A Bush Christmas (12 page)

‘Yes. And I need to give him a chance.'

‘We all deserve a chance, Princess.' Stirling grinned. ‘Even beauticians and fancy saleswomen wearing ladybeetle gumboots.'

Jaime laughed and started tickling again.

When they both had run out of breath, Stirling landed a kiss on her head and then rolled himself upright. He pulled her to her feet beside him, took her by the hand and led her back towards the table and fishing rods.

‘What are you doing?' she asked.

He pointed upwards. ‘See that branch of skinny leaves that looks a lot darker than the others?'

She nodded her head. Once you got your eye in, it did look significantly different to the rest of the tree.

‘That's mistletoe. It's parasitic growth on the tree so normally I'd hate it. But today …' He pulled her in close, dropped his lips towards hers. ‘It'll serve my purpose well.'

And he kissed her. Thoroughly.

 

It was eight o'clock in the evening before they all managed to make it back up to the homestead. Dave was drunk and collapsed on the couch. Blanche was sitting with his head in her lap, feet in her new footbath, reading a book on quilting Dave had given her for Christmas. Apparently that was her next crafting effort. Jaime was relieved. At least she
liked
patchwork.

Jaime heard the last vehicle's horn play a jangling tune as it wove its way down the drive. Bluey and Jean and their six rug-rats. She wondered if the parents had seen the kids' handiwork in the dust spattered across the back window of the old Nissan Patrol. ‘WASH ME' and ‘BLUEY LOVES JEAN' had been drawn into the dried mud. That hadn't been so bad. It was the ‘STIRLING 4 JJ' that had stopped her in her tracks. The little buggers had thought it hilarious.

Jaime could hear another smaller vehicle coming up from the flats. Stirling with his last load of tables and chairs, she guessed.

She'd asked him to pick her up, as she wanted to do a little job before Christmas Day ended and Boxing Day, the
real
anniversary of her father's death, started.

She heard the toot of the four-wheeler's horn outside the window.

‘Back soon, Mum.'

‘No worries, honey,' called Blanche, glancing up distractedly. Her nose was back in the book before Jaime was out the door.

As she exited the house, Jaime found the switch she wanted, flicked it on and strode out the door.

Stirling met her with a wry smile. He could immediately see the effects of what she'd done. ‘To the gate?' he suggested.

She nodded, mounted up behind him, but not before she'd patted Busters One and Two. Both mutts gave a doggy grin.

And Jaime
did
grin as they parked the bike beside the road near the front gate. For now there were two houses, the main homestead as well as Stirling's place, lit up within an inch of their lives. Both houses were framed perfectly by the metal arch over the entrance and blazed Christmas cheer to anyone who drove past.

Above them, the words POLLY'S PLAINS were shining brighter than the heavens.

Jaime cuddled into the back of Stirling McEvoy and soaked it all in.

‘So, are you going to stay on?' asked Stirling, his tentative voice sliding over his shoulder to blend with the clear mountain air.

‘You betcha,' she said.

She felt the man she was cuddling sag with relief.

He got off the bike, gave her a hand to do the same.

With them both standing front to back and facing the property and all of its blazing Christmas lights, Stirling wrapped his arms around her and cuddled her into his big broad chest. She settled into his all-encompassing embrace, rested her head against his shirt and relished a feeling that was redolent with the sense of coming home.

She sighed with pleasure and felt the man behind give her a reassuring squeeze. He dropped his head to hers and lightly kissed her hair.

She snuggled into Stirling's arms even further. It was time to push past the grief for her father and move on.

This place had restored her happiness.

She was content.

‘Thank you, Polly,' she whispered.

Exciting news!

Following the release of
A Bush Christmas
in December 2012, Margareta received many requests from her readers for more about Jaime, Stirling and the other inhabitants of Burdekin's Gap.

So, by popular demand, she has now adapted this novella into a full-length novel, available in both print and ebook in March 2015.

