Song for Emilia Page 10

  Sandra considered this for a moment. Such old history. Once upon a time to hear Prue say that would’ve given her heart an extra thump. ‘Mister L’estrange’s hair is longer, if anything.’

  ‘I always liked his hair,’ Prue said, snipping new pictures from a magazine. ‘Look at this picture of Mick. Skinny legs.’

  The record finished and she searched the pile for another one.

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the Beatles concert?’ Sandra had been curious – her sister was so mad about going to the Stadium.

  Prue glanced up at her question. ‘I was going to go, but you know how you can’t hear the bands—’

  ‘It would’ve been exciting, just to say you’d been there.’

  ‘I guess so, anyway, I like the Stones better. Not so love love me doooo. Plus, I didn’t have any money.’

  ‘I’d have lent you the money. I might’ve gone with you, except I went to Curradeen with Dad.’

  Sandra flipped through Prue’s records, turning them over to read the labels. ‘Hey, here’s Love Me Do. You little sneak, you do like The Beatles.’

  ‘The other side’s better, Please Please Me ... that’s really good.’

  Prue put on the record and they lay on the floor to listen, tapping toes and fingers, singing a treble pleeease me together, laughing when it finished.

  Sliding the record back in its sleeve, Prue said, ‘The sound’s rotten, I’m saving up for a better record player.’

  ‘I know why you didn’t have any money for the Beatles concert.’

  Prue looked at her sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Because you bought that book you’re hiding.’

  ‘No I didn’t, smarty pants. I borrowed it – my friend nicked it from her parents.’ Prue reached under her mattress, withdrew The Book of Lies. She tossed it to Sandra. ‘I’ve tried to read it but I still don’t understand.’ She pointed to a chapter. ‘Do you know what kappa-epsilon and that, means, under each heading?’

  Rolling her eyes at her sister, Sandra muttered the words to herself, beginning kappa-epsilon-phi-alpha. Each one slightly different, the meaning remained obscure. ‘They’re Greek letters for the alphabet, that’s all I know.’ She continued flicking the pages, increasingly puzzled. ‘It’d take ages,’ she finally said. ‘You’d have to study all the references to understand anything. See how each little chapter has a note below, to explain?’

  ‘I know that much.’ Prue said, ‘I just like some of the chapters, like Onion Peelings and The Leopard and the Deer, I can understand those. And I liked number two, The Cry of the Hawk, because I learned the hawk is Horus, the Egyptian god of the sky.’

  ‘Those are easy.’ Sandra closed the book with a snap, but not before she’d glimpsed the lines, Behold this bleeding breast of mine Gashed with the sacramental sign. It gave her the shivers. ‘It’s for grown-ups. I wouldn’t bother, there’s better books you can read.’

  ‘You sound like one of my teachers,’ Prue giggled. Raising her voice imperiously, she mimicked: ‘Prudence! There are better books you can read!’

  ‘Gosh, I hope I don’t sound like that,’ Sandra laughed. ‘Play another record – have you got any more Beatles?’

  After shoving the book back under her mattress, Prue sifted through her records, choosing one, reading the label, putting it down to choose another. The Beatles’ Hold me Tight spun out into the room, and Prue lay flat on the floor, eyes shut, drumming her fingers to the beat.

  Lying beside her, half-listening, Sandra pictured Horus ... memory of the small brown hawks that hovered over the grasses at Wilga Park, wings imperceptibly moving, suspended above whatever prey hid far below. A sudden plummet to earth and the hawk disappeared in the grass. If she waited long enough, the hawk emerged, sailing skywards, to resume its search.

  Secretly, Sandra thought the words she’d skimmed were cruel, but also musical and poetic. But she didn’t want to tell Prue – better for her sister to return the book: too weird, too ritualistic, and perhaps too misleading for Prue, already so interested in her myths and legends. Let Frater Perdurabo stay in his grave.

  Hold me Tight played again, Paul McCartney’s insistent voice, and she closed her eyes to listen.

  Sandra hadn’t deferred university, as she had so often discussed together with Billy. Maybe next year she would decide: go on, or give up? Billy was quitting, not just deferring, and they would no longer see each other every day – only while they continued to play at the club and rehearse on Tuesday afternoons.

