Salt Rain (11 page)

Their mother walked over to Mae and took her arm. ‘I think I know why you’re sick.’

Mae started to cry again, her head dropping down.

‘How long since your last menses?’

Mae’s voice was quiet. ‘Four months, maybe five.’

‘Five months! Mae! Why haven’t you said anything? Does Saul know?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not him.’

‘Go down and do what your father asked, Julia.’ Her mother pointed to the dairy, where the cows were waiting. Julia could hear her father calling to the barking cattle dog. She couldn’t move. Nothing seemed real, this conversation her mother and Mae were having, Mae crying. All four of them down at the dairy in the dark.

Mae took a breath. ‘It was a man from the Show.’

‘Did he take you by force?’ Her mother’s face was shocked.

Mae shrugged then shook her head and lifted her hands to cover her eyes. Her mother took Mae into her arms. ‘What a mess.’

Their father came into the yard. ‘Julia! Have you put the barley out?’ He stopped at the sight of Mae in her mother’s arms. ‘What’s going on?’

No-one spoke. Julia slipped past him and in the dairy door.

‘I said, what…is…going on?’ When there was no reply, his voice turned hard. ‘Mae, go and start the milking.’

Mae pulled her mother’s arms off her and walked silently back towards the house.

He roared, his voice shocking in the still morning. ‘I said get inside there and start work, Mae! Do you hear me?’

‘I’ll do it,’ Julia’s mother took a step towards the dairy. ‘I’ll do it.’

He shook his head and grabbed her arm. ‘Stop, Bess. I want an explanation. Now.’

Julia watched from the dairy door as her parents looked at each other. Behind them Mae was already walking up the steps into the house.

‘She’s pregnant.’ Her mother looked away.

There was a long silence. Julia waited, fear for all of them tightening in her stomach. The cows shuffled behind her and the dog slumped at her feet and scratched itself. She wanted to run after Mae.

Her father was still staring at her mother. He turned and walked into the dairy. ‘Get out of here Julia. You’re bloody useless. Get back to the house.’

Julia ran across the yard. At the top of the steps she turned and looked back—there were the familiar sounds from the dairy and in the sky, apricot streaks and a light blue glow. It was one of the most beautiful and most awful sunrises she had ever seen.

The old woman stood waiting at the front door, looking around her at the plastic pots piled high on the verandah and the weeds growing up through the boards. Her disdain was clear to Allie even from where she sat perched in the branches of the mulberry tree.

‘Grandma!’ Julia called from the paddock.

‘Oh,’ the old woman walked to the end of the verandah. ‘There you are. I’ve tried to phone you a thousand times, Julia, but you don’t answer.’

Julia came up the path shaking her head. ‘No, no. I’ve been planting down the paddock. Come inside. Time for a break anyway.’ She pulled off her boots and pushed the door open.

Allie slid down out of the tree and stood at the open window looking in. The old woman was wearing a pink dress and her shoes seemed too big for her thin legs. This was Mae’s beloved grandmother, putting down her worn handbag and picking up the wooden casing of an old clock Julia had taken apart. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to ring me about coming down for lunch so I could see my great-granddaughter but I have to take things into my own hands, obviously.’ She smiled and put the clock down. ‘Where is she?’

Julia put the kettle on the stove and said, ‘I don’t know. I think she’s grumpy at me.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me, Julia?’

Julia dropped the burnt match into the bin. ‘Do you want Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe?’

The old woman walked up close to Julia and adjusted the kettle on the stove. ‘It’s as if you don’t want to be part of the family anymore, Julia. Something about you has changed. And I wouldn’t bring it up except for Allie. She needs to feel her whole family around her.’

‘She hasn’t asked to see you, Grandma. And no, nothing about me has changed.’ Julia turned to face her. ‘Actually, who I am now is who I’ve always really been.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense Julia, I’ve known you since you were born. I’ve known you since before you knew yourself.’ She sighed. ‘Look, I can see you sacrificed for your mother and father, for the farm, but that didn’t mean you had to relinquish all ideas of marriage or family. Now it’s like you are just going on being deliberately contrary and difficult.’

‘This is what I want.’

‘This?’ she waved her hand around. ‘This is something to aspire to? The farm is falling apart. This house needs a family. Joe Hogan wanted you.’