Look out for ROSE RIVER!

 

 

Now read on for a taster of Margareta Osborn's previous novel

McCauley's Hill

Gippsland, Victoria

The girl clambered through the boundary fence. Spindly arms, matchstick legs, long brown hair flying in bits across a grubby face. Her clothes were getting caught on the razor-sharp barbed wire. He could see her little body twisting this way then that, trying to unsnag herself. She was a determined little devil. Would she be game enough to set foot on the place?

Others had come before her: sneaky little bastards trying to get the better of him. They'd come on good days and he'd only shot at the air above their heads.

Today? Well, this day was different. He was mad. Wild crazy off his head.

That morning, Mae Rouget, gliding down the main street of Narree. Immaculately dressed, beautiful as ever – every inch the princess who should've been his. The woman who had remained in his dreams for years …

Joe took another look in the gun scope at the boundary. The girl had made it through the wire and now was standing looking up at his hill, one hand on her dirty brow, another on a slight hip. She was dressed in buttery yellow shorts and a mud-coloured top that he guessed had once been white. The sleeves of the shirt were torn and decorated with splatters of ruby-red. The barbed wire had obviously cut a bit deep, although it hadn't stopped her from getting through. She was a McCauley: that was for sure.

Joe contemplated her a minute longer, made a decision and started to sneak down the slope through the scrub using a track barely discernible to the eye. As he snuck along the path that hugged the boundary fence, tall box and ironbark trees with their thick, crusty trunks stood sentinel in the adjoining state forest.

He swung inland, creeping past massive red gums that stretched resplendent limbs to capture air and sky. Centuries old, they had seen their fair share of hard times, just like the elderly man sidling under them. The scattered eucalypts then gave way to thick burgan and black wattle scrub, determined in its effort to claim this eastern side of the hill. The thick bushes, with their understorey of bracken fern, hid him from anyone looking up. As he rounded a blind corner he startled a grazing wallaby, sending it on an erratic escape, bounding back towards the scrub that surrounded his property on three sides – this rocky, dry hill with its miserable soil. The place he called home.

It took him a good five minutes to reach the bottom of McCauley's Hill, but there she was. She hadn't moved: still stood standing like she was contemplating what to do next. A Jack Russell dog ran around at her feet, nose to the ground, the scent of rabbit probably wafting from the burrows threaded through his gravelly mountain. She couldn't have been any older than five or six. It was the granddaughter.

He pulled up his gun. ‘Get the hell off my farm, you land-grabbing little fucker!'

The currawong's cry floated on the wisp of a breeze into the dairy. Tamara McCauley hauled down on the milking machine, urging the final milk to keep flowing into the cups attached to the cow's teats. With the new run-off property to pay for, she needed every drop she could get.

‘Whoot, whoot weee-ow,' the pied currawong called again. Piercingly, this time.

It was going to rain. The bird was an infallible storm predictor. And she'd just ordered irrigation water, damn it. This would send Shon over the edge. Tammy shivered and automatically fingered her left eye. The bruise was turning a nasty yellow colour.

The marriage was over, of that much she was sure. She was going to kick him out, however frightened she was of the confrontation.

Tammy pulled off the teat cups, let the platform of cows go and followed them out to a nearby paddock to latch the gate. Gravel crunched on the driveway and she looked up to spy a small white car sitting beside the mail-drum at the entrance to the farm. Lucy. Just finished her night shift, no doubt. She would want a cuppa and some toast before heading home to bed. Of course that was after she'd finished rubbing the prodigious stomach of the Buddha sitting hidden in the grass beside the old gatepost. Wealth and good fortune was supposed to be the reward for such loving care and Lucy couldn't go past the old fella without stopping and giving him a tickle. Tammy wasn't sure what the forty-year-old nurse was wishing for though. To Tammy's mind her friend had it all – lovely quaint cottage painted a delicate shade of lavender, a lazy tabby cat for company and a nice pot-belly stove to keep her warm.

