‘Rudie’s delighted with it. Noël fell asleep on my lap not long after we got there, then we took him out, had some lunch in the cafe and I showed them about. The man was coming with the car at four, so I left them to it then.’
‘It’s a bit lonely for Rudie alone with a kid,’ Bruce said, looking a bit anxious. ‘What’s he going to do with himself in the evenings?’
‘There’s the television, he reads a lot, he’ll be fine. He makes friends easily, I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t know half the town by the end of the week.’
‘Maybe I’ll go down there tomorrow night, take a few beers and have a chat,’ Bruce suggested. ‘I’d like to get to know him. Besides, it might shame Ross into being a little more hospitable too.’
Dulcie had a lovely time with Noël the following day. From the moment he got out of the car and toddled across to see the dogs, he was happy. She showed him the new calves, the pigs and horses, and he laughed so much when she put a sugar lump in his hand and the horse nuzzled it up off his palm.
He was a great hit with all the men, including Ross, for at midday he trotted behind her as she took tea and sandwiches over to the barn for them, then promptly perched himself on Ross’s lap and demanded some of his sandwich.
John gave him aeroplane rides, swinging him round and round. Bob let him sit up on the tractor, and Ross took him off to feed the last bits of sandwiches to the pigs. Bruce wasn’t going to be outdone and saddled up his horse, put Noël in front of him and they cantered round the paddock. Dulcie stood and watched, her heart overflowing with joy to hear their laughter.
Later she put Noël down for a sleep in her old bed while she began preparations for the evening meal. As she peeled the potatoes she glanced out of the window, and to her surprise Ross was shinning up the oak tree with a rope slung across his shoulders. She watched, puzzled. John was standing on the ground looking up at Ross, who was now astride a thick branch and shuffling along. John appeared to be shouting some instructions.
Ross fastened the rope around the branch with a clove-hitch, then promptly slid back down it to the ground. Finally she saw what they were doing. They were making a swing from an old tyre.
She laughed aloud as she saw them testing it out, both clinging on to it together at one point, then suddenly she found herself irrationally tearful that the arrival of one small boy could bring back the child in both these grown men.
But Noël brought back the child in her too, for when he woke up from his nap she took him outside to test the swing and before long she was inside the tyre herself, with Noël on her lap, swinging to her heart’s content.
He got filthy outside that afternoon. He chased Jigger around the yard, he was on and off the swing a hundred and one times, climbed on some wooden boxes, jumped down into her waiting arms, and dug in some sand with a little spade. She had to strip him off and put him in the bath before supper, his little shorts, tee-shirt and socks so dirty she had to put them to soak before attempting to wash them. But fortunately Rudie had put a spare set of clothes in a bag, so she guessed he must go through this most days himself.
Bruce said he would take him home after supper, and even though Dulcie wanted to go herself, she said nothing. Ross had sat Noël up on a cushion on a chair beside him at the table and helped him feed himself, and as Ross seemed relaxed and happy, perhaps it was best not to push anything. She would see Rudie and Noël the following afternoon anyway – maybe by then Ross would be suggesting she brought them both back for supper.
When Rudie heard the knock at the door of his rented cottage, he expected it to be Dulcie. But he was a little surprised to see the man he’d seen only fleetingly at Kalgoorlie three years earlier, with Noël in his arms.
‘G’day, Rudie,’ Bruce said. ‘I offered to bring the little chap home so I could meet you, we can’t really count that day at Kalgoorlie since we never even spoke.’
Rudie’s face broke into a broad grin, and held out his arms for his son. ‘Good to see you, Bruce. Come on in. I can’t offer you much more than a cup of tea, I haven’t got around to getting any booze in.’
Bruce waved a bag as he stepped inside the house. ‘Good job I brought a few beers then! Noël’s been a great hit with everyone today, but I reckon he’s bushed now. Dulcie said to tell you he’s had a bath and a good supper.’
Rudie kissed his son’s cheek. Noël was already sleepily laying his head on his father’s shoulder. ‘You pour yourself a beer and I’ll just get him ready for bed. I hope he’s been good?’
‘A real charmer,’ Bruce said. ‘He’s been on a horse with me, on the tractor with Bob, and John and Ross made him a swing. Never seen Dulcie so happy.’
As Rudie stripped off Noël’s clothes and put on his pyjamas, he watched Bruce go out into the kitchen and return with two glasses of beer. Dulcie had spoken of this man so often, Rudie felt as if he already knew him, yet strangely, the picture he had in his mind of their first meeting, things May had said and the conversations with Bruce on the phone, had given him the idea he was a much younger man.
