Still Waters (24 page)

‘Maisie’s a good girl, but her bread ain’t up to much and she forgets what she’s doin’ half-way through cookin’ and jest wanders off,’ Uncle Josh said. He turned to Mal. ‘Any ideas, young feller? I dessay you like your tucker?’

‘I do,’ Mal said fervently, with happy memories of Kath’s cooking and of the beautiful garden they’d made at the Magellan coming immediately to mind. ‘I’ve been watchin’ my ma since I was small, I think I can make bread, stews and so on. Mebbe I could teach this Maisie a bit?’

This was greeted with great enthusiasm, though when Maisie was told to take the new head stockman round the garden her eyes saucered. She was a plump, lively woman, married to Colly, one of the hands, but it soon transpired, neither an inspired cook nor a gardener. The aboriginals hunted and harvested the rivers and the bush but they neither sowed nor ploughed. It was not necessary, they thought, when nature had such bounty available to them.

‘As for a garden, we ain’t got one,’ she told Mal frankly, leading him out across the yard to where he had assumed the garden would be. ‘Look at it, cobber! You can’t call that a garden, nor it ain’t been one since the old lady died.’

The garden, Mal saw with lively dismay, was worse than a wilderness, worse than the bush because the ground, rich with manure and with the good alluvial mud of the river, had simply
roared
into fertility and, when untended, had then gone back to nature with a vengeance.

‘We’ll plough it in,’ Mal said at last. ‘It’s the only way – I don’t think there’s a man or woman born who could do anything else with that lot. And we need greenstuffs. What have you been eatin’?’

‘Pigweed, mostly,’ Maisie said. ‘That’s all right if you cook it well. And once or twice I done fought my way in an’ dug sweet taters.’

Mal knew that pigweed was a sort of wild spinach and agreed that it would have to do for the time being, but he longed for the moment when the garden was a garden once more, and also for the moment when Maisie could cook. If only he had been able to get his mother to come over for a few weeks and give Maisie lessons – but it was impossible. Royce needed Kath; without her the Magellan garden, too, would speedily return to nature.

But it was a challenge; that was all you could say.

‘We could mebbe spare someone to cook a bit, help clear the ground, set some seed,’ Royce said at last, when the problem had been chewed over for a couple of evenings. It was not all that had been chewed over. Maisie’s beef stew could not be eaten by anyone not blessed with their own strong teeth and the strange root crop which she had dug up and cooked was stringy and tough. Uncle Josh, uncomplaining, had sopped a hefty slice of doughy bread in the gravy and eaten that, but for a man used to filling his belly twice a day it didn’t seem much.

‘Gosh Roy, that ’ud be real grand,’ Mal said when Royce made his suggestion. ‘But what will Mam say?’

‘Your mother will be delighted to know that you’re eating properly,’ Royce said. ‘But you’ve gotta get goin’ on the garden, feller! Once the wet comes . . .’

He had no need to finish the sentence. The Wandina was close to the Mitchell River and the alluvial mud which was so rich and good was not spread across the flats by fairies but by floods. Once the wet came no one would be doing much gardening.

‘The houseboys cut the corn and thresh it and then it goes off to be milled and we get the flour back,’ Uncle Josh told Mal. ‘Cattle feed stays here, of course. We need more stores, we’re ’most down to bare essentials.’

‘Can Maisie order up?’ Mal said with a trace of anxiety. He had seen his mother ordering but had no idea of quantities, he only knew one ordered a great deal. ‘Uncle Josh, d’you know what we need?’

‘I ain’t too sure, but Mrs Forbes kept a book,’ Uncle Josh said. ‘You’ll be takin’ over her room, young feller, you can read it all up when we go off to our beds.’

And that was what Mal did and discovered, to his pleasure, that Mrs Forbes had not only kept ‘a book’, she had also kept a diary. Recipes, tips, blow-by-blow accounts of mustering tucker, clothing, general needs including medication, filled the large pile of five-year diaries in the long bottom drawer of her clothes chest. Mal felt a bit mean reading them but speedily realised that without them he would be lost – and with them, he stood a good chance of finding out just how to run this place.

