The Cattleman's Daughter Page 5

  Luke nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ Kelvin said, ‘the cattlemen have caused me nothing but headaches. The day grazing is banned from the high country will be a happy, happy day. And it’s coming soon.’

  Kelvin Grimsley huffed as he stood, grabbing up his cup.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked Luke.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Ha!’ Kelvin laughed. ‘No coffee? You’re definitely the man for the job. Finding good coffee at Dargo would be like finding hen’s teeth. Oh, what am I doing? I’m the acting manager! I don’t have to get my own drinks.’ He buzzed Kylie.

  Smiling at Luke, he said, ‘You could get to the top of the tree like me, son. If you work hard.’

  As Kelvin continued his monologue Luke looked again at the newspaper article and wondered what ‘critical condition’ meant. Would the cattleman’s daughter make it through, or die, or perhaps be hideously injured for life? He felt sorry for her, whoever she was. But his wandering mind was jolted back on track when Kelvin perched himself on the desk in front of him.

  ‘I like you, Luke Bradshaw. Of course there’ll have to be a formal offer, but I think you’re the perfect man for the job. What do you say?’

  Eight

  ‘Congratulations,’ beamed the pint-sized Indian doctor as he sailed into Emily’s room, his white coat billowing behind him like sheets on the line. ‘You’ve been moved off our critical list and you can now vamoose onto the regular ward.’

  ‘Can’t I just go home?’ Emily said.

  The doctor shook his head. ‘No, my dear. You’ll be in for a long while yet.’

  Emily looked dejected as the doctor signed some paperwork and handed it to a nurse.

  ‘Come on! Don’t look so down,’ he said. ‘Rumour has it your gorgeous girls and your handsome husband are in the building and on their way. You’ve plenty to smile about.’

  He exited the room as quickly as he’d entered it and Emily was left bracing herself. Clancy? Here? With the girls? How could she tell him it was over with the girls right there? But how could she wait? She couldn’t bear to think life might go on as it had before the accident.

  And suddenly they were there in the room, Meg and Tilly, with Clancy standing tall behind them, apprehension on his face.

  ‘Mummy’s awake!’ shrilled Tilly and both girls ran to her, clambering up on the bed and covering her with kisses, the collection of drawings they’d brought for her getting scrunched and torn.

  ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ said Emily. ‘Careful. Shift your leg, Meg. Gently! Mum’s a bit sore. Oh, my girls! My little legends!’ She glanced at Clancy and cautiously said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, babe,’ he said gently, waiting for the girls’ excitement to subside before he came over to the bed.

  Emily focused her attention on the girls, stroking their hair, hugging them as best she could through her pain. Tears rose in her eyes as she realised the gift she’d been given to be able to hold them again. How easily it might not have been this way. The thought of them travelling through life without her was unbearable. She had endured her own motherless childhood, grateful for Flo, but there had always been such a void in her life.

  ‘Mummy, there’s a cupboard down there with food in it and Daddy said if you put money in it the cupboard opens!’

  ‘A cupboard? Really? Oh! You mean a vending machine.’

  ‘Yes. Why do they have those cupboards in the hospital?’ Meg asked.

  ‘So people can have a snack,’ she said.

  ‘Like grabbing an apple?’

  ‘Yes, just like that. It’s city snacking because they don’t have apple trees much here.’

  As the girls fired questions at Emily and she answered as best she could, she began to take in Clancy. He was hovering a distance away, wearing the same checked shirt she’d ironed for the Cattlemen’s. Now it had been washed but was crinkled, the chest pockets of it turning up unevenly, like a pup with one ear up, one ear down.

  At the cattlemen’s bar, the night before the race, she’d spotted Clancy easily in that shirt the moment she’d walked in. He’d been standing under the sheen of the spotlights in a crush of sweat-stained hats and singlets, hairy backs and tats. He looked like a peacock in the colourful green and blue checks and she had felt so much like the plain pea-hen in her oilskin, her brown hat hiding her dull, cropped hair. Underneath her jeans she wore her aeroplane undies with little red and green biplanes buzzing on them and the words, Landing Strip Under Repair; Proceed with Caution. She knew now that Clancy wouldn’t be getting the joke tonight.

