Territory (6 page)

Jock gave a final salute to the receding Spitfire. ‘He's fearless, that boy,' he announced to the sky, ‘utterly fearless.' A chip off the old block, he was thinking. A son any man would be proud to call his own. And the boy worshipped him. Always had.

Jock recalled the barbecue at a neighbouring homestead when Terry had been barely ten years old. Asked how he wanted his steak cooked, the boy had loudly stated, ‘Same as the old man, rare and bloody, it's the
only
way.' Then, encouraged by his father's delighted guffaw, he'd added, ‘Just cut its horns off and wipe its arse.' He'd heard his father say it in male company on a number of occasions.

The women had been disapproving, and Terence's two younger brothers had ducked for cover, fearing their father's wrath. But, far from angry, Jock had laughed fit to burst. ‘A chip off the old block,' he'd proudly said to his mates when he'd regained his composure. ‘That boy's a chip off the old block.' He'd been saying it ever since.

And now his son was a hero. Defending his country just like his father had. And, just like his father, he was fearless in the face of battle.

Over the years, Jock had conveniently forgotten that he had never fired a shot in combat. He was a Gallipoli veteran and you didn't get a more honourable war record than that. The truth was that Jock could remember, in the dead of night, climbing down the rope netting, full tackle
on his back, and into the boats. And he could remember the boats being towed by the pinnaces away from the ships and then released near the shore. He could remember rowing with all his might. They'd chanted as they'd rowed and he'd concentrated on the heaving back of the man in front of him, just as he knew the man seated behind him was concentrating on his back. ‘Heave! two, three, four …' They were a team, ‘two three four …' Then all hell had broken loose. That was the last thing Jock remembered. The noise! The unspeakable noise!

Then nothing but silence. He barely remembered the hospital ship. A month or so later, he recalled the English nurses and the crisp cotton sheets of the sanatorium, but all remained silence. Six months later, back in Australia, honourably discharged from the army on medical grounds, his was still a world without sound. It was nine months before his hearing started to return, and then only slowly.

Jock had been sorely cheated. Like so many, keen for adventure, eager to fight a war, he'd been quick to volunteer, even at the age of thirty-three. He'd lied about his age and, as he'd looked every bit as fit and strong as the men ten years his junior who were enlisting beside him, no-one had raised an eyebrow. He'd suffered no guilt at leaving behind a wife with a three-year-old daughter and a new baby son; King and Country called, he said. And he'd revelled in training camp. He loved army life and the rigours it entailed, he was a natural soldier who ached for battle. And he'd never got to fire one bloody shot! He'd been cheated, all right.

It didn't help, after the war at Anzac Day reunions, when old army buddies said, ‘Jesus, Jock, you were well out of it, count your lucky stars, mate.' At first he'd thought they were mocking him. But he soon realised they weren't. ‘Bloody hideous war,' they said. ‘Nothing noble about it, I can tell you.' ‘You can stick the army right up
your arse, mate.' They all seemed to be in agreement, but Jock did not concur one bit. A military life was a noble life and if a war was thrown in then all the better.

He stopped going to reunions where he might meet disenchanted fellow veterans and, from the stories of others, he created his own history. But his was a noble history and his battles were glorious. Over the years, nobody, his wife, his four children, even his domineering father, ever doubted the veracity of Jock's stories. Jock Galloway was a Gallipoli veteran, with his medal and discharge papers to prove it.

The Spitfire was a speck in the distance. Soon it would disappear over the far-off hill to land at the RAAF base beyond. Jock turned to discover Henrietta standing barely ten yards away, she too apparently lost in thought. Margaret had hustled the Aborigines back to their chores, Nellie and Pearl only too happy to obey, and Charlotte had left her father to his reverie as she always did, Jock invariably watching until the aircraft had disappeared from sight. But this time Henrietta had remained. Just as she should, Jock thought. Paying tribute to her husband, it was only right.

‘He's a fine man, the man you married,' he said.

‘Yes.' It wasn't what Henrietta had been thinking.

