Still Waters (33 page)

But now, standing on the margin of the Broad watching as his daughter and her companion pulled the boat out, dealt with the sails, the mast, their gear, he could still remember every line of Leonora’s profile, every fluid movement. Leonora, so like Tess. When Tess reached up for the mast, one long, lovely line, pain, raw as salt in a wound, stabbed him. Ziggy gone, Leonora gone . . . but he had survived and was, he reminded himself briskly, turning back towards the terrace, a damned lucky fellow. He was happy, Marianne was a good wife in many ways, Tess and Cherie good daughters. His home was much loved, he was successful at work and could still play a brisk game of squash, a punishing round of golf. Whilst Leonora . . .

Tears formed in his eyes and he stared at the house and the terrace as though through water. God, he missed her!

Nine

The Wandina, January 1939

UNCLE JOSH HAD
been old when Mal first took over as head stockman at the Wandina, but he didn’t get ill until he got bit by the red-back spider – if it was a red-back – and it wasn’t until he got bit by the red-back that Mal discovered the disadvantages of illness in the wet.

Wally had come back from hospital within a couple of months of Mal arriving, but he was crippled and there was no hope of any further recovery, the doctors said. Fortunately, Wally was the sort of man who took everything philosophically. He limped into the kitchen at Wandina that first evening, grinned at Mal, said, ‘G’day; you the new head stockman?’ and then slumped into a chair.

‘G’day. You’ll be Wally,’ Mal said carefully. Wally was tall and broad, even though he limped. ‘I ain’t took your job, you know. It’s just that Uncle Josh needed a temporary replacement . . .’

‘Came to say you ain’t a temp’rary replacement no more,’ Wally interrupted. ‘This ’un . . .’ He slapped his right leg, which was shorter than the left and drawn up in an awkward manner, the knee pointing always inwards. ‘. . . This ’un won’t work no more, not ever. The docs say it’s crook for good. I’ll never ride another muster. Right?’

‘What’ll you do?’ Mal said, horrified by the other man’s words. ‘If you can’t ride . . .’

‘I can cook, sew, mend harness, tack up, mebbe even shoe a horse,’ Wally said. ‘I ain’t never tried to shoe a horse, but if the smith’ll learn me . . .’

‘You can cook?’ Mal’s voice rose to an adolescent squeak from sheer excitement. He was so sick of trying to cook, trying to jam some ideas other than bully beef and sweet potatoes boiled to mush into Maisie’s head . . . He cleared his throat and dropped his voice into his boots. ‘You say you can
cook
? Oh boy, oh boy, oh
boy
!’

From that moment on, they’d got on great, just great. Wally wasn’t just any cook, he was superb. He read up recipes and followed them to the letter, spent hours ‘figurin’ out’ as he called it why a dish had not turned out quite as planned, and took an enthusiastic interest both in the ordering of supplies, which was a nightmare for Mal, and in the growing of their garden, though he could not do much in the way of heavy digging or planting out.

Uncle Josh paid him a good wage and his keep, so that was all right, and though occasionally Wally watched them going off on a muster and then got roaring drunk, he was always sober again by the time Mal and the hands rode home and Uncle Josh just chuckled and said it wasn’t a
serious
binge, just a ‘poor bloody Wally’ one.

In the two years which had elapsed since Mal had left the Magellan, he had been home twice, and found to his surprise that he had thoroughly enjoyed both visits. Royce and Kath were patently happy and the new baby, Susie, was a plump and chuckling armful who was adored by everyone on the station, especially the twins.

‘We earn good money lookin’ after her, Mal,’ Bart told him. ‘We takes her out in the tug-cart an’ sit her on the swing . . . and Mum counts the hours we do and Dad pays us at the end of the week.’

It made Mal chuckle, but he admired his mother’s planning. She had got herself two happy little boys who were doing just as she wished and thinking themselves lucky to be doing it.

And now that he was away from the Magellan, he got on very much better with Royce. Royce said he was much missed, which is always good to hear, and then the two of them discussed the running of their separate stations and Mal unashamedly picked Royce’s brains and Royce said he was going to take on several of Mal’s ideas.

But getting back to the Wandina was best. Until Josh trod on the red-back, that was.

