The Cattleman's Daughter Read online

  ‘Well, here I am.’

  ‘Here you are! That’s great. That’s really great. I’m rapt to see you alive and well.’ He was looking at her fully now, taking in her pretty smile and stunning dark-brown eyes with the long curled-up lashes. Emily stared back at him and for a moment she felt a zing. Then, just as suddenly, a wave of self-consciousness. They both laughed nervously.

  He looked down at the drawing in her hands.

  ‘Do you paint?’

  Emily laughed. ‘No. But my daughter does.’

  ‘Oh, good! If you’d done that, you’d be crap, but seeing as your daughter did it, it’s great. She’s got talent. Is that your home?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Emily said.

  ‘Just the one kid?’

  ‘I have another little girl.’

  ‘Two girls. Nice.’

  Emily nodded and they both fell silent. Nothing more to say then. That will be the story of the rest of my life, Emily thought, resigned. Man meets girl. Girl has two children. Man loses interest. She glanced back up at the tree. The man was about to speak again, when they heard someone calling.

  ‘Luuuuke!’

  He jumped in his seat and looked around. Emily turned to see a skinny girl wearing shorts and a singlet being helped through the sliding doors on crutches by a nurse, who was carrying a large bag with the rat head sticking out of it.

  ‘That’s her. Gotta go,’ said Luke, who sprang up and began walking quickly away. He spun around, walking backwards over the small patch of lawn. ‘Nice to sort of meet you.’ He shot her another heart-melting smile and then he was gone.

  ‘Hooly dooly,’ Emily said again. His girlfriend was Ratgirl. Her costume was the ‘padding’ he was talking about. She thought about his smile. His interest in her wellbeing and Meg’s drawing. What a lovely, lovely bloke, she thought. And he went out with Ratgirl. The world was a funny old place.

  That night, Emily woke suddenly, without knowing why. She propped herself up and looked around the darkened ward. Light from the corridor spilled a slanted rectangle over the floor. She glanced at the clock. It was eleven p.m.

  ‘Bloody oath,’ she said, sinking back into the bed. If the days were long at the hospital, the nights were worse. In the silent eerie space of the night ward, Emily saw the hut on the high plains and again felt the call of the land itself. She didn’t even have to be asleep for the visions to come. What did it all mean, she wondered? She knew her life had been spared – but for what? And she knew, now, that she was being guided home. Meg’s paintings had shown her that. But why her great-great grandmother? Why wasn’t her mother up there in the cosmos, being her guardian angel?

  Emily went over and over these thoughts. For too long, married to Clancy, she’d shut out what her future might be. Now she was going to reclaim it. She was a cattleman’s daughter, with a proud heritage of caring for the land. She was going to teach her girls the same bushman skills she had learned – and teach them the old-fashioned values that had so far been lost in their suburban lives of too much TV and junk food. She thought of the high plains now and wished herself and her girls there. She wondered though if it was all too late. The government was again being pressured to evict the mountain cattlemen. A sinking feeling besieged her. What if they lost the runs? What then of her life?

  ‘Hurry up and heal,’ she muttered now, looking down at her body. Then she heard a noise, a shuffling, that she was sure came from beneath her bed.

  ‘Hello?’ she said nervously.

  ‘Shhh!’ It was a voice in the darkness, directly beneath her.

  ‘Holy fuck!’ said Emily, grappling for her lightswitch, the nurse button, anything.

  ‘No, no, no, you don’t!’ A man’s hand reached up from beneath the bed and grabbed hers. ‘Don’t let anyone know I’m here!’ She heard a familiar chuckle.

  ‘Sam?’ Emily breathed. ‘Sam? Is that you? What the …?’

  With a clatter and a clank, her brother emerged from under her bed clutching a pillow and a hospital blanket.

  ‘Sam! What are you doing here?’

  Just seeing him caused emotion to well up within her. Emily flung out her arms as best she could and he fell into them as gently as he could. She took in the smell of him. A mix of hard booze and wacky tobaccy, but that same earthy smell that was him. Her brother.

  ‘Shhh! Shhhh! I’m on the run from the law, sis. Keep a lid on it,’ he said in a dreadful phoney Nashville accent.

