The Cane Suite 1i2c2m

Contents Title

Acknowledgements

Saint Friday

Joy and Happiness

Disgust

Anger

Love

Fear

Sadness

Title

THE CANE SUITE

Pamela Gargett

Copyright ©2021 Pamela Gargett

This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, events, incidents, and organisations are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, excepting brief excerpts used by writers of reviews or critical articles.

ISBN 978-0-6450196-1-2

Front cover design and image by Judy Morris

Acknowledgements

This is the book I have waited and wanted to write. When the time finally came, the came also.

Thank you to Geoff for giving me the space.

Thank you to Shirley for expecting this to happen and offering kind encouragement.

To Paul for setting the bar so high and leading by example and sage advice, to Judy for her advice, and time and to Susan for her encouragement and enthusiasm, thank you for being there.

To every friend who has shared the love of words with me, I am forever grateful.

For the people where I live.

Saint Friday

If any day were to be made a saint, it would be Friday.

Saint Friday.

Not to be compared with the flashy week-end days. Saturday and Sunday. Definitely not to be held up for comparison to holidays or rostered days off or time in lieu. No, just on its own, Friday is to be revered above all other weekdays.

It is the lure, the magnet, the attraction that drags me through the mire of school lunches, school uniforms and standing over reluctant children as they jiggle their pencils across photocopied homework sheets. It is what helps me to see off the ‘get up right now or you will be late for school’ chore day after day as the week unfolds.

On Thursday afternoon, life starts to swell. Just like the sweet green cane shoots in the fields spurred on by the warmth of sunlight and the soft brush of rain, unfurling as they reach for the sky. Not to put too fine a point on it, that is what happens to me each week. As Thursday afternoon comes around, my soul lifts, my spirits rise.

Things look a little calmer.

I to smile. I think of plans and hopes, wishes and wants that focus on the promise of a few short hours.

Friday.

Here it comes!

Nirvana, utopia, paradise, Shangri-La, heaven in my hands.

Laugh all you like but a chance each week to escape a normal predictable life seems all that helps keep me tethered to the here and now.

Out of bed, get kids ready first, rush them off to school. Start the housework, get lunch, snatch a tiny window of the daytime TV soaps. Kids home already. What’s to eat? Mum can I do this? That? This? That? What’s for tea?

Day after day, the tedium grows and grows until there isn’t much left inside that is just for me.

Sound spoiled, do I? Don’t bother to tell me other people are doing it tougher. I read the local newspaper; I watch the TV news. But what I see there is other people.

Not me. Other people.

I see other people’s wars, other people’s accidents, other people’s losses, other people’s money. Not mine.

I have grown a thick skin over the part of me that should care. Sometimes the skin cracks a little and emotion seeps in. Particularly if it is something involving children. I love kids. Long ago I realised I could never open my arms wide enough to gather in the needy of the world. I would never cry enough tears to stop the drought, put out the fires. So, I stopped trying.

Drew myself in. Created my persona.

A loving mother, a dutiful wife, the caring friend.

You would like me. I might even look like you.

I wear clothes which aren’t flashy but follow the trends. My hair is cut and coloured every six weeks. I spend a traumatic hour or so under old towels, hoping no-one I know pops in to witness my entire head sending signals to Mars. I wish foils weren’t all the rage.

As for my nails, I splay them on the plastic covered kitchen table and have them painted a sweet pink.

My kids fit right in with all the other little angels. They certainly are not feral but their grandparents have suggested they could or should be better behaved. As if

‘please’ and ‘thank you’ make much difference to anyone.

Time has moved on. I tell Mum and Dad kids are different these days. They can’t believe I even bought their school uniforms readymade. No home sewn clothes for them. Always the latest lunchboxes and pencil cases and everything on the school booklist.

No, you would never guess my life isn’t just another gerbera as it nods away in the front yard, pretty much like the others. Looks great from a distance and puts on a great show to brighten your day. But this little gerbera has a petal or two that set her apart and give her a story to tell.

I love my husband. He makes me surface happy, most of the time. His kindness shows in the way he treats the kids. The way he gathers them up in his arms at bedtime and nuzzles their necks. The horsey rides around the lounge, bumping the furniture and scootching up the rugs. But today is Friday. It is the day I feel a rush of joy for him.

Saint Friday. You are very welcome.

Saint Friday. What promise and escape you hold in your hours.

Friday dawns never come quickly enough. The kids are always slower. They lie in bed all rumpled, tired eyes. ‘No Mum, sick of school. Don’t want to go. Isn’t today Saturday?’

No, no, no! Not Saturday. It has to be Friday. Mother’s reward.

The small, slow thrill of anticipation cannot be stolen by everybody’s day! Saturday.

And so, it is at last…Friday.

