Sarah Thornhill (20 page)

By the middle of the second day, I was sick of being on the horse. Hot in the sun, and grit all over. But as Daunt promised, during the afternoon we wound down out of the range into a great broad valley. The road no better made, but flatter, running beside a quick clear river. From a distance, Gammaroy was a dozen buildings lined up along something that resembled a street. I was glad, thinking of an inn, a cheerful woman like Judith, human society after the empty bush.

We'll sleep at the inn tonight? I asked Daunt.

Well now, inn would be putting too fine a point on it, he said. Not a house of accommodation of the kind you and I might know. A bullocky's camp, Gammaroy. Got the fenced place by the creek, see there, where they spell the beasts.

Not afraid of a few bullocks, nor yet bullockies. Didn't have a high regard for Daunt for being so squeamish.

You'll get the measure of it when you see it close, he said. What it is I'm trying to say.

As we rode through the place I saw what he hadn't wanted to say clear. Gammaroy was a dirty low place, the huts small and lopsided, not a one standing straight. Flies round the doors, dogs snapping at each other, dark-skinned children bare-bottomed on the dust. There was a blacksmith's and a saddlery and a grain mill, and a hut with a sign swinging crooked, a rising sun. As we rode past it a man lurched out, hatless, in his braces, trousers gaping open at the front, arm round a black woman wearing nothing but a man's vest, naked from the waist down. Both staggering, and the man bellowing out what he must of thought was a song.

We made camp a half-mile further on. A poor night's rest. I was itching with the dust and the heat and the tiredness, and the mosquitoes big as birds. Lay stifling under the sheet, but better that than the mosquitoes.

Gammaroy was nearly enough to do what seventy miles of forest and two days on a rough road had not. I'd had hopes of it, that was my mistake. Lay choking down the tears, not to let Daunt know how near I was to giving up.

The third and last day on the road the country opened out. Off to the south, on our left, was the dark pile of the range we'd come through, a great corner in the earth pushed up, blunt as the side of a box. In there somewhere was Garlogie. Further again, way off beyond, was Thornhill's Point. But to the north the country smoothed out into a gentle up-and-down, all grass, no scrub, the shadow of one tree not touching the shadow of the next. It folded away as far as the eye could see, dark lines of trees in the creases showing where the creeks ran.

I'd never been in such open-faced country.

Off to the northwest was a range of sharp mountains, a faded faraway blue. Peak after peak falling away fainter and fainter till the blue joined the sky. Government called that range Limit of Location, drew the line on the map,
no one past here
, but it was only a mark on paper. Out there was where the wild blacks was supposed to be, the ones that cut out white folk's hearts, but men greedy for pasture took their chances.

The sun was low when I saw smoke rising from somewhere up ahead, a kink in the land like the fold in a piece of taffeta. Every line of hill and shadow and track funnelled towards that crease. I knew, before Daunt took off his hat and flapped it to tell me,
this is the place.
Soon I'd see it, the place I'd come to know down to the last pebble and twig. It would be new to me just this one time.

He reined in for me to catch up.

See now, he said. Where the trees are. Where we've got the brook.

Yes, I said. I see.

It's a good brook, he said. No end of water.

Tried to give him some sort of smile from under my bonnet.

Not so very far now, he said. Not more than a step.

Wondered was he going to reach over, take my hand. Wed a fortnight, sharing our breathing in the dark every one of those nights, but hadn't found a way to say how we felt. More private, somehow, than what our bodies did in the bed.

The house was on a sweet piece of rising ground. Long and low, sawn boards, shingle roof, three rooms wide. Looked all right, but closer up I saw what Daunt meant by
the present shortcomings
. Verandah not flagged, just dirt. No windows, just the holes for them. Sheets of bark for shutters.

That rogue of a carpenter, Daunt said. Promised me windows this six months gone. The shutters a temporary expedient, keep out the wind till the fellow sees fit to grace us with his presence.

More long words than I needed to get the gist.

At the door I felt him thinking
should I be carrying her over the
threshold
. Glanced at me and decided no. Just stood back, made a bit of a bow. Might of thought I was looking stony because of the windows. It wasn't that. It was thinking about the other place I'd pictured walking into with a husband. Not this place, not this husband.

He was looking a little stony himself.

Inside it was clean enough, if a bit on the bare side. No rugs, no curtains, the walls not lined, only the boards whitewashed.

The old Irish woman, Daunt's housekeeper, made me a cup of tea and a scone, Maeve her name was. Spoke her few words of English with such a brogue she might of been speaking Irish for all I could follow, and with a whistle through a mouth that had only a few teeth left. But made a good dark cup of tea. Daunt spoke a few words of Irish with her. What an up-and-down sort of language it was, and with a coaxing music to it. I saw how his way of talking got its flavour, rubbing up against that other language. Watched his mouth shaping words I couldn't follow and remembered the way Jack became someone else when he spoke to the girl.

Was there any road in my thoughts that didn't lead to Jack?

Maeve was obliging enough, wrinkled up like an old apple but her cheeks pink, her eyes blue and bright. We'd manage together, but I was cast down that the one woman I might of shared a chat with was out of reach.

She brought me hot water and I blessed her for it after being so dusty along those weary miles. Lay down with my ears ringing and my muscles twitching as if I was still bending against every step of the horse.

Oh, the bliss of lying still and quiet and washed.

