The Bark Cutters (44 page)

‘You don't strike me as the kind of lass who would rush into something.'

Sarah looked up slowly from the untouched water glass twirling in her fingers. Leaning back into the two-seater couch, she rubbed the bridge of her nose tiredly. Last night's dream of the settlement of Wangallon still haunted her thoughts. She listened to Mrs Jamieson's deep sigh as she joined her on the couch. Great, Sarah thought as she made room for the older woman.

‘Sarah Gordon, times were when things didn't matter so much. The clans did inter-marry. That was then.' Mrs Jamieson pulled herself upright. ‘Not now.' She cleared her throat carefully. ‘You can't have a relationship with Jim.'

‘What? Who's talking about a relationship?'

‘Who do you think? Mrs Robert Macken.' Mrs Jamieson got to her feet, smoothing her plain cotton dress and gathering her worn cardigan about her. ‘Besides, you love someone else.'

The conversation seemed to be moving very randomly. Sarah shook her head vehemently.

Mrs Jamieson inclined her head knowingly. ‘Aye, you run from your heritage, as lost within your own life as Jim is. Half of him is missing, lass. An important part he's unaware of: his father.'

‘His father?' Sarah repeated, screwing her eyes up in confusion.

‘Lass, I look at you and see myself. I look at you and … Sarah Gordon, lass, your land is far more important to you than anything else. You love your country, the land. As I love mine. I don't believe you would forsake your home, even if you did care for Jim.' Mrs Jamieson reached reluctantly into her dress pocket, her hand quivering as she withdrew an old black-and-white photograph. ‘I can see it in your eyes as sure as I saw it in your father's.'

Sarah accepted the photograph. ‘My God, it's Dad!'

‘Drink this.'

Sarah threw back the dram of whisky accompanying the fresh coffee and thought of the many photographs salvaged from her father's office in West Wangallon. Then there were the discarded ones, images Sarah found so entrancing that they hung in her Sydney apartment. The cottage in one of those photographs was the very same she now inhabited. Why hadn't she seen the resemblance sooner?

‘Pride, lass, pride stops a great deal from being accomplished in the world. It stops people from sharing the truth with the very ones they care most about.' Mrs Jamieson took a fortifying gulp of her whisky. ‘Maggie Macken knows who you are now, Sarah, yet how could she acknowledge you? By doing so she would break her boy's heart. She hopes you will leave. She only ever wanted her son's happiness, but even if a romance were possible between you two young people we both know you would not
leave Wangallon for anyone, let alone Jim. Maggie and I, well we have never seen eye to eye, thanks to your father, but in this case we have agreed it is for the best.'

‘For the best?' Sarah moved to stand opposite Mrs Jamieson. Her head pounded with the strain of this bizarre conversation. Perspiration collected at the waistband of her jeans, her palms were sweaty. ‘I don't understand any of this. How did you come to have a photo of my father and why on earth would you think that there is something between Jim and me? That
is
what you're insinuating, isn't it?'

‘Maggie loves her son. She's always loved him, you know, as much as I have. Who is to blame her for wanting everything for him? Those who know the story would keep their mouths shut all right. But there are others who would not. This is a small community, Sarah Gordon. It is too small for your dreams and even if you both left, those of us who remain would suffer the gossip for years.'

‘Gossip? What are you talking about?' Sarah asked, her voice rising uneasily.

‘This place is in our blood, as yours is in you. And if you truly listen to your heart, you will understand the truth. Jim is your half-brother.'

Sarah saw the faces of the men in her family, saw their piercing violet eyes, heard Maggie Macken's descriptions of a country she had never seen.

‘Robert Macken is not Jim's father.'

Sarah experienced a pain in her abdomen, a feeling of being physically hit.

‘Jim doesn't know you are his half-sister, Sarah, lass, and it is better that way. You must break off your friendship, if that is what it is.'

Much later, after Sarah managed to consume a couple of spoonfuls of thick barley soup, her head cleared a little. Now she
knew why her father had been less than thrilled with the idea of this trip.

‘I lost my only brother, Cameron, in a horse-riding accident. Every day of my life I –'

‘Your pain lingers like a shroud, but none can bring him back; nor should they.'

‘I see so much of him in Jim. It's the way he looks at the world, joking, caring about everything as if, as if –'

‘It were his last?' Mrs Jamieson finished. ‘It is easy to love the reckless, for those are the ones we fail to truly understand. But you love Jim for your brother's sake. You want to see those things in him, but he is not reckless, he is his own person, steady, responsible, serious and strong; no doubt, lass, a good counterpart for a brother.' Mrs Jamieson pushed the soup closer to Sarah, nodding towards the bowl. ‘Be content to know there is another like you in the world, Sarah Gordon. Most of us are never fortunate enough to have more than one gift bestowed on us in a lifetime.'

‘But Jim, surely he has a right to know?'

‘At some time. We all have to be ready. Maybe the time has passed, maybe it will come again in the future.'

‘And my father?'

Mrs Jamieson leaned back and smiled.

‘He arrived from nowhere with stories of his home and his family. At the ceilidhs he entranced us with his tales of settlement, told us of how his forefathers set out from the Gordon Highlands and carved a country such as Australia until they had a portion of their own. I loved him then and there. We all did. He was the embodiment of so many of those who left, of so many forefathers never seen again. In him he carried a sister, brother, aunt or great-grandfather. He had the passion of a hundred lifetimes in his eyes, and he loved his people and place as much as I loved mine. I adored him.'