So he and Josh discussed money, agreed what both thought was a fair wage for a beginner, and then Mal waved his stepfather off with heartfelt thanks and many messages for his mother and the twins, and turned back into the house with a sigh of pleasure. Now to get down to the essentials of running a station!

A week later Mal and Bas, the most experienced of the stockmen, decided they would have to have a cattle muster next day. A small part of the garden had been cleared, Mal had made bread and done his best to pass on his knowledge to Maisie, and had despatched his first order, courtesy of Mrs Forbes’s little book, to the nearest town. It was July, and the dry was getting to everything. The creeks had mostly dried up, dust rose in stifling clouds whenever you crossed a river bed and cattle, as Mal well knew, don’t have the sense to find water for themselves as the wild animals do. The men would have to ride out, round them up from wherever they had wandered, and drive them towards a water hole, or a creek, or the banks of a river. Once the beasts had been taken to water they’d stay by it for a little but then they’d wander off to find better grass and you’d be out after them again, cursing every bullock that ever lived, persuading them back to water.

Mustering could take weeks – would take weeks – and during that time, Uncle Josh would be coping alone at the homestead. But the men shouldn’t be asked to do a muster without a leader, not when they’d been used to Wally and Gumbo showing the way. If I stay at home they’ll never accept me as the new boss, Mal told himself. Perhaps I’ll ride out with them this time, let them do most of the guesswork, see how they get on, and then next time, let them go alone.

He put it to Uncle Josh, who was not certain what would be best.

‘I’d ha’ gone myself, once,’ he said. ‘But when you’re my age, three or four weeks lyin’ on the ground plays merry hell with your bones. No, I’ll stay behind, keep an eye on things. Maisie says you want the garden ploughin’ in.’

‘It’s got to be done,’ Mal said grimly. ‘Trouble is, Uncle Josh, there’s everythin’ wants doin’ and not enough of us to do it. But we’ll get shipshape in time.’

And then next morning, when they were taking their swags out to the horses and preparing for the camp, they had a surprise. A figure rode in and swung down out of the saddle in the mustering yard. It was Soljer, grinning from ear to ear, his swag on the saddle before him.

‘I’ve come to work wi’ you, Boss,’ he said to Mal. ‘Mr Malone said it was okay and your mammy said she’d feel safer if we were together. Anythin’ I can do?’

‘Bloody hell, Soljer, you’re a gift from the gods,’ Mal gasped. ‘I want to get the garden cleared – Maisie’ll show you where it is – before the wet so I can get seeds planted, and there’s fruit trees between the river an’ the garden which need waterin’ terrible bad. And Maisie can’t cook . . . we’re off on a muster. Can you stay and give Uncle Josh a hand here?’

Soljer agreed to stay, Uncle Josh welcomed him with open arms, and Mal rode out with the Wandina hands mounted on the best nags the station could provide and with a half-caste called Arthur bringing up the rear with the spare horses and all the camping gear.

It was a hot, dry day. As they trotted down the long, sandy track which led, eventually, to civilisation, Mal suddenly realised that he was completely happy for the first time since his mother had married Royce. In fact, he thought it went back further than that. He’d not known contentment like this since young Petey died. Mal had never forgotten his little brother nor the manner of his dying and he still had the nightmares, but had learned, even in his sleep, to control them. He never shouted out, or he didn’t think he did since the men who shared his bunkhouse had not complained. And besides, he was getting harder. Since Bill’s death he had realised that he would have to make his own way in life, for though Kath supported him, she was a mere female, not a member of the superior sex. So a nightmare was just a fantasy, nothing to be afraid of. If it upset him, he kicked it brusquely to the back of his mind and told himself that he was a Man, wasn’t he, and Men weren’t scared by shadows.

It was odd, Mal reflected now, feeling the sun burning down and glad of the shade of his broad-brimmed hat, that he’d had to wait until now to get contentment back. After Bill had died, life had been so tough for Kath and himself that the struggle to survive had simply eaten up every hour that came. School could not be relished, nor could games, food was sparse, clothing always hand-me-downs from the most unlikely sources, his mother always tired, always worried.

