Territory (26 page)

One Saturday, only a fortnight or so after the boys' expedition to the home paddock, Terence arrived home in the early afternoon. He and Buff Nelson had been out surveying the fencing—the maintenance of fences on the vast property was a never-ending affair—when a dust storm had come up. Normally the men would have stuck it out. Huddled under their ground cloths or their oilskin jackets, they would have weathered the storm. But this was a bad one, there was no point in staying on, so they'd come back, Buff to his cottage and Terence to the homestead.

Caked in grit, his eyes, his ears, his nose full of the fine red dust, uncomfortable and irritable, Terence walked into the kitchen to see his wife and two sons sprawled belly down on the wooden floor studying a pile of rocks. And for the first time in years, the madness came upon him.

They were so engrossed that none of them had heard him. Terence, plodding wearily, had made little noise.

Suddenly, a large boot flashed before them, and the stones were viciously scattered, the fortress and its treasure strewn in every direction.

Henrietta grabbed the boys and pulled them to their feet. They could have lost an eye from the force with which Terence had sent the stones flying.

She saw the madness instantly.

‘What have I told you about these bloody rocks!' he yelled at her. ‘Get them out of here, do you hear me!' And he kicked at the stones once again sending them whistling through the air like missiles. ‘Get them out of here!'

She didn't waste time collecting them, it was more important to get the boys out of the kitchen and away from their father. She hustled them into the hall.

‘Go upstairs to your rooms,' she instructed, ‘and don't come down until I tell you.'

‘Will you save my Darwin collection, Mum?' Malcolm pleaded. ‘Just the Darwin ones, please?'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘I promise. Now go upstairs.' The boys obeyed and she went back to face Terence and clear away the offending stones.

He was standing in the centre of the kitchen staring down at the tin soldiers, and he seemed perfectly calm. Had the madness left him so quickly, she wondered. She said nothing, but knelt and started sweeping up the stones with a dustpan and brush, careful to put the Darwin ones in their special box.

Terence stooped and picked up several of the toy soldiers, placing them on the kitchen table.

‘They were playing military manoeuvres,' she said, hoping to mollify him.

‘Yes, I can see that.' A number of the toy soldiers were time-worn and battered, they'd been Terence's when he was a child. He hadn't noticed them when the rage at the sight of the forbidden rocks had overtaken him.

‘The soldiers were attacking the fortress,' she explained.

‘It's a childish game, Malcolm's too old for toy soldiers. Tell the boys to come in here, I want to talk to them.'

He seemed rational, and Henrietta decided it would court far more danger if she were to question his orders. She finished clearing up the mess, threw the stones in the bin, and placed the box with the Darwin collection on the table.

‘Malcolm! Kit!' she called up the stairs from the hall. ‘Your father wants to talk to you.'

The boys tentatively entered the kitchen where Terence was seated at the table.

‘Sit down,' he instructed, and they did. ‘Malcolm,' he said, ‘what would you do if your mates at school called you a sissy?'

Malcolm stared back. It was a test, but he wasn't sure of the right answer. Was he supposed to say that he'd fight them?

‘You wouldn't like it if they called you a sissy, would you?' his father asked.

Malcolm shook his head vigorously, ‘a sissy' was the worst possible thing a kid could be called.

‘Good.' Terence continued to address his elder son quietly and authoritatively, but as an adult, ‘You are ten years old, you can ride a horse and you can shoot a rifle, don't you think playing with toy soldiers and rocks is a little bit childish?'

‘Yes,' the boy agreed.

‘Good.' Terence said again, pleased with the response. ‘I'll let you keep the toy soldiers as a memento of your childhood,' he continued magnanimously, ‘but you'll throw out the rocks. Right now.'

Kit looked anxiously at his brother, not the Darwin collection surely, they were the jewels and Malcolm treasured them. But Malcolm didn't flinch, he nodded obediently.

‘Can I keep them?' Kit asked, ‘Just the Darwin ones?'

Henrietta jumped in quickly, aware that Terence was annoyed at Kit's interruption. ‘He's only seven,' she said, it was a gentle reminder that the boy didn't have to become an adult for another three years.