  ‘Oh, Sam, you big dumb idiot.’ They were hugging, giggling and crying all at once. ‘I thought you were in the States.’

  ‘Had to come home and make sure my big sis was okay. I like the butch look,’ he said, scruffling her hair.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said. They fell silent.

  ‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ said Sam eventually, giving her hand a squeeze. They sat silently contemplating how it could’ve been. Sam back for a funeral, not a reunion.

  Emily held him at arm’s length and took in the prison-style buzz cut, so different from the last time she’d seen him with his sandy blond hair all long and floppy. She saw he was still boyishly handsome with his five o’clock shadow and cute heart-shaped face, a mirror of her own. His jawline was fringed with dark stubble. He had that cheeky smile that turned up at one side and blue-green eyes like the sea on a mild day.

  He was wearing the coolest tan cowboy boots, unpolished and scuffed about the intricate stitching on their pointed toes. His jacket looked like an inside-out sheep – the sort Marlboro Men wore when they rode horses and smoked cigarettes. But there was an air of detachment, even desperation, about him.

  ‘What the frig were you doing under my bed, Sam?’

  ‘I wanted to surprise you.’

  ‘Surprise me? You scared the crap out of me!’

  ‘You looked so comfy sleeping when I snuck in I didn’t want to wake you. I thought I’d get some shut-eye too – it’s a long bloody flight from LA, you know.’

  ‘Does Dad know?’

  Sam shook his head. ‘Not even Ike knows.’

  ‘But your music? Shouldn’t Ike know you’re home?’

  He shook his head again. ‘I need to lay low for a bit. Get my shit together.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Emily asked gently. Sam shrugged, looking down at his lap.

  ‘You’ve got yourself a little bit lost, haven’t you?’ Emily said, noting the pallor in his skin and the dark circles under his eyes.

  ‘Seems like you have too,’ he said.

  Emily hung her head. ‘I’ve split up with Clancy.’

  ‘I kinda thought you might.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Uh-huh, one day.’

  They sat in silence for a moment together, the moan of an old lady in the ward next door underlining their sadness. They had both felt a gap in their lives without their mother, so vast it felt like an ocean.

  ‘Hey?’ Emily said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Want to do me a favour?’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Kidnapping.’

  ‘Kidnapping?’

  ‘C’mon,’ Emily pleaded, ‘you’ve got to get me out of here. Please.’

  Their eyes met and brother and sister grinned.

  ‘Are you sure you’re well enough? You look like shit.’

  ‘So do you,’ Emily shot back.

  ‘Gee, thanks. Well, where to?’

  ‘Where do you think!’ Emily jerked her head in what she thought was the direction of the mountains and the Flanaghans’ old summer grazing homestead.

  ‘The high plains. The perfect hideout,’ Emily said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You’ve got your ute?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sam.

  ‘Well?’

  Sam grinned. ‘Okey-dokey, let’s get out of here!’

  As Sam helped her out of bed, Emily noticed how slowly he moved and the way he kept vaguing out. He helped her pack her things, holding up a pair of pink underpants that had a cartoon elephant on
the front with a stitched-on trunk and, on the back, a tail.

  ‘These are truly woeful!’

  ‘Shut up,’ Emily said, grabbing the undies from him and shoving them in the bag with the others Flo had brought down from Brigalow. ‘You’re really stoned.’

  ‘What if I am?’

  ‘Only losers get stoned.’

  ‘I’m a loser then.’

  ‘That makes two of us,’ Emily said, thinking of the mess she’d made of her life.

  Eleven

  ‘You can be Thelma and I’ll be Louise,’ said Sam as he helped Emily into the front seat of his sporty royal-blue Holden ute.

  ‘No, I reckon I should be Louise. Lou-wheeze. Get it. Wheeze. The ribs!’ They both spluttered with laughter. ‘Ouch! It hurts to cack myself.’

  That sent them careening sideways into the ute, in hysterics, before shushing each other. Sam glanced around to see if anyone from the hospital had come after them, but sneaking out had been easy. Anyone who was about seemed too busy to notice or care.