‘Put on a hat if you're going to stand around in the sun.' Jock's voice was as gruff as always but his intention was kindly enough. Although Margaret would have preferred an Australian daughter-in-law, Jock approved of his son's choice. A good strong body, shapely, but not plump. A healthy bosom, good child-bearing hips, a sound young filly when all was said and done. Jock had always likened women to horses. No insult was intended, indeed more often than not he considered his comparisons a compliment to the woman to whom they were directed. They certainly were in this case. Henrietta was a filly with excellent breeding prospects. A chestnut into the bargain.
Chestnuts had always been Jock's preference. ‘Or else come into the house,' he said, ‘the sun's not kind to complexions like yours.'

‘I'll come in when I've fed the chickens,' Henrietta replied. She wanted to be on her own for a while.

‘Chooks, girl! When will you learn? Chooks!' But he smiled his leathery smile as he said it.

‘Chooks.' She smiled back. ‘Chooks. Yes.'

Henrietta watched him mount the steps to the verandah. She watched the flywire door slap shut behind him. The heavy wooden front door remained open, as all the doors in the homestead did on still days like this, to channel through the house any available vestige of breeze.

The flywire door had amused her at first, it was at odds with such an imposing house. ‘Designed by my grandfather,' Terence had proudly informed her three months previously, as he'd pulled the Landrover up in front of Bullalalla homestead. ‘Built entirely from imported Tasmanian oak.'

Two storeys high, the house was surrounded by verandahs on all four sides, and large front balconies opened out from the upstairs bedrooms. A succession of elegant lemon-scented gums lined the last fifty yards of the driveway. They were around thirty feet tall with graceful white trunks and silver-green leaves and, just beyond the gums, where the drive dipped down to the homestead gates and the private road beyond, was the grove of mango trees, glossy green in foliage, rich and luscious. The mixture of sub-tropical and Australian-outback flora was striking, and typical of the area Henrietta was to discover.

‘Two storeys is a bit of a luxury,' Terence boasted. ‘Grandpa Lionel owned a stud in South Australia. Race-horses. He was very successful. Very wealthy. He only bought the Bullalalla property as an investment, running buffalo for pet meat, it was big business back then. He hadn't planned on falling in love with the place, but he did,
so he built the sort of house he wanted to live in. Personally,' Terence added with a grin, ‘I think the old bloke wanted to show off a bit of southern style to the locals.'

Terence could barely remember his grandfather, Lionel Galloway, but the stories he'd heard from Jock were romantic and intriguing.

‘Grandpa left the place solely to Dad in his will,' he continued. ‘Dad was always his favourite, because of his war record and all that. When Grandpa built this homestead, Dad says it caused a lot of comment in Darwin, people thought that Lionel Galloway had tickets on himself. But so what? Good on him! That's what Dad reckons.'

Henrietta nodded happily. The house was beautiful, she agreed, but it was Terence's boyish enthusiasm which she found most engaging. She loved him, and she was going to love this house, and Terence's family, and this strange new country. Henrietta intended to embrace it all.

‘Grandpa Lionel even built a full-scale racecourse, I'll take you to see it tomorrow. We have an annual race meeting on the station, people come from all over, jockeys and bookies, the lot. Of course it's all been put on hold for the duration of the war, but you just wait, Henrietta.' And she laughed as he swept her off her feet and carried her up the porch steps. ‘One day you'll be the belle of the Bullalalla Races!'

He was about to carry her over the threshold and that's when she'd commented on the flywire screen door. It was incongruous, the ugly mesh screen masking the magnificence of the hand-carved oak door with its huge horse's head door-knocker in gleaming brass.

On the other side of the doorway, Margaret Galloway had gathered the family, including Nellie and Pearl, in the hall beside the grand staircase. Even Jackie, Nellie's husband and head stockman, had been called from his duties. Jackie, Nellie and their daughter did not live in humpies like the other natives but in a small cottage a half
a mile from the homestead, and Margaret had insisted that all concerned with homestead life must be present to greet the new wife of her eldest son. Jock had wanted to stand on the verandah and wave and yell at the Landrover as it pulled up, but his wife had maintained that, as an Englishwoman, Henrietta should be greeted with a touch of formality, along the lines to which she was no doubt accustomed. Jock had agreed readily enough, it was acknowledged that Margaret had full reign in the running of the house; it was a woman's job, after all, and no doubt his wife knew best in such matters of protocol.