  The first time they played at the club since the abortive kiss, Billy met her at the door. ‘I thought you mightn’t come,’ he said to Sandra’s astonished face.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? We were all right at rehearsal—’

  ‘Just saying. After the night at my place – I thought you might be sick of me, sick of the club.’

  Ignoring his rueful expression, she replied, ‘I love what we do. Let’s not spoil it.’

  Sandra had done her best to separate their rehearsal and the club from that night. Maybe he could be everything she wanted, but when he put down the saxophone and she closed the piano, what else did they have together? It wasn’t something she’d ever wished to pursue.

  It was a good crowd tonight, the room already smoky. The band from the first hour of the evening was packing up.

  Billy put a lemonade beside the piano, and held out his closed fist. ‘Give me your hand,’ he said, closing her fingers over a tiny object.

  Opening her hand, she found a small pearl button in her palm. Across the stage, Billy smirked, blew an experimental note on the sax.

  She answered with a cheeky glissando, returning his grin.

  ♫

  After what seemed an endless taxiing along the runway, the DC-3 rose into the sky. Sandra pressed her face to the window as far below the countryside opened out, from their sweeping arc above the ocean until the plane turned inland – the bones of mountains unfolding, then obscured by clouds until the sky suddenly cleared and they were flying above a brown landscape, roads laid out below like strings, apparently going nowhere. She was fascinated how the rivets on the wings seemed to jiggle, thin streams of oil streaking the fuselage. How old was this plane!

  As they circled above Curradeen airport, among the minuscule cars, she saw Nick’s ute parked by the fence. Almost there – a couple of bumps, the pilot apologising for the rough landing, due he said, to strong cross-winds. The door opened and she faced a hot blast of air, blowing from the desert.

  Hint of a smile, an airy kiss, and Nick stowed her suitcase in the ute. If this was how her visit was going to be, why did she bother to come? Nick had sounded so keen on the phone, and now, here was this careful young man, as if he watched his every step.

  Mrs Morgan’s greeting was an improvement, a firm hug letting Sandra know without any words, that she was glad to see her.

  Before dawn, Nick loaded the truck with bags of feed, and after breakfast, with Sandra beside him and his kelpie balanced in the back, they drove first to the windmills, checking the water tank and troughs. In his khaki shirt and shorts, thick socks and work boots, to Sandra, he looked the typical farmer – his lean body hardened by work, browned by the sun, an old misshapen Akubra crammed on his head.

  ‘This hat?’ he laughed, when she made fun of it. ‘It’s a drinking bowl for the dogs when I’m out mustering. Everyone needs a classic hat like this.’

  At last, Nick sounded relaxed. She guessed it was hard for his parents, knowing he’d made an unwilling return to Wilga Park.

  Mr Morgan appeared at mealtimes, otherwise he stayed cloistered in his office, or Sandra would discover him seated alone on the veranda, his unsmoked cigarette burning to ash as he gazed across the empty paddocks.

  She had arranged to be away five days: Friday was her night at the club with Billy, and both the night and the money were important – even precious.

  On the back veranda, Harry Morgan shaded his eyes from the morning glare. Already it was very ho
t away from the shade. The dogs were quiet in their kennels, sheltered by scrubby trees near the machinery shed. Nick had left early to feed the ewes and rams that would be saved as the breeding nucleus for a good season. Some time ago, Mr Morgan had sent two truck-loads to agistment in Victoria.

  Sandra heard the screen door swing shut, and not knowing where Mrs Morgan was, she walked down the hallway, closing the back door behind her.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Morgan—’ She stopped, dismayed at the sight of a rifle in the crook of his arm.

  Last night after dinner, Nick told her that his father intended to shoot some of the sheep. It was too awful to contemplate. Not so long ago, 1960 to be exact, Mr Morgan berated Nick for wanting to leave Wilga Park. ‘Three generations,’ she’d heard him shout, ‘and you want to study some degree for an easy job in the city.’ Nick had eventually left home. But when the drought got tough, he’d come back as he’d promised – shelving his own dream to help run the property. Evidently, it wasn’t enough.

  ‘Go inside, Sandra,’ Mr Morgan said tersely. ‘It can’t be helped, I’m afraid. The dams have long since dried up. You’ve seen the paddocks.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything you can do?’

  Harry Morgan turned to face her. ‘The market’s flat, they’re not worth two bob. Six months ago, I put off the stockmen. I can only keep the very best sheep now.’