  In the shine from the streetlights, he looked over at Emily. ‘You sure you’re right to do this?’

  ‘Sure as sure.’ Sam fired up the engine. ‘No funny buggers,’ Emily said. Sam could be a lead foot, particularly behind the wheel of his boy’s toy V8 ute. He shot her a Jack Nicholson smile.

  On the Monash Freeway, lit to glowing by endless rows of lights, Emily was grateful to be heading away from this fast-paced world. Even in the middle of the night, the freeway was still buzzing with cars, trucks and vans, all hurtling along in a four-lane vortex of speed. This concrete shuttle-way was so impersonal, the landscape so artificial, Emily thought, as she looked at the tussocks and silver grasses planted beside the road. Designer nature. She hated it. Freeways frightened her.

  Emily shut her eyes and suddenly a picture of her forebears came to her. They were travelling across the foot tracks in the high country, dressed in heavy felt coats with their hats pulled down low, their packhorses making slow progress through the snow drifts, guided only by the moonlight. Just enough to illuminate the snowpoles and the blazes on tree trunks that marked the way.

  Emily knew how the miners in the region looked out eagerly for the Flanaghans’ packhorse team to arrive from Harrietville loaded with supplies and mail. They travelled no matter what the weather and shared food and a campfire with whoever was about. There was always time to pull up and have a yarn.

  Travelling through this city at 110 clicks in Sam’s flashy V8 ute was not what Emily wanted her life to be. She felt the presence of her great-great grandmother, and suddenly Emily longed to live like her; busy with honest, meaningful work, yet in the heart of a world that turned slowly and held a rich silence, save for the sounds of nature. How hard could it be, Emily wondered, to stay on at the old homestead as the world turned white? She shook the thought from her. Ridiculous, she told herself, looking down at her weak and overweight body.

  She looked out of the window to Melbourne’s sprawl that glowed with electricity. Row after row of huge houses had swallowed up what were once dairy paddocks and orchards. Emily looked distastefully at the houses that had neither solar panels nor water tanks to sustain them, and no room in their tiny gardens for vegetable patches. These houses turned their backs to the sun and, together with the vast areas of concrete, collected thousands of litres of water that was channelled down drains and eventually spat out to sea, as if water was some kind of inconvenience. Airconditioned homes, their giant garages housing airconditioned cars, petrol-guzzling four-wheel-drives that never left the suburbs.

  The city was a massive display of cars and consumerism, a system that used vast amounts of energy, yet gave very little back to the earth. Emily shook her head.

  ‘How can you stand this place?’ she asked Sam.

  ‘Oh, I love it. Bright lights, noise, excitement. Different people.’

  ‘This is exciting?’ she said, indicating the urban sprawl beyond her window.

  ‘Well, not this part. I mean the inner city. Especially Sydney. It was so cool.’

  Emily frowned. ‘Some of the people living in these houses are the ones calling us the environmental rednecks. They’re the ones voting to kick us off the mountains. But look at these houses!’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Sam said. ‘But they’re not all bad.’

  ‘They’re so out of touch with, with … I dunno.’ Emily struggled for words. City people thought they were immune to Mother Nature, complaining when the airconditioning was bung or water restrictions were on, not realising that bushfires threatened power stations hundreds of kilometres away, or that irrigation water was being shut off to farmers to keep the city thriving.

  ‘It’s so hypocritical to see people live this way,’ she said, gesturing to the houses, ‘and yet they’re always slamming us.’

  ‘There’s no point getting upset about it, Em. People will think what they think.’

  ‘But can’t we do something about it? What if they do revoke our grazing licences? What then?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘When you hear stuff on the radio and hear blokes like Bob being dickheads, I can see a city person’s reasoning. I understand how they come to think the country’s better off in the hands of a well-spoken scientist than a cattleman with no obvious credentials, other than the fact he was born and raised in the area.’ Sam paused, the streetlights chasing shadows across his face. ‘Look, I didn’t fly all the way round the world to stir up this old conversation again. Let’s move on, Emily. Have a laugh, be glad we’re on the road and on the run. Cheer up!’