He was big, muscular and seemingly fit, a warm, vibrant personality with a smile that would light up a room, yet despite all that Rudie sensed this was a man who was now close to the end of his life. He wondered if Bruce knew this himself, for it could explain why he showed such fatherly concern for Dulcie.
‘Reckon he’s got the makings of a country boy,’ Bruce said jovially. ‘He really likes animals.’
‘I’ll have to make sure he gets more contact with them then when I get home,’ Rudie smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll get him a dog, and take him out horse-riding. I might be a city slicker myself now, but I was brought up in the country too.’ With Noël in his arms he nipped out into the kitchen to get his bottle of milk. ‘That’s one of the drawbacks with bringing a child up on your own,’ he said as he returned. ‘You haven’t got another person to suggest things you haven’t thought of.’
‘Maybe you should look around for a wife,’ Bruce said.
Rudie laughed, the way Bruce spoke he made it sound like you went to the market and just picked one out. ‘I’d be worried I might find the wicked stepmother,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m a bit jaundiced but most of the women I meet are more interested in what I’ve got than the real me and Noël.’
Noël drank his bottle in double-quick time, then Rudie carried him up to bed.
‘I have to hand it to you,’ Bruce said as he came back down again, ‘you’ve done a fine job with that little lad. He’s a credit to you. And it was real good of you to bring him all this way so Dulcie could see him.’
‘It’s important Noël keeps in contact with her,’ Rudie said, picking up the drink Bruce had poured for him. ‘As he grows up I want the picture in his head of his mother to be a positive one. I know there’s a likelihood that someone, someday, will spill the beans about May, but if he’s got his aunt about, it won’t hurt him.’
Bruce nodded in agreement. ‘Dulcie needs him too. It choked me up seeing how happy she was with him today. She’s had such a bloody raw deal in life, and fond as I am of her, if she told me she wanted to take off to Sydney for good, I’d be happy for her. She deserves something better than she’s got now.’
Rudie hadn’t expected such a statement from a man who clearly saw Dulcie as an adopted daughter. ‘Are you saying she isn’t happy?’ he asked. ‘She gave me the impression everything was fine now.’
Bruce sighed. ‘She would. But then her idea of personal happiness is when everyone else around her is content and comfortable. My Betty was a bit like that too, but then we had the foundation of a strong, loving marriage, and we weathered the storms together. I don’t see Dulcie’s and Ross’s marriage in the same way, it’s all her giving, and him taking.’
Rudie realized then this was precisely why Bruce had called on him tonight, he was worried about Dulcie and he needed to share it with someone else.
They talked for a while about Ross’s breakdown, and it became clear to Rudie that Bruce was as much in the dark about what happened up at Bindoon as he was.
‘How is he now?’ Rudie asked.
Bruce shrugged. ‘His old self in most ways. Competent, hard-working, the perfect stockman, you could say. Bob and John, my two other stockmen, are good men too, but not in the same class as Ross because he can do almost anything, twice as quickly, more thoroughly. Yet I know John and Bob inside out. Not Ross though, he’s a dark horse, you can’t get close to him.’
‘Dulcie said something today about him going up to Kalgoorlie once a month. Do Bob and John do this too?’
‘Not Bob,’ Bruce grinned. ‘He’s a bit of a mother’s boy. He doesn’t go much on hard drinking and throwing his money away on sheilas. John used to when he was younger, he was a wild one then, but he’s calmed down, still likes a few beers and the sheilas, but he wouldn’t drive a hundred and fifty miles for it now.’
‘Is it beer or women Ross goes to Kalgoorlie for then?’ Rudie asked.
Bruce hesitated.
That hesitation said reams to Rudie. ‘You think it’s women, don’t you?’ he said.
Bruce suddenly looked anxious. ‘Look, mate. I don’t know anything for certain. But the bloke comes back from there looking like the cat that’s been in the cream. The two blokes he goes with are both womanizers. If it was just beer he wanted he could get that here.’
Rudie thought about it for a moment. He knew Kalgoorlie’s reputation, it was the one place in Australia where prostitution was, if not legal, accepted. The thought of Ross going with women like that and then coming home to Dulcie filled him with horror.
He might have only just met Bruce, but he knew the man was worldly, intuitive and fair. He wouldn’t have come here to speak about this unless he was completely certain in his own mind that was what Ross was up to.