Terence shrugged, he felt an intense irritation towards his younger son. He often did. There were moments when Terence disliked Kit. The boy showed no respect for his authority. ‘He can do what he likes,' he said dismissively to Henrietta. ‘Malcolm,' he rose from the table, ‘there's still time for some rifle practice. I'll see you down by the tack room.' He left abruptly, Malcolm jumping to his feet to follow.

‘I'll look after them for you, Malcolm,' Kit promised.

‘What?'

‘The Darwin collection. They'll still be yours, I'll look after them.'

‘You can have them, I don't want them, they're for sissies.' Malcolm ran off to join his father.

‘That was nice of you, Kit.' The little boy looked so hurt, Henrietta wanted to cuddle him, but she didn't. She knew he was trying very hard to be grown up. ‘We'll look after them together.'

‘Okay,' he agreed, and they took the box upstairs where Kit hid it under his bed.

Henrietta thought of Paul that night. She often thought of Paul, Kit was such a reminder. Just like his father, the boy was gentle, but strong.

Paul Trewinnard had disappeared from her life. Aggie thought that perhaps he was dead. ‘Why else would he stop writing?' she had asked when Henrietta expressed shock at such a brutal assumption.

‘Perhaps he's met someone,' Henrietta had replied, ‘perhaps he's married now, perhaps he has a child and a whole new life.' She hoped that he had.

‘That wouldn't stop him writing to us,' Aggie had scoffed, ‘we're his best friends.' For years Paul had dropped the pretence of polite enquiries after Henrietta, his letters were always addressed to the two of them. ‘Dearest Aggie and Henrietta,' he would write and then he would chat on about his assignments and travels. Paul's letters had been witty, amusing and often outrageous, and the women had taken great pleasure in reading them aloud to each other and chuckling at the latest irreverence.

The letters had always been posted to Aggie. Aggie had assumed Paul was avoiding direct contact with Henrietta in order to spare the woman any unpleasant reaction from her over-possessive husband, and she approved of the decision. God only knew what Terence's response would be to his wife's receiving regular correspondence from another man. In Aggie's opinion Terence Galloway was a megalomaniac who would brook no outside influence upon any member of his family. She was appalled with the way in which he was turning his elder son into a carbon copy of himself. She never commented on the fact to
Henrietta, however, as usual avoiding any discussion of Terence.

Then, abruptly, Paul's letters stopped arriving, and Aggie's own letters to Paul were returned ‘address unknown'. When she'd tried to reach him through the family firm, she'd discovered they had no home address for him whatsoever. They never had. Just a post box number at St Martin's in the Fields GPO in Trafalgar Square. She'd received no response from there either, and for the past two years Aggie had given up trying to trace Paul Trewinnard, convinced that he was dead.

 

On Kit's first day at school, Aggie had been there to welcome him. She discovered very quickly, and to her relief, that the boy was not yet brainwashed by his father the way his brother had been. He was a friendly child and got on well with the others, displaying none of his brother's aggression, and yet Aggie sensed a quiet strength beneath the surface. He would need it, she thought, to survive a father like Terence Galloway. Thank goodness the boy had Henrietta's spirit.

Kit loved school. He enjoyed the company of other children and made friends quickly. When Henrietta picked the boys up each afternoon Kit would chatter on endlessly about his mates whilst Malcolm would look away through the open window of the ute and pretend disinterest.

‘I don't know why you hang around with that mob,' he occasionally sneered, ‘they're a bunch of sissies.'

‘No they're not,' Kit hotly denied. ‘What about the day Pete Mowbray fell out of the tree and busted his elbow.' Kit had boasted about the incident often, it had deeply impressed him. ‘He didn't cry or anything, he just said “I think it's busted”, Pete's really brave.'

‘He's not brave,' Malcolm scoffed, ‘he's dumb, they all are, that mob.'

When the conversation took such a turn, Henrietta
would change the subject, encouraging Malcolm to talk about his own day at school, but by then the damage had been done and he'd shrug sulkily and continue to stare out the window. She realised that, deep down, he resented the ease with which Kit made friends. It worried her to see the boys argue, they had never argued in the past. But when they got home to Bullalalla the tension disappeared and the brothers remained the true friends they'd always been.

