Inheritance (19 page)

‘Why don’t we have lunch now?’ asked Mark. ‘We’ve probably all had enough swimming for now. You stay here, Mother. Cassie and I’ll go back to the boat and bring the food.’

‘All right. Thank you. The children can stay here with me but they are not to go back in the water.’

‘We can go over to the rocks and look for crabs. Would that be all right?’ Larry asked.

‘Yes,’ Mark answered. ‘That’s all right.’

‘Put on your sandals or the rocks will hurt your feet, and your tops so you don’t get burnt,’ Nadia ordered them, sounding more like her usual self as she walked back to the umbrella.

Mark and Cassie left them obeying and climbed into the dinghy. ‘Poor Nadia, what a horrible experience that was for her. I hope she’s feeling better now,’ Cassie said as they headed back to the catamaran.

‘Let’s hope so. Yes, it could have turned out very nasty.’ Mark smiled at her. ‘Apart from that, are you enjoying yourself?’

‘Very much so.’ She smiled back, thinking she had seen a different side of him today. He had been patient and gentle with both Gemma and Larry, taking the time to give them confidence in their abilities in the water without pushing them. Quite the family man.

Climbing aboard the catamaran, they soon had the food packed and headed back.

Nadia came to the water’s edge to help them unload the provisions, the snake obviously pushed to the back of her mind.

Cassie helped Nadia set out the food and, in no time, they were all sitting down and enjoying the delicious lunch she had provided for them. There was cold chicken and salad, prawns and chilli calamari. And a large cheese platter to finish. Lemonade for Gemma and Larry and a bottle of chilled white wine for the adults. Then Nadia produced a large chocolate cake, iced and with the words ‘Happy Birthday Gemma’ written on it. She put six candles on top and Mark lit them. They all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ while Gemma blew them out.

‘Now you have to make a wish,’ Larry told her while she was blowing.

When the candles were all out, they watched while she carefully inserted the knife and cut the first slice. Then Nadia took over and handed the slices around.

‘Boy, that was good. Thank you, Mrs Pierce. I couldn’t eat another thing.’ Larry spoke contentedly and Nadia smiled warmly at him.

‘You are very welcome, Larry. I am glad you enjoyed it. Now, why don’t you and Gemma see if you can find some more little crabs among the rocks? We will just sit here for a while.’

‘Do you want to, Gemma?’ Larry asked.

‘Yes.’ She was up and skipping across the sand. Larry bounded after her.

‘It is good to see her enjoying herself so much,’ Nadia said. ‘Now I may lean back and have a little nap.’ And she settled herself back in her seat and closed her eyes.

Cassie packed away the remains of the lunch. Replete and satisfied, Mark and Cassie sat on the rug in the shade, talking idly about the wonderful experience of the Great Barrier Reef and what they had seen below the waters.

Finally Cassie lay back and stretched out. The sun, the swimming and the two glasses of wine she had drunk combined to make her drowsy. She was dozing when Gemma came running back with her sandal in her hand.

‘Daddy,’ Gemma called, ‘the strap’s come off my sandal. Can you fix it for me?’ She held the sandal out to Mark, who sat up and took it from her.

‘Yes, I think I can fix that. Just sit down for a minute.’

Gemma sat down alongside Cassie, who sat up, yawning.

‘Larry and I found lots of pools with little crabs hiding under stones in them.’ Gemma told them excitedly. ‘He’s been telling me about the snake we saw in the water, too. The snake is his totem. It’s very important. When the Earth was first made, the Great Snake wriggled across the ground and made the places for the water to come behind him and that’s how the rivers were made.’ She nodded her head to emphasise the importance of this information. ‘I didn’t know that but Larry knows all about it. And the Ancient Spirits were so pleased with the snake, they told him he would always be very important.’

‘Gemma, I don’t want you listening to such rubbish!’ Mark frowned and spoke angrily. ‘If that’s the sort of thing Larry’s filling your head with, then you’d better not spend any more time with him.’

He stood up, glaring down at Gemma, who ran across to her grandmother and hid her head against her shoulder.

‘Mark, control yourself.’ Nadia spoke sharply. ‘Go on back, Gemma, look for more crabs.’ She gave the girl a push and Gemma ran quickly back across the sand, disappearing behind a large rock.

‘I will not have her head filled with that rubbish,’ Mark thundered.