They had had a good Christmas. The hands loved the wet because they couldn’t do anywhere near as much work with the river swollen and every creek a torrent and they loved Christmas because of the presents, the food and the fun and games. That year, Uncle Josh had got store-bought presents for them, putting in a big order in November and then being very secretive over six packing cases and not allowing anyone else near them.

Excitement reached fever pitch on Christmas Eve and spilled over into wild revels on Christmas Day. Then things quieted down a trifle, what with the wet and all.

Mal decided afterwards that the red-back – if that’s what it was – must have come in from the wet, because the day Uncle Josh was taken bad the rain was coming down like great steel rods, sizzling and bouncing on the baked earth, making clouds of steam rise up from the tops of banks and the ridges of the plough. They had had a good breakfast, starting with porridge, going on with fried potatoes, bacon and eggs and finishing up with a good deal of bread and butter spread thick with marmalade. Wally made the nicest marmalade Mal had ever tasted. He made it from their own fruit but instead of using just oranges he used lemons too and a few limes, and it was so good that Kath, presented with a tub last winter, in the dry, had actually asked Wally for his recipe.

Uncle Josh was pottering round as usual in an old pair of carpet slippers, with his reading glasses on his nose in case he saw something he fancied reading. There had been a storm of alarming ferocity in the night and when Mal looked out of the window at about three a.m. it was like trying to look through a waterfall, so he wasn’t surprised to find three angry scorpions in the bath-tub that morning and that was a sure sign that the migration had begun. He had warned Uncle Josh to look out, but they all knew there was a lot of luck involved with creepies. There were just so many of them around the house and outbuildings once the wet got going.

Mal still wasn’t truly used to it – the migration. Kath called it that. She said that the moment the wet started every living creepy-crawly – and that included snakes, scorpions and spiders – would be fighting for a place in a nice dry house or store, so everyone had to look out. She also said that nothing bites you for fun, only if it believes you’re threatening its life, but no one seemed to have told the creepies this interesting fact. Mal had been stung by a scorpion within a month of arriving at the Magellan, and only prompt action by Royce, who had cut the wound, sucked out the poison and doused it with meths, had saved him from what Royce had called ‘a nasty experience’.

And when it rained the way it had last night damage was nearly always done. The Wandina owned four boats, two quite large and two very small, and because of the way the river had risen they would now be bobbing about in midstream – if their anchor ropes hadn’t snapped, that was. So Mal was getting ready to go out and most of the hands were doing the same. He would round up the fowls and feed them and all the rest of the livestock which was kept close to the house – the pig-pens might well be awash – and then check as best he might on the horses and those of the herd close enough to the homestead to be checked. And whilst he got ready to go Maisie was washing up, Wally was mending harness and the cook-boy, Toulu, was peeling potatoes.

Uncle Josh’s yell brought them all running, but at first they couldn’t find him. He didn’t seem to be in the sitting-room, they knew he wasn’t in the kitchen, the verandah was no place to sit in the wet . . .

‘Him in he bedroom,’ Maisie gasped out. ‘On the floor . . . him look bad!’

He didn’t just look bad, he looked very strange, but that was because his face and neck had swollen and gone a sort of bluish pink. He was also deeply unconscious.

‘He’s been bit,’ Wally said. ‘Snake? Scorpy?’

They scanned the room but could see nothing. ‘Red-back,’ Mal decided. They were small, almost impossible to see in a crowded little room like this. ‘Find the punctures.’

When Mal first arrived at the Wandina Uncle Josh had been old but big. Now, without Mal really noticing, he had become even older, thin and rather frail. It took no strength to lift him up and carry him out of the dark little room into the bright, noisy kitchen. Maisie did it before either of the men could stop her. She laid him on the big, scrubbed wooden table and before anyone could say anything, she had his shirt off and was examining his skinny, bony chest for signs of puncture marks. There were none.

‘It’ll be on his face or neck, where the swellin’ is,’ Mal gasped, and grabbed the old man’s head, turning it sideways. ‘Look, all of you!’

They looked, but could find no puncture marks.

‘If it was a red-back there won’t be much of a mark to notice,’ Wally said. ‘But there’s a flush round the bite, so they say.’

‘Your Colly was bit last year, Mais,’ Mal said suddenly, struck by the recollection of Colly’s embittered remarks – and yells – at the time. ‘What did the wound look like? Was there a flush round it?’

Maisie snorted. ‘Colly him too black to see some li’l mark,’ she said scornfully. ‘Him say . . .
“It hurt there, fool woman, there!
”, so I made the cut where he say.’

