grace. She didn’t look well – the spark had gone
out of her eyes and she seemed to be tired all the time.
He hoped that she was with child again, and that
there was no other reason for her pale, exhausted
face. He couldn’t imagine life without her now.

He brought the stone to a standstill and checked
the edge of the axe blade. Judging it sharp enough,
he leaned it up against the door and went into their
living quarters for a cup of tea.

The quietness in the kitchen unnerved him,
until he looked through the open doorway and saw
Diane asleep in her cot and Grace dozing beside her.
He went in and looked at the two people he loved
most in the world, then touched Grace’s shoulder.
She started as she woke, then smiled at him. He
motioned for her to follow him and they went into
the kitchen, where he wrapped her in his arms and
asked, ‘Are you pregnant, my love?’

She nodded, then buried her face in his chest.

‘That’s wonderful,’ Michael said. He put his fingers
under her chin and lifted her face.

‘Yes, it is,’ Grace said, ‘but I feel so ill. So tired.’

‘Well, I’ll take you to Esperance tomorrow to
see the doctor. I have business to attend to, and it’s
important for you to make sure things are right.’

Grace bustled over to the stove and lifted the
heavy iron kettle onto the stove top then brought out
tin pannikins from the makeshift cupboard and put
them on the bench. She reached for the teapot and
filled it with tea and put the condensed milk in front
of Michael before turning back to him.

‘I would like that. I’m positive that all is well, but
I didn’t feel this poorly with Diane.’

Michael sat at the table and stirred the condensed
milk into his tea and took a sip.

‘I have heard some news that bothers me,’ he
said after a while. ‘It seems that Frank might be
leaving town.’

Grace looked shocked. ‘Surely not?’

‘I’ve heard that he is to resign and move to
another posting.’

The silence between them said it all. They knew
how lucky they were to have a bank manager who
had helped them without judgment. Another man
might have started whispers among the townsfolk
that Michael Greenfield and his wife were not all
they seemed.

Chapter 33

‘How about I come and stay with you for a couple of nights?’ Adrian suggested. ‘I can sleep on the couch or in the spare room. Maybe if I’m here you’ll get a good night’s sleep.’

Amanda lay on the couch. The laundry basket taunted her from where it sat in the corner of the lounge room so she closed her eyes to block it out, along with Adrian’s agitation.

‘I’ll be fine, Ade, I’m just -’

‘Well, obviously you’re not fine,’ Adrian interrupted. ‘I’ve had a phone call from Jonno asking what the hell is going on with you and why I’m letting you get into the state you’re in. But you’ve hardly mentioned it to me. How can I fix something that I don’t know about?’ Adrian paced the floor angrily.

Amanda sat up.‘I have been telling you – you haven’t been listening.’

‘What?’ Adrian turned to face her. ‘What are you talking about?’ he blustered.

‘I’ve told you about the noises and I told you about the lights. You told me not to be stupid. And you know what? I
know
that what I’m hearing is all just normal everyday stuff. I
know
I should be able to just head off to bed and sleep right through the night without any interruptions. I
don’t know
why I can’t and why I’m feeling the way I do. So back off on the
why didn’t you
tell me
crap ’cos I don’t need it!’

Amanda lay back again and there was silence for a while, then she felt the couch sink as Adrian sat down next to her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t like the idea of you rattling around in this house – on this farm – by yourself. It bothers me to think of you roaming the house at night and driving around the farm dog-tired. You might have an accident or . . . or . . . I don’t know. He was silent for a moment.

‘Look I’m sorry if you think I haven’t been taking enough notice of what you’re saying. I’ll head home now and grab a bag of overnight things, come back and cook you dinner. Then I’ll sleep in the spare room for a few nights. How does that sound?’

‘That sounds nice. Thank you,’ she said, after a pause.

Adrian leaned over and kissed her cheek then pulled her into a hug. ‘Will you be okay while I’m gone?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Won’t be long,’ he said and disappeared out the door.

Amanda lay there a bit longer with a sense of relief sweeping over her. She hadn’t wanted to ask Adrian to stay; that would be admitting how frightened and helpless she felt. But when he had offered, she had almost cried with gratitude.

She got up and looked at the clock – nearly five. Time for a drink. She pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge, opened it with expert ease and poured herself a glass.

Back in the lounge she opened the photo album that never seemed to be far from her side and turned over to the page where her father was looking at her adoringly.

Without warning she was racked with huge sobs that felt as if they were being ripped from her body. As the tears subsided she pulled the photo out of the plastic pocket and held it to her chest. ‘Mum, Dad,’ she whispered, ‘I miss you so much.’

Amanda took another slug of wine and turned the photo over, trying to feel more of her parents’ presence, but there was nothing. The photo that she held in her hand was only a piece of paper.