  With resentment, Emily drew in the smell of spilt beer. Summer rain careened off the marquee and she was angry at Clancy for not helping her set up camp before the storm blew in. Meg was slung on her hip, sulking, and Tilly clung dripping wet to her coat.

  She could see Clancy was talking to an Amazonian bottle blonde. Her boobs were plumped up in a low-cut top so that her cleavage formed an inviting line down her chest. Her eyes were sparkling. Emily didn’t know much about make-up but this girl was coated in it. Black stuff round her eyes and shimmery stuff on her lids and lips that glowed red.

  Now she knew more about the inner workings of Clancy’s mind, she knew the woman’s red lips would remind Clancy of the parts of her he’d really like to know.

  Emily felt jealousy and inadequacy spike within her. The discovery of the receipt for the prostitutes was still raw in her and it simmered beneath the surface like a volcano that could erupt at any time. She held onto the knowledge like a loaded gun, ready to fire at Clancy. Sprung. Despite her jealousy, Emily acknowledged the girl looked awesome. Slightly trashy, but totally at one with her far from magazine-perfect body. She was almost as tall as Clancy, with shoulders as broad as Lisa Curry. She was big and curvy, Wonder Woman in jeans and a tank top. Her wrists jangled with gold bracelets and glassy baubles and her white-blonde hair was caught up in swirls on top of her head. She looked like she’d snap a man in half in the sack, thought Emily, and perhaps if Emily hadn’t come along, that’s what she was planning to do with Clancy.

  Emily looked at the men and women behind the bar who were busy topping up the booze baths with bags of ice to keep the cans cold. They tossed them down from the truck like army volunteers threw sandbags in a flood. It was the same scene from when she and Clancy had met at the get-together seven years ago. Clancy Moran stood at six foot tall, and was so impossibly good looking, women of all ages found it hard to draw their eyes away from him. He was something like a cowboy from a Wrangler jeans catalogue. In Melbourne, with his manly jaw line highlighted by flecks of stubble, his indigo-blue eyes and short dark hair, he’d been ‘spotted’ several times and asked to be in photo shoots, but Clancy had always responded the same way.

  ‘Modelling’s for poofters. No way.’

  But when Clancy’d first hit on Emily, she made sure she wasn’t going to be like the other women. She kidded and joked along with him like she would a big brother and stirred him mercilessly. It had driven him mad to meet a girl he hadn’t won over in an instant with his looks.

  ‘I swear you’ll end up infertile with dacks as tight as that,’ she’d said to him dryly as she leant, drinking legally for the first time at the cattlemen’s bar. ‘They’re so tight I can near see your goolies. Did your mum shrink them in the wash or did you plan it that way to pull the chicks?’ Clancy had met his match.

  Ever since she was sixteen Emily Flanaghan had filled out a pair of jeans like only a fit, strong country girl can, the thick brown leather of her belt hugging her tiny waist. She often wore checked shirts with press-stud buttons that Clancy had liked to rip right open in one hit. He’d also liked the way she wore the buttons part way undone, so that there was always a glimpse of blue singlet and a hint of the gentle rise of her sun-kissed breasts.

  He’d told her that he’d always had his eye on her. Even when she was a little tacker. The way, years ago, she claimed the junior cattlemen’s cup on her nuggety little buckskin by a whisker to a big loping tho
roughbred bay. He’d seen her each year as she blossomed and grew, cracking stockwhips like a pro in the junior whip crack. Her mouth set firm in a determined line, a soft frown on her face beneath her wide-brimmed hat as the crackers flew back and forth. The sound, mimicking a train rolling away from the station, echoing around the hills. The way her tanned and grubby hands stroked the snake of plaited leather of her stockwhips as she expertly curled them and hung them over her caramel-coloured shoulder when she was done. How she swung lithely on the back of her stockhorse and rode off like an exotic princess with her dark, wavy hair falling down her back. He had treated her like one and she had fallen for it.

  Now, here they were again at the cattlemen’s bar and he was treating her not like a princess but like shit. A rage surfaced in Emily. She pushed her way through the crowd, kids in tow, to Clancy.

  Before she could fling angry words at him, the girl turned towards Emily and beamed a smile at her.

  ‘Emily!’ the girl said.

  Emily looked blank.

  ‘You don’t remember me?’ She laid her ringed fingers on her chest. ‘Bridie. Bridie McFarlane. From Dargo Primary?’