Now, Margaret's lips pursed into a hard, thin line as she heard her daughter-in-law's disparaging comments about the flywire screen door. Already the girl was being critical. Well, we won't have any hoity-toity behaviour here young miss, she thought.

Terence laughed. ‘Every door and every window in the place has a screen,' he said. ‘You'll find out why soon enough.'

And she had. The flies and mosquitoes had driven her mad for the first few weeks. But she'd quickly taught herself to become accustomed to them. Just as she'd taught herself to become accustomed to the erratic weather.

‘It comes with the territory,' Terence had laughed, but Henrietta had been suffocated by the humidity on her arrival. They'd been married in London and Terence had flown home shortly after the ceremony for briefing and training with the defence unit. He'd been there to meet her ship and, from the moment she'd stepped ashore and he'd walked her through the streets of Darwin, or what was left of Darwin since the bombing, she'd felt as if she was walking under water. Wading through a wet haze, her legs heavy, her head engulfed in the clammy, moisture-laden air.

‘That's where the post office used to be,' he'd said, pointing out a pile of rubble with tufts of grass growing
through it and chickens running about amongst the ruins. ‘Ten postal workers killed, mostly young too.'

‘How terrible,' she'd said, and she'd meant it, but, as pockets of damp seemed to hit her in waves, all she could think of was the fact that, at any minute, she might faint.

Then, two weeks later, an almighty thunderstorm had broken out. It had raged through the night and Henrietta had been fearful, sure that at any moment one of the great jagged bolts of lightning must strike the homestead. But Terence and the other members of the household had taken it all in their stride, unbothered by the show of nature's force. The storm had been followed by torrential rain which had lasted a fortnight, turning the red earth into mud. Where was the pattern to such weather, Henrietta had wondered. It was the monsoon, Terence told her, the ‘wet' season, the weather was always erratic during the wet season, she'd find the ‘dry' more comfortable.

Henrietta soon realised that extremes were a daily occurrence in the Northern Territory and, as a result, the Territorians' reaction to drama was, on the whole, rather placid. To Henrietta everything around her seemed dramatic. The size of the landscape, the ferocity of the storms, the intensity of the heat. She must learn to adjust, she'd told herself.

She was aware, however, that there was one adjustment which she would find very difficult to make, and that was the change in moral outlook. In particular, Terence's explanation of European and Aboriginal relations which had shocked Henrietta immeasurably.

‘It's not talked about, although it's common knowledge,' Terence had said, shortly after she'd met the Aboriginal family whom she'd presumed to be house servants, ‘but Nellie is Dad's half sister.'

Henrietta had been more mystified than shocked at first. The fact was very difficult to assimilate, Nellie being so distinctly Aboriginal in appearance, and a good twenty-five
years younger than Jock. But Henrietta had tried to cover her nonplussed reaction as she waited for Terence to explain.

‘There are hundreds of half-caste blacks wandering about the place,' he'd said, ‘the offspring of white station owners and the wives of black stockmen. They take the boss's Christian name as their surname—Nellie was Nellie Lionel before she married.' He grinned. ‘The whole thing's a bit of a joke, really. In pubs all over the Territory there are white blokes skiting about the number of black kids running around with their Christian name—kids they've fathered by stockmen's wives.'

‘Don't the stockmen mind?' She wondered how she could sound so calm as she voiced the question.

‘Good God no,' Terence scoffed at the suggestion, ‘on the contrary, they're proud if the white boss takes a fancy to one of their wives—they usually have two or three, sometimes more. Quite often they'll offer the services of whichever lubra the boss has an eye for, and the boss'll give them a present in return. Tobacco's the most popular.'

‘Oh, I see.' Henrietta's reply had been followed by a breathless gulp, and that's when Terence had suddenly realised that she was shocked.

He'd cursed himself. Of course she'd be shocked, it would all be so foreign to her. She needed to be broken in to their ways gently, he should have been more careful.