Through her tears, she could make out her mother’s faded handwriting. She wiped them away to read what was written there and then flicked it back over and looked at the image. Flick over, back again. Flick over, back again. Then she threw the photo to the ground and burst into another round of loud, noisy sobs.

The date that was written on the back of the photo was not her birthday.

‘Look, Mandy, please – I really think you should see a doctor.’ Adrian stood at the kitchen bench two days later.

The first night he’d said he hadn’t heard anything, but on the second he had heard the tin creaking and expanding. He’d heard an old fuel drum bang down at the shed and the moaning of the wind that seemed to come through a gap in the door – both things he could fix. But that was all he heard.

‘You know, you’ve been through so much in the past few years, maybe something just isn’t right in your brain. Oh hell! That came out wrong!’ Adrian backtracked quickly when Amanda glared at him. ‘I just mean you might need some help,’ he finished lamely.

‘Well thank you very much,’ Amanda said testily, and then she sighed.‘I’ve been wondering that too, but I didn’t want to admit it.’ She was silent for a minute, playing with her coffee cup, then said, ‘I’ll try and get a doctor’s appointment today.’

‘So, Amanda . . .’ The kindly doctor slipped his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose.‘What seems to be the problem? I haven’t seen you since your father died. You must be keeping very well.’

Amanda shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘I’m not sure, Kevin. There’s been a few odd things happening and I’m not sure how to explain it. I just seem to be making too much out of everything. I know it sounds stupid, but a couple of my friends are concerned about me and I know there’s something not quite right. I think I haven’t done something and it turns out I have, or vice versa. I’m having trouble sleeping – and if I do sleep, I have nightmares. I’ve started sleeping with a light on and my dog in the bedroom. I get the sweats if something goes wrong and I start to shake. It doesn’t have to be a big problem – maybe a sheep jumps a fence when it shouldn’t; I just seem to go into meltdown. It’s got a lot worse over the past two months.’ She could feel her heart beating and wondered if Kevin could hear it – it was so loud, surely he could. Then she thought about what she had just said and suddenly felt self-conscious. ‘Ah, look Kevin, I know all this sounds really stupid. I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time. I’d better get going.’ Amanda rose from her chair but Kevin held out his hand and waved for her to sit down.

‘No, Amanda,’ he said gently. ‘It doesn’t sound stupid at all. And no, you’re not going crazy.’ He smiled and Amanda suddenly felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. ‘Tell me, do you think much about your parents’ deaths?’

‘Yeah, I guess I do. Not Mum’s so much . . . I mean, I think of the crash, but nothing else. Dad’s is a bit different. I often go down to the river and sit. I’m not sure why – to try and connect with him, or maybe even find a little piece of him, like his watch or pocket knife – something to say he really was there that night and it wasn’t just my imagination. I wonder if – well maybe if I hadn’t been so out of it I could’ve changed something.’ There was a silence and then she said, ‘I wonder if Dad might have jumped, you see. I realise now he wasn’t in a great state of mind before the flood.’

Kevin nodded. ‘And the farm? Is that doing well?’

Amanda’s mouth turned downwards, wondering what that had to do with anything. ‘Yeah, it’s going okay now. I had a hell of a time getting it up and going for the first two years or so, but the studs and higher lambing percentages have made a lot of difference to the cash flow.’ She shrugged.‘Why?’

‘Bear with me. What about friends? Do you go out much?’

‘Um, well not really. I go to Adrian’s dinner parties, occasionally out to tea. I’ve sort of befriended a girl in the merch store who comes fox shooting with me, but none of my good mates are in Esperance. They’re all in Sydney or Perth.’

‘So not really anyone your own age?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well I’d like you to think about all the things that have happened to you in the past – what is it, five years since your mum died? You’ve lost both parents and, if local gossip is to be believed, your farm was almost in the hands of the bank. So you’ve had to pull it back from the brink of financial ruin, you’ve had the stress of running the farm and trying to make a go of it all by yourself. Who have you had to talk to about your feelings? Your doubts, your ideas, your
achievements
?

‘Have you grieved for your parents? I would almost bet you haven’t. You’ve been too busy trying to make the farm profitable again.

‘You see, Amanda, doctors hear and see things in small country towns like this one. We know most of what is going on and I’ve been watching you from afar. You’re not going crazy or imagining things. There’s a name for what you’re experiencing and it can be treated.You have the classic symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.’

Back in her kitchen, Amanda looked at the packet of antidepressants the doctor had given her, willing herself to push one of the white tablets out into her hand and into her mouth. Something stopped her.

She wondered what her parents would think – and what about her grandfather? Michael must have been through so much as an early settler, but no signs of weakness came through in his diaries.

The phone rang and, deliberately ignoring the packet of pills, she answered it with a bright and cheery, ‘Hello?’