  ‘Bridie McFarlane! Oh my God!’ Emily said excitedly. ‘Course I remember you. I just didn’t recognise you!’

  ‘Yeah, well, the boys did call me pudden guts back in school. A total dag.’

  ‘Come here!’ And with that both girls hugged for a long time, the memories of their friendship in the tiny school flooding back. Emily bent down to introduce Tilly and Meg.

  ‘This is Mummy’s best friend from school!’ She stood again. ‘My God, what are you doing back here? I thought you’d moved to Tassie.’

  ‘Mum and Dad are still there, but I’ve been away in Brizzie at bewdy school. You know, facials, waxing, tints. That kinda stuff.’

  ‘Good for you!’

  ‘And you?’

  Emily shrugged and inclined her head. Clancy was standing beside them with two drinks in his hands, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘Just being a slave to my husband. But I see you’ve already met.’

  ‘Husband?’ Bridie said, her eyes narrowing at Clancy. Bridie took both the cans from him without thanking him and very deliberately handed one to Emily, keeping the other for herself.

  ‘Is he looking after you well in Dargo?’ she said pointedly.

  Emily shook her head. ‘We’re not in Dargo. Clancy runs a trucking business out of Brigalow and we’ve got a house there.’

  ‘Emily Flanaghan in Brigalow! Geez!’ she said, turning to Clancy. ‘How’d you get her out of the mountains?’

  ‘Looks and charm,’ he said with a nervous wink.

  ‘Wouldna worked on me,’ Bridie said dryly, then turned her back to him and faced Emily and the girls. ‘That’s a shame you don’t live there now, just when I’m movin’ back. Settin’ up me own beauty business.’

  ‘In Dargo? Geez, why set up there?’

  ‘A broken heart makes a girl do funny things. I guess I wanted somewhere familiar for a bit.’ ‘She swigged on her drink. ‘You’ll have to stop by.’

  ‘I’d love to! I could do with some TLC.’ Clancy looked put out. Emily realised how much he’d quashed her other friendships with women over the past few years. Suddenly Emily saw clearly how her life was not her own. She remembered the receipt. Hurt spiked again in her.

  The clouds by now had drifted away in the wake of the storm, and the evening star in the east was shining brightly. The white silhouette of a new moon was on the rise as the pale sky began to fade to ink. Purple and pink rays fanned out from the setting sun, illuminating the western sky. The warmth was back in the air again, but this time it was steamy like a jungle.

  ‘Oh,’ Bridie said, ducking her head to look out from the marquee, ‘would you look at that sunset! It’s bloody beautiful up here. C’mon.’ She linked arms with Emily and grabbed Tilly’s hand. ‘Let’s take a walk, girls, and leave old Dad here to get sozzled on his own.’

  Clancy looked pissed off, but Bridie held such command he didn’t protest. Emily gave him a sideways look for good measure before moving away into the crowd.

  Emily relished walking beside her childhood friend again. She and Bridie shared a past of wild girls going feral in the creeks, rivers and all about Dargo on their bikes and ponies. Bridie had been a blob of a kid, but now her wide blocky shoulders were tanned to a tasty cinnamon colour and she carried her weight well. Her tight-fitting aqua tank-top defined her waist that was wide but strongly curved enough in an hourglass shape to be inviting. She moved her ample arse like a slinky cat, which Emily guessed she’d learnt at beauty school. Despite her heaviness, she walked like she was sex on a stick. Emily wanted to take a leaf out of her book. Bridie oozed confidence and strength. But despite the broken heart she spoke of, she also seemed full of the joy of life. How Emily used to be.

  They sat on a steep grassy bank lit by generator floodlights. Beside them Meg and Tilly joined the pack of kids who had taken to tobogganing down the slippery, dry incline on flattened beer cartons.

  As they laughed at the kids’ antics, Bridie leant her head towards Emily’s and rested it against hers.

  ‘It’s so good to see you again.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘Sorry I never wrote.’

  ‘Same. I’m crap at letters. Thumbnail dipped in tar kinda stuff.’

  Bridie stopped and turned to Emily suddenly, ‘Can I get up close and personal again?’

  Emily nodded, unsure what she meant.

  ‘It looks as if you need some sorting,’ she said, lifting Emily’s hat and surveying the hacked hairstyle.