Cassie flushed with annoyance. ‘Larry’s only passing on the legends of the Dreamtime.’ She spoke hotly. ‘It won’t do Gemma any harm to know something of the aborigine’s beliefs.’ Standing, she confronted Mark.

He scowled at her. ‘She belongs to a Christian race and I don’t want her hearing a lot of heathen mumbo-jumbo.’

‘I have never known you to take much interest in your religion,’ Nadia snapped. ‘I am lucky if you come to church with me at Christmas and Easter.’

‘You keep out of this, Mother. She’s my daughter and she’ll be brought up how I say.’

Nadia tossed her head. ‘You need not shout at me!’

‘Ancient Spirits, indeed,’ Mark snorted. ‘I’m going over to give Larry a kick in the backside and tell him to keep away from my daughter.’

A wave of anger surged through Cassie. ‘Don’t you dare go and humiliate him and belittle his beliefs!’ Her voice rose. ‘I knew you were arrogant the first time I met you. What I didn’t realise is that you’re racially prejudiced and…and a narrow minded bigot as well.’

Mark’s eyes blazed. ‘I am not racially prejudiced. I just don’t want her exposed to this nonsense. I don’t want my daughter to grow up a…a hippie or…a…a flower child…or…or worse!’

Cassie was furious. ‘These are the same legends that Sam used to tell me as a child! Are you saying that I’m a hippie?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘You’re the one who’s being ridiculous. If you’ll calm down for a minute, you’ll realise that all we have to do is explain to Gemma, and Larry, that there are many beliefs in the world and they’re all valid. Didn’t you tell me that you envied me being exposed to different cultures as a child?’

‘That’s different.’

‘How is it different?’

Mark had the grace to look uncomfortable but he was not about to yield.

‘All right.
You’re
the expert on this.
You
tell her. And it better be good!’ He sat down on the rug again, his mouth set in a hard line.

Cassie called out loudly, ‘Gemma, Larry! Come over here.’ Both children emerged from the shelter of the rock. They came slowly across the sand, Larry hanging his head and scuffing the sand with his foot.

Cassie took a deep breath. ‘Sit down,’ she told them, forcing her voice to sound calm.

They did so, silently, all traces of their former high spirits gone.

Cassie joined them on the rug.

‘You know, Larry, I know a lot about your Dreamtime. Sam used to tell me when I was a little girl.’

‘You do?’ He raised his head to look at her. ‘You know about totems and things?’

‘Oh, yes. I also know about the Christian beliefs. I learnt about them, too, at Sunday school, when I was a little girl.’

‘I’ve been to Sunday school,’ Gemma offered, hopefully, eyes wide.

‘Good. You see, there are a lot of different beliefs in the world. And they’re all real. Different people have different beliefs. A lot of it depends on where you’re born and what you learn as a child. You see, Christians believe in one Almighty God and that he had a son called Jesus, and he had twelve disciples to help him tell people what was the right way to do things. That was two thousand years ago. We Christians learn all about that from going to church where the priests or ministers tell us.’

Cassie leant over and picked up a shell from the sand, turning it over in her hands as she continued. ‘You learn about the Dreamtime from your parents or the elders, Larry. That’s the aboriginal religion and culture. That goes way, way back. Perhaps even sixty thousand years. As old as when the first shells were created.’ She held it up for them to see, a miracle of perfection surviving from an earlier age.

‘There are also people in the world with different beliefs again. There are Jews, Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus and more. They call their God by a different name but he’s true for them.’

‘But how can they all be true?’ It was Larry who spoke but both children looked puzzled.

Mark looked at Cassie with a quizzical raise of the eyebrows, which clearly said ‘how will you explain this?’

‘Sometimes the truth looks different to different people, depending on how you’re looking at it,’ Cassie told them. ‘What colour is the sea?’

‘Blue,’ responded Gemma definitely.

‘Quite right, but if the sky was cloudy, what colour would it be?’

‘Grey,’ Larry put in quickly.

‘Right. Two different colours for the sea but both true. What colour is a cloud?’

‘White,’ said Gemma.

‘But what colour is it at sunset?’

‘Pink.’ Larry again.

‘You see, you’ve both given me different answers about two things, but you’ve both told the truth. It all depends on how you’re looking at it. It’s the same with our beliefs. They’re all true. It’s just different ways of looking at them. And different names given by different cultures.’