Not like the homestead here, which was a cold, dark place most of the time. Heavy antique furniture guarded a century of memories and, when Shon was around, the place was filled with tension and anger. They had a cat somewhere too but it knew to stay out of the way.

Tammy started to trudge back towards the dairy, her gumboots flipping and flapping against her slim legs. She wished so hard for a life filled with love and family again. After her grandparents had died eight years earlier it had seemed like all the light and energy had disappeared. The only family she had left was her husband, a man who was currently stomping on their marriage as though it was dog shit. The only man in the family left standing.

Well – that wasn't
entirely
true. Her eyes flicked up towards the mountain partially shrouding the farm in its early-morning shadow. So deep was the cleft at the base of the mount, the sun hadn't yet penetrated that part of its eastern face. Shadows left a deep scar at the bottom of the rising bush, a black space like a roaring monster's mouth, warning all and sundry not to enter. Tammy stifled a shudder. Well, that was a pretty apt representation of old Joe McCauley, the man who owned the mountain.

A smudge of smoke wafted lazily through the crisp air, probably issuing from Joe's chimney. Tammy squinted: if she looked hard enough there were actually two wisps of smoke up there on Hope's Road. The one to the south came from Travis Hunter's; he was the new wild-dog trapper, moved in six months back. The one to the north was old Joe's, and by the size of the smoke plume his fire was burning well this morning, which meant Joe himself was up and about. She really shouldn't have to tell whether her great-uncle was alive and kicking from a curl of smoke, but that was life here in the Narree Valley – life for the remaining McCauleys at least. Some disagreement between him and Tammy's grandfather had led to this point. He was her only relation but he hadn't spoken to her since she was a small kid, and that had been to swear at her for trespassing.

She was only six at the time. Had gone home repeating the word he'd used – had seemed to take such delight in. ‘Fucker. Fucker.' Rolling it around her tongue until she got the inflection right. She'd sounded just like him – that crazy old man! She yelled it at Jack the dog, when he took off after a rabbit, and stood there, proud of herself. She hadn't known her grandfather was coming up behind her with a bowl of dog food.

The Tabasco sauce her grandparents had put on her tongue that night for saying such a word had burned like heck. They hadn't asked her where she'd heard it, which was just as well because she would have had to lie. Even back then she sensed it wasn't good to talk about the man who had a face like her grandfather's but was never mentioned by name.

As Tammy walked, she gazed out beyond her farm towards the Great Dividing Range guarding this little hamlet in Gippsland from the rest of the world. She sighed. Montmorency Downs, her family property, went back five generations. A place inexplicably linked to her by blood, dirt, and once upon a time by love. At the moment she wished she were a long way away.

Her eyes drifted back to the gateway and the little white car. Lucy was still rubbing the old guy's tummy. Putting two fingers to the roof of her mouth, Tammy let out an ear-piecing whistle. Lucy stood up and waved, then moved towards her car.

Shon had given her the concrete cast of the Buddha one Christmas a couple of years back. A backhanded slap at his wife's Catholic roots, she guessed. A wife who, he'd stated the night before, was worthless and useless.

‘I feel nothing for you. Nothing, ya hear me! You're a frigid bitch of a thing; I wish I'd never laid eyes on ya.' Shon's ruddy face had pulsed with fury. Purple veins stood out on his temples as he pinned her down on the ground with his knee in her chest. ‘Give me those bloody keys. I'm going.'

‘You're not getting them. You can't leave for the weekend. I need you here!'

She may as well have spoken to the Buddha. Shon ignored her then just like he'd been ignoring everything she said for the last few years.

‘Give me them fuckin' keys!' He was unrelenting, sitting his solid weight on her thrashing legs, pulling at her arms, ruthlessly digging the car keys out of her hand. ‘Where's that big almighty God of yours now?' he taunted, with one last jab into her chest with his knee. He got up, victorious, keys dangling in his hand. ‘Fucking pissed him off too, I'll bet.'