  She looked sullenly out the ute window as another massive, fluoro-lit billboard loomed, advertising a new country housing estate. She turned to her brother and smiled in the darkness. He was right. The grazing debate had consumed enough of their lives already. What would be would be, she thought.

  She breathed as deeply as her tender ribs would allow and smiled. Suddenly, she was very grateful she had a mountain retreat to go to. So many of these people seemed to her stuck amid squares. In the boxes of their cars, the squares of their homes, cornered in the right-angles of their fences and streets, and this cornered their thoughts, just as she had felt in Brigalow. But now she was free.

  ‘Are we going straight to the high plains? Or shall we call into Dad’s and get the girls first?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I don’t want to disturb them tonight. And I know Dad’ll be furious. He’d probably try to send me back to hospital.’

  ‘Okay, straight there?’

  ‘But I really, really want to get Rousie tonight. I know Clancy won’t be looking after him properly.’

  ‘What if Clancy’s there?’

  Emily shrugged. ‘You’ll have to sort him for me.’

  The sight of the Brigalow house prompted a flood of memories. Emily had to clamp her lips shut so she could slow her anxious breath. She began reliving the past: the day they’d first brought Matilda home as a tiny baby; the night feeds, Clancy fuming because the baby had woken him and he had an early run in the trucks. The way he’d joked about her stretch marks when she was eight months gone with Meg. Emily saw herself, her weight ballooning, her body clad in shapeless T-shirts and sagging tracksuit pants. She couldn’t believe what she had become.

  Sam pulled up and backed the ute into the drive. He turned to her with a cheeky grin. ‘For a fast getaway, Louise,’ he said.

  Round the back, Rousie was going nuts on the end of his chain. His barks prompted the lights to flick on in the house.

  ‘Shit,’ Emily said. ‘He’s here.’

  Sam got out. ‘Don’t worry.’

  He ran behind the house and Emily swallowed nervously. She saw the bedroom curtains being drawn aside. She saw Clancy’s naked torso. Then she glimpsed another form in the bedroom. A woman. In their bed.

  Emily felt a strangling sensation in her throat. Her body tensed and every muscle contracted with hurt and anger. She sat in Sam’s ute, holding back tears, trying to be strong. It was to be expected, she said
to herself, chanting it like a mantra. The curtain fell on the scene.

  Then Sam was back and Rousie was bounding around the ute, standing up on his back legs and sniffing the air for scents of his mistress. Her faithful dog. Emily smiled and wound the window down. Rousie, too polite to jump up on the ute door but too excited to contain his joy, bounded on the spot and whined with delight, his whole body wagging along with his tail. Sam commanded him onto the back of the ute, flipping open a gap in the tarp for him to nestle into.

  The front door opened and there was Clancy.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Sam Flanaghan?’

  ‘G’day, Clancy,’ said Sam. ‘Just helping Em pick up a few things. Clothes and that.’

  ‘Fuck her.’

  ‘Hello, Clancy,’ Emily said mildly, trying to contain the tremor in her voice.

  ‘You can take your stinkin’ barkin’ dog, but you’re not setting foot inside this house. You chose to leave – so leave!’

  ‘Well, could you just chuck a few of Em’s things in a bag, mate, and then we’ll go,’ Sam said.

  ‘No friggin’ way, mate. Stuff you.’

  ‘Clance,’ Emily tried to soothe, ‘please don’t be angry. We’ve got to get on. For the girls’ sake.’

  Clancy roared like a wounded animal and came hurtling off the front steps towards her. She flinched as he started pummelling his fists on the roof of the ute.

  ‘Just piss off! Get out of my life!’

  Emily could smell the grog on his breath. Spit was foaming on the sides of his mouth as he yelled and she hunkered down in her seat clutching her head in her hands. Then Sam was dragging Clancy away, eventually flinging him to the lawn.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ Sam yelled as he stood over him. Clancy stumbled forward, but Sam was already in the driver’s seat, revving the V8 and fishtailing it away down the street.

  Six years’ worth of distress began to tumble from Emily. She sat crying with her brother’s hand on her knee. The tears wouldn’t stop. Sam kept saying over and over, ‘We’ll be right, sis. We’ll be right. We’ll get to the plains and we’ll be right.’