‘Like different colours in the same kind of flowers?’ Gemma asked hopefully.

‘Yes.’

‘So all the religions believe their Gods created the Earth; they just tell it in different ways.’ Larry looked solemn and spoke slowly, frowning as he obviously tried to set it straight in his mind.

‘Exactly.’ Cassie nodded, and saw that Nadia was doing the same thing.

‘Then that’s all right, then.’ Relief sounded in Larry’s voice and his face lost its worried expression.

Gemma jumped up. ‘So that’s all right. Can we go now, please, Daddy?’

‘Hmph. Yes I guess so. Better not go back in the water, though. We’ll be going soon.’ He thrust the sandal at Gemma. ‘Here. Put this on! You’ll hurt your foot.’

Gemma took the sandal, sat down and put it on without a word, then jumped up and took Larry’s hand, pulling at him till he stood up too. ‘Come on! Let’s look for shells.’ Off they ran, their spirits seemingly restored.

‘You handled that so well, Cassie. You really have a way with children.’ Nadia’s voice was full of admiration.

‘I hope they understood. It’s not an easy concept for them to grasp.’

‘You explained it beautifully.’

‘I think it’s time we were going.’ Mark’s voice interrupted. ‘If I can cut short your admiration session. If you gather up the rest of the gear, I’ll put it all in the dinghy and take it back to the boat. Then I’ll come back for everyone.’

Picking up the food hamper, he stalked down to the dinghy.

Nadia shook her head. ‘There are times when he is as hard as his father was. Pig-headed, too. Men hate to admit when they are in the wrong, I have noticed.’

Cassie gave a rueful laugh. ‘You’re right.’ She itched to tell Mark what she thought of his behaviour, but did not want to upset Nadia further. ‘Let’s get the gear together; we don’t want to keep him waiting.’ She started to collect their belongings.

Nadia did the same. ‘He will be like a bear with a sore head now, there will be no talking to him for the rest of the day,’ she predicted.

Sure enough, Mark collected the next load without saying a word. When he returned for the last pile he said, brusquely, ‘I’ll leave the umbrella till I come back,
and
the rug,’ he added, as Cassie bent to lift it. She opened her mouth to make a cross reply, but thought better of it, so glared at him but made no comment.

As the dinghy approached the beach on his return, Nadia called the children. When he returned to collect them, they were all ready and waiting for him, rug folded and umbrella furled. He bundled them all into the dinghy and returned to the boat without a word.

It was a silent trip home.

On Saturday, Rosie whistled cheerfully as she dressed for the rodeo in a blue checked shirt and snug fitting jeans, and perched an Akubra hat on her short brown curls.

Ben arrived to pick her up on the dot of nine.

‘Hi,’ she greeted him, ‘I like a man who’s punctual.’

‘Didn’t want to keep you waiting, babe.’ He looked her up and down. ‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, you look gorgeous. Fresh and pretty, just like a country girl should look. And I love your turned-up nose!’

Rosie blushed. ‘Get out with you!’

‘I mean it. And you should always wear that colour blue, it matches your eyes. I’ll be proud to be seen with you, babe.’

‘Well, it’s nice to receive a compliment now and then,’ she laughed.

He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before opening the car door for her, then climbed in himself.

The CD player blared forth a Willie Nelson song. Ben turned it down low. ‘We’ve got a long way to go, so just settle back and enjoy yourself. We’ll have some music on the way. I hope you like Country and Western.’

‘It’s my favourite.’

‘So, how’s things at Yallandoo Station?’ he asked as they headed out on to the road. ‘How’s the boss lady?’

Rosie frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call her that. Her name’s Cassie!’

Ben laughed. ‘Sorry, babe. I forgot. Anyway, how is she?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘Pretty nice spread she’s got. Been in the family for years, I suppose.’

‘Yes. For over a hundred years.’

‘Pioneers, eh? Wonder if they had much trouble with the blacks back in those days?’

‘Apparently not. They seem to have been a peaceable tribe and the family treated them well.’

‘I suppose there would’ve been a lot of them around here, what with plenty of water and the rainforest and all. Plenty of tucker.’

‘I guess so.’

‘I wonder where they would have camped. The rain can be pretty fierce up here, they’d have needed more shelter than just their bark huts.’

‘There’re caves up in the hills behind the rainforest. They used them. One of them has drawings in it going back goodness knows how long.’