  Without a backward glance, he strode off the veranda.

  ‘He’s very upset. This is terrible for Harry.’ Mrs Morgan stood beside her as they watched the retreating figure crunch across the yellowed lawn to the garden gate, unlatch it, and disappear in his truck across the paddock. A sudden willy-willy full of dust and twigs, went spinning across the dirt road, to vanish just as suddenly.

  ‘We should go inside, dear. Harry won’t want us out here.’

  In the kitchen, all doors closed against both heat and the distant sound of gun shots, Mrs Morgan poured tea. ‘It breaks his heart,’ she said. ‘But he told Nick he needed to do the job by himself.

  ‘You know, when Nick was a very little boy, he loved the new lambs, and once when a mother couldn’t feed twins, Nick took the unwanted lamb and nursed it, fed it with bottles, let it sleep beside him, nestled in his dressing gown.’

  ‘Was it all right?’

  ‘Oh, eventually it died, poor little thing, we don’t know why, but the mother knew, and I suppose that’s why she didn’t want it. Nick was so upset.

  They drank their tea, uneasy with the far-off shots every few minutes, unconsciously counting. ‘They get too weak to stand,’ Mrs Morgan said. ‘Poor things get bogged in the dams, and often the crows pick out their eyes before we find them.’

  ‘Oh, don’t tell me!’

  Mrs Morgan patted Sandra’s hand. ‘Life in the bush can be very cruel. I’ve had to get used to it.’ She put down her tea cup. ‘Let’s go and play the piano, shall we?’

  They drew back the curtains, and lifting the lid of her piano stool, Mrs Morgan sorted some sheet music, a tremble in her hands. Mozart’s bewigged head adorned the cover of a collection of sonatas. ‘I played them ages ago, too tricky for me—’

  ‘Oh, this one’s better, the Pathétique, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, yes, whatever you like.’

  ‘I won’t be able to play it quite as fast—’

  In the dim light of the lounge room, occasionally fumbling, Sandra gave herself up to the music, deliberately hitting the notes hard, her foot heavy on the pedal – anything to drown the sound of the rifle, the hideous pictures it created.

  Mrs Morgan pulled an armchair close, perched on the arm beside the piano. ‘I could never play the second movement,’ she said, swaying gently to the quieter rhythm. ‘But I loved it anyway, the singing notes, the beautiful theme.’

  Eventually, after the final loud allegro movement of the sonata, they could no longer hear the rifle. Outside, all was silent, but Mr Morgan didn’t return.

  ‘Whatever can Harry be doing.’ A frown creased Mrs Morgan’s face. ‘He should come in. Nick will have gone to get the bulldozer by now.’

  ‘He might be in the shed?’ Sandra suggested, imagining Harry Morgan levelling a gun at his chest. She’d heard about farmers shooting themselves when they went broke, or were broken by hardship. Nick, please hurry back.

  About noon, they heard slow, dragging footsteps on the back steps. Mrs Morgan rushed to the door, flinging it open. ‘Harry, I was so worried—’

  Mr Morgan’s face reflected the sadness of the dreadful thing he’d done. His skin was burned by the sun, his trousers smeared with blood. He propped the rifle in the corner. ‘Eighty sheep less to feed,’ was all he said.

  On his return from burying the sheep, Nick’s whole body drooped with grief, dust in his hair, his face; his eyes red-rimmed, filth on his arms and hands. Sandra had been listening for the sound of the dozer as Nick parked it by the shed – watching for him. She met him on the veranda.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, when she put a hand on his arm. ‘I stink.’

  She left him, and later he found her alone on the veranda. The evening air was very still, the usual daily build-up of clouds on the horizon as if a storm might come.

  ‘You have no idea,’ Nick said, dropping onto a chair. ‘That has to be the worst thing I’ll ever have to do.’

  He put his head in his hands, consumed in misery. Looking up at her, he said, ‘You know, that mightn’t be the end of it.’

  ‘You won’t be going back to uni, will you?’

  ‘No. I won’t be going back. Not till this is over.’

  After that terrible day, Sandra decided that she ought to return home a day sooner than planned. Neither Nick nor his parents would want her there after Mr Morgan shot the sheep. Nick had pushed their bodies into a gully, burned them and buried them. Another chapter had opened.