After a while I walked out into the dusk, the air holding the light. Followed the sound of water down to the creek, or brook. Watched it stream over the stones. Every stone washed, night and day, day and night, since the world began.

On the other side of the creek a bush was alive with some kind of tiny round green bird with a silvery eye. Every single one hopping and twittering, a hundred cheerful creatures all talking at once.That bush was full of birds, the way a cake left out overnight is full of ants in the morning.

I had a pang for their lively society. Grieved for that place I'd left, boats drawing up at the jetty, people coming to the house, always someone calling out, or sneezing, or whistling. I'd lost a life that would never come again.

Jack had travelled along the road with me every day, but fainter with every mile. Everywhere else I'd been, he'd been there too and left some hair or flake of skin. Now I was in a place where he'd never drawn the air into himself and breathed it out again. Never would.

The dust, I had it all ready to say if Daunt came out and found me crying. Had the feeling he might be watching me from up at the house. But if he was, he left me to it.

I
T WAS
the four of us in the house—me and Daunt, and Maeve and an old feller Paddy Riley—plus the four government men out on the sheepwalk.

Daunt was lucky to have Maeve, a good worker and an honest woman although a thief. Both of them from the same part of the country, though Daunt from the English type of Irish and Maeve a poor woman and of course a Papist. Back in Cork she'd lifted the watch out of some feller's pocket and would of been all right, she said, only a shopkeeper saw. Showed me one day how it was done. I put a stone in my pocket and she got it out slick as you please, didn't feel a blessed thing.

The government men were out on the sheepwalk a week at a time, I didn't have much to do with them. Londoners, never seen a sheep in their lives before. Come back, couldn't stop talking from the loneliness out there.

Paddy Riley was a different sort of feller. Been a shepherd back in the old country but too old for that now. Did the work round the yard. Milk the cow, split the kindling, bring the hay for the horses. A weather-beaten old feller, so shy he couldn't meet your eye. One pointy yellow tooth showing in his bottom jaw, and a felt hat worn to splits along the folds. Stand for an hour yarning through his lopsided mouth. Sent out years before, left behind a wife and little ones. Told me once about his son. Kept putting his hand down level with his leg, showing me how tall he'd been, as if the boy might appear under his hand.

Showed me his fiddle, hanging on a hook in a green felt bag in his lean-to. The wood black with use, and shiny where his chin rested and his fingers slid up and down. He handled it tenderly as a baby.

Play for you one of these nights, he said. Mr Daunt likes a tune.

I was pleased to hear that, pictured us jigging round on the boards of the parlour or singing along, something rousing and cheerful.

Gentleman and all as he was, Daunt was a hard worker. One of the government men did the heavy digging but Daunt was the one got the vegetables watered and weeded and into the kitchen. Looked after the fruit trees and the horses. Didn't do the killing of the sheep or the lamb, one of the men did that, but did the butchering of it. Could joint up a beast as neat as Campbell cut up those fowls that day. Rode out to see the men on the sheepwalk, took them their victuals, saw to everything. When it was time for the shearing he rolled up his sleeves with the rest. In his shabby work-trousers and the check shirt all pale down the back from being so worn out, you wouldn't of picked him from the others.

He might of looked like one of the men, but of course he wasn't. Told them what he wanted, very mild, never raised his voice, made a bit of a joke of it if he could. They hopped to it. If they didn't, he didn't mind getting the steel in his voice. But never lost his courtesy or his temper that I ever saw.

Couldn't think why he'd be pleased to be mucking in with the men. Pa would never of been seen in a shirt like that, or with a spade in his hand. But something in Daunt rose to it with pleasure. He'd come back to the house after a day in the paddocks, caught by the sun across his nose and cheeks, could hardly speak he was that tired. Hands torn, nails full of dirt. But a happy man.

Me and Mary wasn't brought up to sit on a sofa not doing a hand's turn. We'd done our fair share at home. But my word I worked harder that first year at Glenmire than ever I had in my life. The food had to be kept up to the men, and only me and Maeve to do it all. Separate the milk, churn the butter, and always the worry how to keep it all cool. Mutton chops and mutton stew and leg of mutton, mutton pies and cold mutton to be sent out the men on the sheepwalk. Onions and carrots, turnip and potato, peel and chop, peel and chop. Set the yeast bottle last thing at night, don't forget or there'd be no bread the next day, and that would be the end of the world.

I was glad of Maeve, every kind of work less trying with another to share it. She'd sing away in Irish while she pounded the dough or scrubbed out the pots. I'd ask her, what's that song about, Maeve, but beyond that it was sad, she didn't have the words to tell me. In behind Maeve's worn smiling face and mild ways, another woman lived in her that you only knew about when she lifted her voice in song. No sweet small voice as you might expect, but rich and strong, so that while she sang she was like a queen, her words something you had to listen to.

Daunt's place was as he'd said, plenty of water and the soil in good heart. Deep, the colour of rust, plant anything and it grew. Good sheep country, hard frosts to make the wool thick. Still only sixpence the pound, but it was as Daunt said, it had to come up again by and by. Until then we wouldn't go hungry. Any amount of lamb and mutton, milk and butter. Bushels of potatoes and cabbages. A paddock of corn and the fruit trees coming on. I made the coarse soap for the laundry myself, the tallow candles for everyday.