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Your husband just tried to pick me up at the bar.’

  Emily felt tears rise in an instant. Of course he had.

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ she said, her voice cracking.

  Bridie squeezed an arm about her shoulders.

  ‘Hey! Shush! Don’t worry, Auntie Bridie’s here! Beauty consultant by day, trained counsellor and drinking partner by night.’

  Emily nodded gratefully.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about leaving him.’

  ‘When?’ Bridie asked. Emily shrugged, too choked up to answer.

  ‘I know I’ve just met him, but he’s an arsehole, Em. And I know ’em when I see ’em.’ She tried to read Emily’s reaction.

  ‘Geez, sorry,’ Bridie said. ‘Tell me if what I’ve said is way too rude.’

  Emily smiled. ‘No, you’re absolutely right. He is an arsehole. I’m gonna ride in the race tomorrow. After that, I’m telling him I’m leaving.’

  ‘Really?’ Bridie asked.

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘Good for you, girl!’ she said, toasting Emily. ‘There’s no turning back!’

  Later that night, as Emily quietly unzipped the tent, she felt Clancy’s presence behind her.

  ‘You think you’re so fucken smart, don’t you?’ he said, grabbing her arm. ‘Pissing off with that fat bitch and treating me like shit.’

  She shook his grip away.

  ‘Shh!’ she said, aware of the other campers and the girls she’d just settled in the nearby tent. She moved away to the creek.

  In the darkness she looked up at the stars through the river gums and tried to summon up the courage to tell him that she knew about the truckie prostitutes. That their marriage was over. But no words came. Clancy slid down the bank in his cowboy boots towards her. She could smell the grog on his breath and the pungent stench of his sweaty underarms. Still in her boots, she splashed through the shallows away from him.

  After that her memory was fractured. Blotted out like shadows in the night. She remembered his fingers biting into the soft underbelly-white of her upper arms. His grip too tight. His fingers burning her as he shoved her back onto the jagged creekbed. She tried to cry out but he put his large hand over her mouth. The strength of him was frightening as he tugged her jeans down and grunted into her like an animal. Her eyes were scrunched tight, h
er head held by his big hand to one side. The press of rocks into the aching muscles of her back. She remembered the angry bite of ants against her thighs. Then the stillness afterwards, when he had rolled off her and swayed drunkenly away. The smell of his warm semen trickling out of her made her want to retch. She remembered crying, hugging her knees to her chest in the dust beside the creekbed, wondering how she could ever go on from here.

  Emily looked at Clancy standing before her in the hospital.

  ‘Have you got any money?’ Her voice cold and matter-of-fact. He frowned.

  ‘What sort of a question is that? What do you want money now for?’

  She inclined her head towards the girls.

  ‘Send them down to the vending machine.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Couldn’t you go get them something so they can sit and eat it in the corridor? We need some time alone. We need to talk.’ She knew they were the words he most hated to hear.

  ‘Talk?’

  ‘Yes, talk, Clancy. Talk. About us.’ She cast him a look so filled with sadness and distress, he couldn’t argue. He dug his big square hands into his pockets.

  ‘C’mon, rug rats, let’s go to the food machine.’

  Meg and Tilly danced around their father, giggling. Emily watched him usher them out and despair swamped her. Clancy loved his girls in his own way. Here she was about to break up their family – no matter how fragmented that family had been. Would separation be too hard on the girls? Was it the right thing to do? Should she stay with Clancy and give him another chance?

  She fanned Meg and Tilly’s drawings out across the bed, looking at them closely for the first time. Matilda had painted a picture of Mummy and her horse. Snowgum had bandages around her legs and head. Emily grimaced before shuffling to the next one in the pile. This was by Meg and it pulled Emily up short. Her hand flew to her mouth as she stared at the picture.

  It was a drawing of a house – but not a house. A hut, with a crude chimney, just like the one in her dream. Meg had drawn trees too, lots of them, and among the clumsy crayon slashes of a four-year-old there was a woman with grey hair wearing a long dark dress. Hovering above the hut was an angel. She had short dark hair, like Emily, and she was holding onto a horse that had wings too. It was all there on the page. Meg had depicted Emily’s near-death experience. Emily shivered. The mountains, she thought. She was being shown the mountains.