‘Joe Hogan wants his meals cooked and laundry done…like Dad wanted from Mum and then from me. Didn’t we already have this discussion several times when Joe was scouting for a wife?’

‘It’s not just about you anymore. If you want to reject your family that’s one thing. But now Allie’s involved too. She’s part of Mae that’s come back to the valley.’

Julia sighed and reached for the tea canister.

‘Where is she Julia? I’ll go and find her.’

Allie stepped inside the door as the old woman turned and saw her, ‘Oh. There you are. Yes.’ She pulled something out of her bag and passed it to Allie. For a second Allie thought it was a photo of herself, then she saw that it was Mae, with long dark plaits, standing unsmiling and straight-backed in front of a white paling fence, a skinny fair kid beside her.

The old woman came close, the sweetness of her perfume overpowering. ‘That’s Julia with her, believe it or not.’ She tapped on the photo with a short fingernail. ‘Mae’s twelve here. Just started high school. You know she was the brightest girl in the school. She really could have done anything. The teachers all said that.’

There was a seriousness in her mother’s face that Allie had never seen, and her eyes were wide open, as if searching for all the possible futures that lay ahead.

The old woman reached for Allie’s hand and stroked it with her papery fingers. ‘Did she ever talk about coming back to the valley? This farm is half hers you know. Half yours now, I should think.’ She raised her voice. ‘Isn’t that right Julia? Allie has a right to half this property.’

Julia shrugged and prised open a tin of shortbreads. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t looked into the legalities of it.’

‘You’d better. Allie may not like what you are doing to the place. It doesn’t even look like a farm anymore.’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘So you say.’ The old woman started getting down china teacups and saucers from the kitchen dresser. ‘Let’s drink from these, Julia. I can’t abide those thick cups you use.’

Julia nodded as she slipped a knitted cosy over the teapot.

Allie moved close to the old woman and spoke quietly, so Julia wouldn’t hear. ‘She always read the
National Geographic
you sent.’

She tilted her head and smiled, ‘I thought so.’

Julia put a jug of milk on the table. ‘What
National Geographic
?’

‘I used to send Mae magazines when we’d finished with them.’

‘You did? I didn’t know you had contact with her.’

The old woman shrugged her shoulders and sat down at the table. She patted at her short white hair.

Julia said, ‘So how often did you send magazines to her?’

‘Often enough. But you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear, Julia, that she only ever wrote back to me once.’ She tipped the milk jug to look inside. ‘Who are you getting your milk from these days?’

‘The Philips.’

Allie wanted to tell her great-grandmother that Mae used to stack the magazines in the toilet outside, the pile of yellow spines growing higher and higher over the years. Mae would tear out articles and leave them on Allie’s pillow. In the dust under her bed was a tangle of screwed-up stories about Antarctic adventurers and African tribes. Mae’s grandmother also sent tea towels, fine Irish linen that Mae would carefully iron and stack in the kitchen cupboard. She pressed all their sheets and pillowslips. She even took on an ironing job for a little while but they said she was too slow. Allie looked down at the photo of her mother, to see again that clear light in her face.

The old woman poured the tea. ‘I saw you talking to young Saul Philips the other day. I guess you heard about him and your mother, how they were sweethearts?’

Allie nodded. ‘She told me.’

‘So who is this Tom that Julia mentioned? I notice he didn’t turn up for the funeral.’

Allie glanced at Julia as she spoke. ‘Maybe he didn’t hear about it.’

The old woman raised her eyebrows. ‘Just like Mae never heard about her own mother’s funeral?’

Julia’s voice was low. ‘How was I supposed to get in contact with her if I didn’t have a phone number or street address? It’s Mae’s fault for being so bloody secretive and for not checking her post box for days! The only reason she made it to Dad’s funeral was because I insisted she give me her actual address after she never turned up to Mum’s. I had to wring it out of her like…’ She flapped her hands into the air as she stood up and went to the bench.

‘Just the same, she should have been here for her mother’s burial. We needed her here.’ The old woman gripped Allie’s hand again, ‘So was Tom going to marry her? She could have had any man she wanted you know. She was like her father in that, he had all the women in the valley after him. What was he like, this Tom?’

Tom who had bent to wipe the drops of blood from the floor, the very last traces of her mother. She hated that she had let him hold her that morning when Mae disappeared. Right there at the bottom of the stairs he had hugged her to his pale flesh. She looked down at the photo on her lap.