‘Well, I must say you sound better than I expected,’ replied Hannah. ‘What’s going on? You’ve got my brother in a hell of a tizz!’

‘Hi, Hannah. Oh, don’t worry about Jonno, he’s got the wrong end of the stick,’ Amanda lied. ‘He’s just made a mountain out of a molehill. I’m fine! He caught me on a bad day.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Hannah, sounding doubtful. ‘That’s why he rang me in a panic saying you were going off the deep end.’

‘Bloody hell, who else did he ring? He gave Adrian the third degree too! Honestly, Hannah, I’m fine.’

‘Okay then, no worries – sorry I cared!’ Hannah sounded flippant.‘So what’s happening in your world?’

They chatted for a few minutes and then Hannah said in a gentler tone,‘Mandy, I know you very well and your voice is giving you away. C’mon, spill the beans. What’s going on?’

The tears welled again, and Amanda found it hard to speak. When she did, it all came out in a rush. The noises, the lights and everything else – though she left out the baby photo. She couldn’t deal with that just yet. ‘And you know, Han, it’s almost like something
is
happening, someone
is
trying to make all of this happen and scare the crap out of me. But obviously that can’t be the case, because the doctor says I’ve got this stupid bloody thing called post-traumatic stress disorder. What he says makes sense – that I’ve been so busy I haven’t allowed myself time to grieve, haven’t let myself go near those feelings, which is true. But oh, man, you wouldn’t believe how much I don’t want it to be true. But hey -’ she laughed grimly – ‘what’s worse? Post-traumatic stress or being crazy?

‘And the farm having money troubles when I came home after Mum died, well that was all pretty stressful but I got it sorted out. I wouldn’t have thought that still bothered me.

‘Dad’s death upsets me more than anything because I know now, looking back, that he wasn’t coping. Whether he had some sort of depression I wouldn’t know, but it’s likely – and, Hannah, I was so horrible to him! I didn’t have any understanding of what he was going through, I was just so driven to make sure Kyleena didn’t get sold that I didn’t give a toss about his feelings. You wouldn’t believe how ashamed I am of the way I acted back then.

‘I reckon he was just beginning to come out of it when he was killed. We’d started to have a quiet sort of relationship that was gradually getting better. I don’t know, it’s a bit hard to explain.

‘Now this bloody doctor wants to put me on antidepressants and that just doesn’t wash with me. Why can’t I cope with my life without them? I’m not weak.’

Hannah interrupted her flow.‘Okay, stop right there. First of all, taking antidepressants doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re strong enough to go and get help when you need it. Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, all of those sorts of things are just illnesses. The stressful and emotional times that you’ve been through have triggered a chemical imbalance in your brain – didn’t the doctor explain this to you?

‘Sometimes, the body needs some help to balance things out and those little pills actually do that. I know first hand. One of your really good mates has been on them and I bet you can’t guess who?’

Amanda bit. ‘Who?’

‘Jonno.’

‘Jonno? Seriously? How come?’

‘He’s not on them now, but when we first started year twelve – you know how we were sent to boarding school for our final year? That was a hell of an upheaval for us. We had to try and fit in with groups that had already formed; make friends with people who already had friends and didn’t need to make more. A lot of these kids had been at boarding school together since year eight! And you know what it’s like when you’re seventeen: every funny look means someone’s laughing at you, every zit is twice as big as it actually is and no one needs a reason to give you a hard time.

‘Anyway, the other boys were a bit tough on him. Because Jonno was a bit quieter than them, didn’t play sport and liked reading, he didn’t fit in.

‘Being away from the farm didn’t help. I know he gives the impression that he’s really tough, but he’s very emotional. Things just got on top of him and he took tablets for about a year, then he was able to go off them. Slowly, of course – you can’t just drop them cold turkey – but look at him now. He’s fine. That’s why he was so concerned about you; he recognised the signs because he’s been there.

‘Now as for your dad, that’s a bit harder. You’re going to have to talk about this a bit more. One of the things about what you’re going through is that pills can make the physical symptoms go away, but talking is really important too. It’s how you resolve a lot of these dark, hidden feelings.’ She sighed. ‘Sorry, I’m sure I sound like a walking encyclopaedia, but it’s something I know a bit about.’

‘I had no idea,’ said Amanda, momentarily forgetting her own issues. ‘I mean, I love Jonno to pieces and nothing would affect my feelings for him, but . . . I just had no idea.’

‘Well, it’s been and gone, and if you deal with your problems the way Jonno did, you’ll be right in no time. Just don’t fight what’s going on: roll with it and get it sorted.’

‘I feel like I should be able to cope with all this myself,’ Amanda confided.‘Like I shouldn’t need outside help. It’s almost like I’ve failed if I can’t manage to get through difficult times without relying on pills!’