‘You?' Sarah could not believe the grey-haired woman sitting opposite her.

‘I wasn't always old, Sarah,' Mrs Jamieson replied, her feathery eyebrows lifting in amusement. ‘I thought of marriage, but then I believed I could no sooner leave the North Country than he could leave his blue haze. We spent many a day together and then on the last, at a time of my choosing, I turned away from him. He left without a word and returned, oh, months later. When I saw him, I knew then and there that if he asked me, I would go with him. He stayed part of the winter here. There were many days he spent in the company of Lord Andrews and his father. They were a gentleman family then. We saw each other and I waited, but he never asked me again. He was too proud and I said nothing. Before he left, I heard young Maggie was outing with him. I saw the flare in both their eyes one night and knew he would not visit me again, as sure as I knew he would not stay for Maggie, nor would he ever return to Tongue.

‘In the summer, Jim was born and Maggie married Robert. I did not need to see the boy to know who the father was. And I had heard of the violet eyes of one line of the Clan Gordon. Young Jim had those eyes like his father and –' she nodded pointedly at Sarah – ‘his sister. I spoke to Maggie many years later, told her I had written to Ronald, your father, telling him of his boy. She's not spoken to me since, until this morning. She believed young Jim's birthright should remain a secret. But it was too late. I told your father because it was only right he should know.'

‘Dad never said anything.'

‘And you would be expecting him to? He didn't know about Jim until the year your own dear brother turned five.'

Sarah couldn't stop her eyes filling with tears as she recalled the gradual disintegration of their family.

‘I'm sorry, lass. Things have been hard for you.'

‘Hard!' Sarah gave a weary sigh. ‘My mother virtually ignored me. Her life revolved around my brother. She adored him, I guess, because Cameron was the son of her lover, while I was the daughter she didn't want.' Wiping tears from her cheek, Sarah blew her nose loudly.

‘I'm sorry, Sarah.' Mrs Jamieson patted Sarah's hand, the roughness of her calloused palms pulling the soft skin beneath.

‘Well, it's done now,' Sarah replied sadly, removing her hand from the table top to place it protectively in her lap. ‘I guess after Mum learned Dad had been unfaithful she just found it difficult to love me. Ironic, isn't it? She was also unfaithful, yet there was no room in her heart for me.' She wondered if the revelation of Jim's existence caused the wedge between her grandfather and father. ‘Grandfather must have found out about Dad's affair and been disgusted.'

‘Or supremely disappointed young Jim wasn't shipped out to Australia. Look, Sarah, I gave no thought to how the news of Jim's existence would affect your family. No doubt your father believed your mother would be able to handle the situation, otherwise he never would have told her. But, you see, you can't tell how people will react, that is why it is so important for you to keep this to yourself. You met a soul on the other side of the world, lass. You know a part of your father few would. What's done is for a reason. Don't destroy a family you may never see again.'

‘But doesn't Jim deserve to know about his father and his family? Don't you want to know …'

‘What? Tell us what in our hearts we know, lass? Tell us he married a woman who didn't share his love for his beloved home, but at least bore him two strong children? All a man can ask for is strong young 'uns. I see the sadness and know you, Sarah Gordon. Go back to Wangallon, it's what made your family. Go back and live. Don't wonder for the rest of your life what might have been.'

Sarah was sitting on the cracked cement step outside the cottage when the familiar rattle of the ancient green pick-up slowed on approach. Swallowing involuntarily, her hands grew clammy as Jim appeared from the vehicle's interior. Dressed in dark jeans and a round-necked jumper in a mottle of green and grey hues, Sarah noted that although tall, it was his barrel chest and thick arms that marked him as a Gordon. And, violet eyes aside, he only needed a pipe and a dog by his side to replicate the yellowing photograph of her great-grandfather, Hamish. He walked steadily towards her and, as Sarah's eyes traversed the length of his body, she studied this man who was blood related, and caught her first glimpse of the steadfast, sensitive boy Mrs Jamieson spoke of. As he sat next to her, spreading his legs out before him, crossing his ankles carefully, Sarah sensed the weight of responsibility that rested comfortably on his broad shoulders. How wrong she had been. Jim Macken was a Gordon all right.

‘You won't stay, will you, Sarah? Mother said so.'

Preferring to have been given a day to gather her swirling thoughts instead of the few hours granted to her, Sarah touched his forearm, her fingers resting there, feeling the deep curve of his bicep. ‘I have to go home.' She watched the bunching of his facial muscles, poring over the features of this man who was her half-brother, rendering his image forever in her brain. She wanted to run upstairs and grab her camera, take heaps of photos, jump, leap and wail, cry out to the world she was not alone anymore. ‘Leaving you will be like leaving my best friend.' It was the most she could say. ‘But I can't stay here, Jim, it's not my life, it's yours.' Already her tears were rising unbidden.

‘Answer me, lass. Do you really love your land so much you would never leave it? For that is what Mrs Jamieson says.'

Her silence answered him. He wiped his hands roughly on his jeans, ‘I should go then.' He stood slowly, straightening his back as if finishing a long day of manual labour. With the slightest incline of his head he began to walk away.

‘Jim …' There were so many things she wanted to share with him; so many inconsequential things that she realised only he could fathom, for they were alike; he was her half-brother. ‘You know that out of everyone in the living world, you are the essence of me?' Running to the door of the truck, her hands caught his.