Malcolm would offer to help Kit with his homework, it was his way of apologising for having scorned Kit's mates. He didn't know why he always made fun of Kit's mates. Hell, he thought they were only little kids. He just wished that Kit wouldn't gab on about them all the time.

When Malcolm had something of his own to boast, he always waited until he could announce it in the presence of his father.

‘I kicked the football further than Dennis Portman at goal practice this arvo,' he announced at the dinner table.

‘Oh?' Terence looked up from his roast beef.

‘Dennis Portman's the longest kick in the team.' He had his father's full attention now. ‘And he's a year older than me.'

‘Good on you,' Terence congratulated him. ‘Well done, son.' And he returned to his roast beef.

Malcolm glowed with pride, but he knew better than to chatter on any further about the episode, if he did he'd be accused of boasting.

Henrietta never asked Malcolm why he hadn't told her about his exploits in the car on the drive home. She knew it was important to the boy that his achievements be kept expressly for his father. But the only stories Malcolm brought home from school were those involving competition in which he'd performed favourably. There were no simple tales of comradeship. And if he'd experienced
defeat, no-one would ever know. Kit was exactly the opposite.

‘I came last in the three-legged race,' he said the night after Aggie's fundraising fete at the school. ‘Pete Mowbray was mad at me 'cos I kept falling over, he hates to lose.'

Malcolm looked at his brother in amazement, wondering how he could admit to defeat in the presence of their father. Terence didn't deign to comment.

 

It was a stifling November afternoon and Henrietta had just pulled up in the ute to wait for the boys outside school. She was early, as she usually was, it would be ten or fifteen minutes before Kit charged through the gates of the small wooden fence, Malcolm sauntering out a good five minutes later, wishing the others couldn't see his mother waiting for him.

Malcolm desperately wanted to ride his horse to school. Some of the kids who lived on the outskirts of town did, he'd said to his father, and there were stables nearby. But Terence had instantly dismissed the idea.

‘Don't be ridiculous, boy, it'd take you hours,' he'd said, so twelve-year-old Malcolm had to suffer being collected by his mother as if he were one of the little kids.

Henrietta climbed out of the car. The plastic-covered seats of the Holden had been hot and uncomfortable and she could feel the dampness of her cotton dress clinging to her back and the trickle of sweat between her breasts. She felt claustrophobic when the air was thick and sticky like this, as if the elements were trying to stifle her. It was always the same in the wet, she'd never really adjusted to it. She wished the storm would break soon to relieve the oppressive humidity.

As she stood in the shade of the stringybark tree, fanning herself with the brim of her straw hat, she noticed a nearby car with its driver-side door open, someone else was waiting to collect a child. She wondered if it was one
of the parents she knew, but she didn't recognise the car, a two-tone blue Holden sedan.

Then the man in the driver's seat got out, and Henrietta froze at the sight of the familiar figure. Tall, lanky, a Panama hat, and a beige linen sports jacket. No matter how hot, when others were in shirtsleeves, Paul had always worn a jacket.

‘Hello, Henrietta,' he said as he started towards her.

‘Paul.'

Two other cars were pulling up outside the school, Henrietta recognised the vehicles and the mothers driving them, but she didn't hesitate. Her hat fell from her hand and dropped to the ground as she walked into his arms.

‘Paul, thank God.'

It was Paul who first freed himself from their embrace, not wishing to compromise her reputation.

‘Aggie thought you were dead.' Henrietta held on to his hands, she didn't want to relinquish the physical contact.

‘I know, she told me when I phoned her. “Welcome back from the grave”, were her exact words. Rather apt under the circumstances.'

Henrietta suddenly noticed how tired and worn he looked. There were dark shadows under his eyes and, always a lean man, he was thinner than ever.

‘You've been ill,' she said.

‘Yes.' He gently extricated his hands from hers. ‘I think you're expected to say hello,' he murmured. The two women had climbed out of their cars and were standing by the acacia trees near the gates; both were looking in their direction.