When they went to the station at Cooktown life had become easier, but only until the lady of the house started to make a fuss because Kath was prettier than she, and younger, livelier. Desperately dismayed, Kath and Mal had searched the papers and eventually struck gold and once they had moved to the Magellan life became not only easier but more fun, as well. Royce did not want his twin sons brought up to think that work was the only thing that mattered. For the first time for years, Mal found himself engaged in pursuits which were enjoyable and which didn’t necessarily fill his stomach or bring in money. He swam in the river, fished, went out rabbit shooting, or ’roo shooting, if the ’roos were taking what Royce considered was more than their fair share of the available grass. He played a peculiar sort of football with his cobbers on the river flats in the dry, and built tree-houses, fished for baby crocs and then teased the hands’ women by tipping the little creatures, snapping and wheezing, into their humpies and laughing as the women jumped on stools and screamed to the men to ‘Get ’em out, get ’em out!’

But right from the start he had known Royce was keen on his mother, even if she hadn’t known herself, and it had spoiled things for him. First it was Bill and me, then for a bit it was Petey and me, but both those things got spoiled, Mal thought. Then it was Mam and me, until Royce came along. Can’t I have anyone of my own?

And now, suddenly, he realised that it didn’t matter. He was a head stockman, in charge of the other hands, in time he would be running the station, others would consult him, ask his advice. It was more than he had dreamed of, more than he had any right to expect . . . and wasn’t it good? He thought of schoolmates in Melbourne, Sydney, and in all the small towns where he and his parents had roosted uneasily, waiting for the inevitable moment when Bill would lose yet another job. So many people he’d known over the years, and he’d lost touch with all of them so he couldn’t write and say ‘Look at me – I’ve made it, fellers!’

Still. He could be happy, could feel the warm glow of contentment. That would do for now.

Seven

September 1936

THERE WAS A
swing-seat in the garden of the Old House and Tess and Cherie were sitting on it, swinging gently. They were in league right now, and very nice it is too, Tess thought, to have someone unequivocally on my side.

After her adventure with Andy, her father had been very definitely on her side for quite a long time. He had taken her away from boarding school and turned her into a day-girl again despite Marianne’s vehement opposition, but it only lasted a term, and it had been Tess who had asked to go back to boarding again.

‘It’s easier if Marianne and I don’t see too much of each other,’ she had explained to Peter. ‘She can just about get through the summer hols if I steer clear most of the time. But non-stop me every evening . . . Daddy, it isn’t fair on any of us. I get defensive and you get nervy and Marianne gets . . . well, worse. I’d rather go back to boarding, honest.’

Peter had been glad to agree, and since he telephoned her either from the office or when Marianne was out of the way almost every evening during term-time she no longer felt that she had been dismissed. Well, not by Peter, at any rate, and she didn’t mind in the least being dismissed by Marianne.

But she missed Andy. They had spent that glorious summer holiday together, even though their enthusiasm for detective work had palled when they saw the size and complexity of the archives through which, they supposed, they must plod to discover where Leonora was buried.

‘We’ll try again at Christmas, when the weather isn’t so good,’ Andy had said, but a couple of days into the Christmas holiday he was recalled to Paris by his parents. And ever since then he’d gone straight to whichever embassy his parents were posted to when the holidays started, and returned to school without visiting Norfolk. He and Tess had exchanged letters and the odd card, but hadn’t met since that first wonderful summer.

‘He’s old enough to be interesting now, to his mother and father,’ Tess had said rather bitterly to Janet the last time a letter had arrived for her with a foreign postmark. ‘Still, I like his letters. They make me laugh.’ She and Janet were friends again, since Janet was now working behind the counter in Sainsbury’s on Gentleman’s Walk and was too tired to search Violet out when she got home at night. She was downright glad to meet up with Tess again, for Tess had caught up with Janet so far as interests went and could happily talk about film stars, plays, the Royal family, and anything else which struck them as worth investigation. Though Janet had never really known Andy she appreciated that Tess liked him and was glad to discuss the chances of his returning to Barton, if only because it meant she could, in return, tell Tess about Bertie, who was on the bacon slicer at work and who could be ever so cheeky and suggestive when he felt like it.

So one way and another, Tess thought now, gently rocking the swing seat with one sandalled foot, things weren’t so bad. She was happy at school and had several good friends, though she still didn’t invite people home. Peter appreciated that if she did, life would become difficult for them all, and he loved her more than ever, Tess thought indulgently, for not making an issue of it.