The disgust on his face as he looked down at her was enough.

She'd lain on the ground, trying to not show fear or how much she hurt. Trying not to give him the satisfaction. But he knew. His triumphant smile told her he had her right where he wanted her. Way down low – as low her self-esteem could go. Oh yes, Mr Shon Murphy was all-powerful, wearing king's clothes last night. And she, Tammy McCauley Murphy, was the doormat he could wipe his boots on whenever he felt like it. Well, she'd show him. My oath she would. Enough was enough.

‘Gidday!'

Tammy hadn't heard the car reach the yard.

‘What's up your gander this fine morning?' asked Lucy, as she emerged. ‘Your face looks like it's swallowed a lemon.'

Tammy shook her head, tried to stop her hands from trembling. ‘The only lemon around here is that Ford you're driving.' She dodged as her friend threw a fake punch with mittened fists.

‘You better watch out, woman, or one day you'll feel the end of my glove up close and personal. I'm doing boxercise, did I tell you?'

Tammy rolled her eyes. ‘Last week it was Zumba, this week it's boxing. What's next week? Pole dancing? When the hell are you going to stick to one form of exercise, Luce?'

‘As soon as I get rid of this spare tyre I've been lugging around.' Lucy grabbed at her middle and pinched at a roll beneath her tasselled jumper. ‘Variety is the spice of life. I can't
get it from this diet I'm on or from a bloke, so I've only got exercise left. I just have to find something that suits me. That goes for both physical activity
and
men.' Lucy's smiling face suddenly turned thoughtful. She wrinkled her nose, causing the tiny stud clinging to the side of it to glint in the sun. ‘Mmmm … Pole dancing? Now why didn't I think of that?'

‘Forget I said it. Boxercise sounds fine.'

‘Oh, you can talk – you tiny little thing. Metabolisms like yours make me sick. I swear you could live on chips and cakes for a whole month and you wouldn't put on a kilo. Not fair, Mrs Murphy, not fair at all.'

Tammy scowled. She didn't want to hear that surname this morning. ‘It's Ms McCauley to you, you insolent witch.' She tried to smile to take the sting from her words. It nearly worked. The thought of Lucy pole dancing was what did it. Those short, stocky legs, entwined around a stainless-steel pole.

‘C'mon, woman, you might get some toast if you're lucky. You need feeding up, with everything you've got going on in your life.' Tammy started to turn and walk towards the house.

It was right about then that Lucy noticed her limp.

Bugger.

She grabbed at Tammy's arm, spun her around. ‘What happened to you?' She wasn't playing anymore; the look in her eyes was serious.

‘A cow kicked me this morning while I was bringing her into the cow-yard. It's nothing.'

Lucy leaned in and took a closer look at Tammy's face. ‘And what about this? How'd the cow kick you up there?' A soft hand cupped Tammy's chin and turned her face into the light. ‘That
fucking bastard
! He's bloody well gone and done it this time. He's hit you, hasn't he?'

‘It's nothing, I said.'

‘Like hell it's nothing. He can't do this to you, Tim Tam.'

The pet name her grandpa gave her when she was little.

‘He can't do this,' Lucy repeated. Her fingers reached out to probe around Tammy's left eye.

Tammy quickly moved her face away. ‘Let's just go and get some toast, okay?' And she turned towards the homestead, long unsteady strides covering the distance to the sprawling, mocha-coloured brick house. Moving fast. She could hear Lucy huffing and puffing behind her, and knew she should wait, or at least slow down and let her long-time friend catch up. But she also suspected that if she did – if she turned her face towards her – that would be the end. The thing that would finally break Tammy down into tiny pieces. And she couldn't
afford that. At thirty-six, she'd already broken and repaired herself once – after her grandparents died. She was frightened she wouldn't have the energy to do it all over again.

So she put her head down and kept walking.