Rudie thought it was time he laid his cards on the table. ‘Dulcie confided in me in Sydney that Ross had never consummated their marriage,’ he blurted out. ‘It was a shrink friend of mine who suggested to her this might be because of something which happened to Ross at Bindoon.’
‘I know all that,’ Bruce nodded. ‘Dulcie told me.’
Rudie looked relieved.
‘So did Ross get cured?’ Rudie asked him.
‘I don’t know.’ Bruce shook his head. ‘You can’t ask something like that. Dulcie never told me what happened at Bindoon, but it had to be pretty bloody bad or Ross wouldn’t have gone off his rocker, and she looked as if she’d been to hell and back too. She was so relieved when he got better that I couldn’t bring myself to ask anything that might embarrass her.’
‘Stephan would know,’ Rudie said thoughtfully. ‘But he wouldn’t tell me! The only thing he told me was that Dulcie finally got a bit snotty with him and she hadn’t rung him since. Oh shit, Bruce! We can’t interfere, can we?’
The two men sat drinking their beer for several minutes in silence. Rudie was thinking that whether or not Ross was making love to Dulcie now, the end-result either way was likely to end in more misery for her. He guessed Bruce’s thoughts were running along the same lines.
‘Maybe I should tackle Ross about it,’ Bruce said. ‘I mean, about what he does up in Kalgoorlie.’
‘He’s not going to admit to going with tarts, is he?’ Rudie said dejectedly.
‘What if we could get some proof?’ Bruce said thoughtfully. ‘Mind you, I can’t imagine how we’d get that.’
‘Those girls talk if you make it worth their while,’ Rudie said. ‘That’s how I found out where May was.’
‘Could you go up there and ask around?’ Bruce asked.
Rudie was horrified. ‘Oh, come on, mate!’ he exclaimed. ‘How would it look if I started trouble for Ross? People would think I was after his wife!’
‘But you do want her, don’t you?’ Bruce said in a low voice, his blue eyes looking straight into Rudie’s dark ones. ‘Let’s cut all the crap, Rudie, I’m getting old, I love Dulcie like she was my kid, I want happiness for her while I’m still around to see it. When she came back from Sydney I knew she wasn’t only grieving for Noël and her sister, but you too. I used to see a brightness in her face whenever you phoned, the way she spoke of you. And I’ve been around long enough to know a man doesn’t fly right across Australia purely because he wants his son to see his aunt.’
‘There’s been nothing between us but friendship,’ Rudie said hastily, but he felt himself blushing under the older man’s intense gaze.
Bruce nodded. ‘I know that too. Dulcie wouldn’t have come home if she’d been up to any hanky-panky.’ He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I hold myself responsible for her marrying Ross. I care about him too, you see, and when Dulcie came along I guess I thought they had enough in common to find real happiness together. I should have looked closer like Betty did, but I got carried away with the idea they’d stay with us into our old age, maybe with a whole bunch of kids for us to enjoy like grandchildren. I planned to leave the farm to them too.’
‘You mustn’t feel responsible, they must have fallen in love with one another.’
‘How can two kids brought up in cruel institutions without anyone of the opposite sex know anything?’ Bruce said fiercely ‘They were thrown together, they sensed my approval. Ross was bowled over by her pretty face, kindness and cooking, and Dulcie, being the way she is, thought her pity for him was love. Betty and me knew there was no passion between them, they were like two kids at Sunday school. I know now that when Betty died I should have talked them out of it.’
‘But you were grieving,’ Rudie said.
‘I was, but that’s no excuse. It was self-interest, I wanted them to stay around for ever, Ross was too good a stockman to lose, Dulcie was too good a housekeeper.’
‘You also loved them both,’ Rudie said quietly, knowing this was true.
‘Yes, I do, Ross as much as Dulcie. But that’s the real bugger of it all, Rudie. If they stay together Dulcie is going to spend the rest of her life unhappy. If I encourage, or force her hand to leave Ross, then he will be unhappy. It’s like the bloody judgement of Solomon.’
A tear trickled down Bruce’s cheek, he wiped it away and stood up. ‘I’d best be going now. I’ve said more than enough.’
Rudie stood up too and impulsively embraced the older man. He understood now why Dulcie loved Bruce so much, and he was humbled by the man’s honesty and courage. ‘I’m glad you came tonight,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘But Bruce, you’ve got nothing to reproach yourself for, you’ve been a real father to both Ross and Dulcie, you’ve redressed a great many of the wrongs done to them. Whatever happens, you’ve been the best and greatest influence in their lives.’