‘Well, I’m not cuttin’ at random,’ Mal said uneasily. ‘But somethin’ ought to be done; I don’t like the look of him at all, he’s goin’ bluer by the minute.’

It was Wally who thought of pressing . . . and it did the trick. He began by pressing lightly with his careful cook’s hands all round Josh’s neck, moving up and up until a pressure behind the old man’s right ear brought a strangled shriek from Josh.

‘Found it!’ ‘That’s got ’un!’
‘Now
you’re talkin’!’ came from three mouths simultaneously. Mal reached out for a sharp kitchen knife, Wally bent the old man’s long, withered ear carefully forward and Maisie lit a candle from the kitchen stove and held it above the table.

‘There!’ Mal said. He pressed the blade into the flesh and felt the hard lump where the venom had entered. Uncle Josh groaned, loud and deep, then gave a short, barking cry . . . and blood spurted as Wally did his best to press out the venom.

‘We’ll have to get him to a hospital though,’ Mal said, carefully laying down the knife. ‘The first blood was black, but this looks red again – is that a good sign, Mais?’

Maisie shrugged. ‘Dunno. Best get the Boss to the ’ospital, like you done say. Him old. Poison go deeper when him old.’

‘Right. Wally, I’ll have to take Soljer and some of the other fellers, because of the rivers. Can you cope? You give the orders, they’ll do as they’re told. If you see anything needs doin’, get it done. Right?’

‘Right,’ Wally said quickly. ‘You’ll want tucker; I’ll do that. And a swag. Mais, pack their swags. You’ll take him on a waggon?’

‘Nope. River’s too high,’ Mal said. He didn’t even have to think about it. After two years of living in this particular part of the country he knew that it would be boat and horses, with Uncle Josh propped up in a sort of hammock held between two of the steadiest mounts. ‘Get the fellers to tack up would you, Wally?’

After that all was bustle, and in less time than he had imagined the little procession was all ready to set out for the river, with Uncle Josh, unconscious still but looking no worse, in a canvas sling between Mal and Soljer’s mounts.

‘I hope to God we’re doing the right thing,’ Mal had said privately to Wally just before they left. ‘Suppose we make him worse?’

‘If you can reach the Saundersfoot homestead there’s women there who know a thing or two,’ Wally advised. ‘One of them, old lady Saundersfoot, was a nurse. Or you might leave him there and go and fetch a doc to him. It don’t matter which way you do it, s’long as he’s brung round all right.’

‘Right,’ Mal said. ‘You do your best, Wally. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

And now they were on their way at last. What’ll I do if he dies before we get to Saundersfoot, though? Mal worried. It was a big responsibility, taking the old man away from his home in conditions like these. It was very hot, but the clouds overhead were black and so low they seemed to press on the tops of the trees which grew on the river banks. There’s going to be a storm presently, Mal thought, and then what’ll we do?

They reached the river, which had risen so that the black mud flats where the Wandina maize would later be planted were under water. The boats were in what looked like midstream and it was only by straining his eyes that Mal could see the further bank, or rather the line where water and land met, for the river had flooded equally on both sides. The boats were pulling at their mooring chains though, so Mal dismounted, told Soljer to take charge of both mounts and the stretcher between them, took off his tall boots and shed hat and coat, and waded into the strong-flowing, muddy water. It wasn’t pleasant, his feet sank into the rich mud, but the current’s tug was only medium strong. He turned back to the silent watchers on the bank.

‘Rupert, can you swim out to the boats with me, help bring them inshore?’

Rupert was twenty or so, with a happy disposition and a good deal of natural intelligence. What was more, though most of the men swam well without thinking about it, Rupert was their champion. Unusually, he was well over six feet in height and muscular with it. He had come across the Wandina a couple of years ago when he was on walkabout, and had stayed when asked to do so. He must have been mustering for years despite his youth, Mal thought, and he certainly seemed to enjoy his work. He was naturally athletic, a born horseman as canny in the saddle as Mal himself, and extremely strong.

‘Sure, Boss. Now?’

For answer, Mal waded further into the flood and Rupert splashed in after him. Together, they continued until the water reached their waists, then launched themselves into deep water. They swam strongly out to the boats and Rupert seized the mooring chain of one of the larger ones, but Mal, bobbing up beside him, shook his head.