  Occasionally she played the piano. Mrs Morgan always made a cup of tea for them both, and in-between pieces, they’d talk: about early days on Wilga Park, about music, sometimes about Sandra’s career.

  ‘Imagine playing at a jazz club,’ Mrs Morgan said. ‘You’re an amazing young woman, Sandra. I could never have done that in a hundred years.’

  While Nick and Mr Morgan were out in the paddocks, it was a chance for Sandra to work on a new composition. Intrigued, Mrs Morgan often peered over her shoulder, nodding as Sandra noted instructions on the score, thankful that she’d thought to bring some blank sheets.

  ‘What about university, the Conservatorium? You’ll continue, won’t you?’ Sandra heard the wistfulness in her question – perhaps Mrs Morgan was really asking about Nick. How would she know... he never spoke about university after that day.

  In the evenings, they gathered for drinks on the veranda. No one had much conversation, gazing across the dying garden, through the peppertrees to the dry paddocks. Before dark, Sandra helped Mrs Morgan carry buckets of waste water from the kitchen sink, laundry and shower, to save her roses.

  ‘Even the ’roos have left us,’ Mrs Morgan said, with a sad smile.

  After dinner Nick and his father closeted themselves in the office until late. At five o’clock next morning they’d finished breakfast and were out in the paddocks before it got too hot.

  Yes, Sandra thought: she might as well leave.

  ‘Stay another day?’ Nick said, when she told him. ‘Mum needs a bit of company, and she enjoys having you here.’

  His mother again. She felt the house was enveloped in lethargy, not of the body – though their bodies were weary enough – but the spirit. She would stay an extra day, until Friday – by then it would become impossible to bear.

  Early on the final morning, a tap on Sandra’s door announced Mrs Morgan with her generous smile, carrying the customary cup of tea.

  She sat on the side of the bed. ‘I’ve enjoyed having you stay with us,’ she began.

  ‘You’ve been very kind, I’ve stayed longer than I meant to.’

  ‘It’s been good for us, for Nick.
’

  Good for Nick? Sandra reflected. After the last couple of days, she was pleased to be leaving. The sadness, the stubborn struggle imbedded on the Morgans’ faces each morning. It was contagious, and she wanted to run far, far away from their desperation.

  ‘You’re welcome to come back, any time.’ Sandra heard the hope in Mrs Morgan’s voice as they hugged goodbye on the veranda. ‘Just phone and let us know.’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Morgan, I’d like that.’

  ‘Please call me Beth, dear. You’ve been the good fairy in our house.’

  A silver flash in the sky for a moment, as the sun caught the fuselage, then the DC-3 was on the ground and taxiing towards the airport.

  ‘Have you got everything?’ Nick asked, unloading her suitcase from the ute. ‘All your dresses, hats, feathers and high heels—’

  Sandra laughed, ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Nick put her case on the luggage cart. ‘This is as far as I’m allowed to go.’

  The plane parked on the airstrip – nose in the air like a grasshopper, he’d once described it. Gradually the propellers wound to a halt.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sandra said, loathing the lameness of it. ‘I’ll write,’ she offered.

  ‘If you want. That’d be nice.’

  ‘Goodbye, then,’ and she was walking across the hot tarmac towards the plane, his last kiss a feather on her forehead, her mouth.

  Circling above Curradeen, she pressed her cheek on the window, searching for a familiar landmark. There was the new swimming pool, a blue strip in the brown. Clair de Lune had helped pay for that. Somewhere down there was Ferrari’s Farm. She hadn’t called Emilia, because what for? Towards the west, the horizon vanished in a gray haze.

  Too soon the plane veered on an eastern course and the town was lost from sight.

  At home in her bed as Sandra slept, the dream claimed her, and she stood at the high window of an old building – a castle with crenellated walls that overlooked paddocks with sheep grazing. As she watched, floodwaters rushed in, sweeping the sheep towards the castle. A fence prevented them escaping the flood, and they swam, turning and turning – those that tried to climb the fence hung by their hind legs twisted in the wire, drowning. A voice called in her dream, ‘Why doesn’t someone unlock the gate?’ and the water became so high that the sheep couldn’t be seen, only churning brown water, and she awoke, hating it – another dream of drowning – aware the building from where she watched the flood was the Conservatorium. The voice was Nick’s.