Julia said, ‘Grandma…I don’t think this is quite the time…’

‘I hardly need your instruction on social etiquette, my dear.’

Julia stood up and poured more hot water into the teapot.

‘I’d like you to come and visit me in town, Allie. We have a spare room, your great-uncle Dan and I. You can stay with us as long as you want. Anytime, for as long as you want. There was always an open invitation to your mother too, you know.’

Allie remembered when she and Mae came up for Allie’s grandfather’s funeral. Early the first morning, Mae had walked out into the paddock, her shadow stretching behind her, her black shoes wet from the grass, and she had suddenly dropped to the ground and pressed her hands into the earth. ‘I never thought I missed it. Not like this.’ And she had gripped her stomach and doubled over as she waved Allie away. ‘Leave me alone. Go back to the house.’

The old woman put down her teacup. ‘Don’t fill the pot for me Julia. I’ve got to keep going, I happened to be out here delivering a meal to the Lachlans and I’m due back in town. I just wanted to drop that photo off to Allie.’ She stroked Allie’s hair. ‘Keep it. And come and visit me soon, eh?’

Allie followed her aunt out to the old woman’s car. Julia waved as the car disappeared down the driveway, then she turned and walked briskly down the paddock, pulling her gloves back on.

Allie went inside and picked up the half-eaten shortbread left on her great-grandmother’s plate. She put a piece on her tongue and let it dissolve into a sweet paste. She remembered that at her grandfather’s funeral, Mae had sought out the old woman and hugged her a long time, her eyes squeezed tight.

Mae hadn’t wanted Allie to go with her to the funeral. She had arranged for Allie to stay with a neighbour but when she took her down there with her bag, the neighbour came to the door and said her husband was sick and there was no way she could look after Allie as well, so the two of them ended up catching the afternoon train north. Allie knew from the way Mae stared out the train window that she didn’t want to talk.

Mae had embarrassed her by crying when she hugged Julia on the station platform. Allie could see people glancing sideways as they walked around the two women to collect their luggage. She had been surprised that Julia was so much bigger than Mae. She was taller and broader in her blue work pants, her face clean of make-up, her fine pale hair long and loose down her back. In the front seat of Julia’s old ute, Allie sat between her aunt and her mother, Julia’s thigh pressed against her leg, tensing then softening as her aunt changed gears.

Mae smoked a cigarette, half-leaning out the window, her voice whisked away with the smoke as they drove across the river flats towards the hills. ‘So how did it happen?’ She spoke to Julia the same way she spoke to Allie, straight down the line with none of the lightness in her voice that she used with Tom.

‘Just like that. It just happened,’ said Julia. ‘I went in after milking and all the blankets were off, he’d thrown them on the floor, and his arms were out, like this.’ She stretched one arm along in front of Allie and Mae. ‘He was so thin in the end, you could see where the bones had been broken in the accident, they’d all…calcified,’ her voice dropped. Allie was afraid she would cry again. ‘He was so thin, Mae…and just completely cold when I went in. He must have been like that all night. I should have checked on him before milking.’

There was silence as the car climbed the escarpment, the engine churning slowly around the steep hairpin bends, up and away from the plain and wide river. As they drove along the ridge in the fading light, Allie peered out at the dark forest reaching over the road. She spoke into the silence. ‘What accident?’

‘What?’ said Mae.

‘What accident broke his bones?’

Julia flicked on the wipers, as light rain sprinkled the windscreen. Allie waited for her mother to speak but it was Julia who said, ‘Dad had a tractor roll on him.’

‘How? How did it roll on him?’

‘He drove it wrong, made a mistake.’

‘Did he go to the same hospital I was born in?’

‘Yes,’ Mae sighed, exhaling smoke. ‘The very same. You were born there and he ended up there a few weeks later.’ She threw her cigarette butt onto the road and wound up the window against the rain. She rubbed Allie’s thigh and her hand pressed too hard.

Allie shut her eyes and turned her head from side to side to smell one and then the other sister—the cigarette smoke, the perfume and the mustiness. As they descended into the valley, the forest opened out into wide paddocks, vivid green in the last light of the day. Allie leaned into her mother and whispered, ‘Where’s he live? The First Love?’