If you are anything like me, your mind has raced along the lines and, maybe, danced between them. You have probably deduced Friday is the day I indulge in some secret ion.

That’s true.

But my ion is not the earthy, bodily kind. There are no secret lovers waiting for me, no trysts, no lustful liaisons in one of the newly built, garishly inviting motels along the arterial highway feeding into the town.

Sorry to disappoint.

My ion is not about retreating to cool caves of riches promised and not delivered. My vice is not to gamble. I don’t sit at the blinking brightness of the pokies and feed the maw with my husband’s hard-earned money.

You may have guessed.

My ion is not to indulge in alcohol, secretly or otherwise. You won’t find me propped up at the bar, slowly sliding into oblivion.

My escape, my weekly pleasure reveals a simple soul. I am happiest when I slide into the front seat of the family car beside my husband, and compulsively check I have everything.

My handbag, the list, the other list.

Lists, lists, lists.

It may look like the most boring way to spend a day to you. Bank first, groceries, perhaps a spot of fashion store browsing, window shopping. But, to me, as I glide between the cane fields, tall and wind wisped, I make a journey of the grandest kind. Stand aside, Homer. Your ventures in the Iliad that bored me in high school are beyond dull again when compared with my Friday trip to town.

Each kilometre I cover is a major step away from the humdrum, the ties binding me to family and the routines slowly turning my soul to stone.

Overdramatic? Might be.

Unbelievable? Maybe so.

But many a life has unravelled in the stultifying days of raising children, fitting in, living just so, in order to make a life. I sit and I smile as we get closer to town. The billboards advertising farm machinery or fast-food restaurants signal my nearness. The farmhouses sitting sedately, prettily, at the edge of the cane fields make way for the encroaching stretch of suburbia.

At last, the countryside ends and the buildings cluster side by side, street after street. Town proper. People doing what people do with their lives. Ordinary lives, each seeming more complex and thrilling than mine. But I have no envy. If I can slide into their lives just once a week, I can develop the fortitude to face my own pale life for another six days.

Finally, the main street. Straight and long. Manicured garden beds dissecting the median strip. Huge palms stand tall between me and cars sliding past in the other direction. Shops display their wares behind huge panes of glass, arranged for me to see, enticing. The products stare back at me as the car slips down the street. I see our car clearly in this window before the reflection speeds up and splashes across the next window.

It’s Friday. I’m drinking in the town. Let me see her in full glory. Out of the way people. Walk on. Move away. Let me see more. Shop windows, filled with dresses I can’t afford, won’t ever afford. The chemist, shelves and cabinets spilling onto the footpath. Trays of products with discreet price tags I can’t be bothered with right now. The newsagent brandishing newspaper headlines trapped in flat cages for all to see. Behind the glass a ‘New Release’ book takes pride of place among lottery posters.

At last, my favourite.

The furniture shop is well established in this town and everyone buys from there.

The excitement of the newlyweds as they choose their first bed is matched by the anticipation of shopping for recliner chairs by the elderly. And then there’s the cots, tables, chairs, lounges and outdoor settings that have filled the homes and enriched the lives of those who bought them over the years.

But the window display has changed since last Friday.

What is this? As the car is reversed in against the kerb, I am jolted from my reverie by an apparition. I am overawed by what I see, swamped by unfamiliar emotions.

A cane suite. Four single cane chairs. A table for newspapers and cups of tea. So simple yet so stylish.

I can’t believe a suite of furniture is having such an effect. My voice is trembling as I ask my husband to wait while I have a good look.

I know I must have it.

Joy and Happiness

If you fall into the class of ‘dear reader’, or if you are family, friend or obligated other, I will start your reading off on a good note. Wouldn’t you choose that?

Happiness and joy. Such positive feelings. What we need to grow our souls and fill our cups with achingly sweet truisms.

Me, I am a bit of a sucker for babies and puppies and flowers. I swear and attest they make my spirits rise. Daily doses of laughter don’t go astray either.

That is why I begin with a journey through the most desirable of emotions, joy and happiness.

Of course, you can start wherever you like. But be aware, these tales are not written in the first person. I couldn’t possibly write about these bare-souled things, stories nestled next to the heart, from a personal perspective. Oh no, I have chosen to step back and to wear a cloak of indifference and distance. I have used the security of talking and telling you about things from a place removed. Heaven knows I need to cushion my soul from the rawness and hurtfulness that can come with real life.

And so, let us begin with:

Joy

The vivid emotions of pleasure and extreme gladness

Joy is also known as happiness, felicity, bliss, beatitude, enchantment, rapture, ecstasy, heaven

The emotion of joy lifts us into happy places and times.

Okay, I may have aimed high, but hopefully you will me to share just a smidgen of joy, and a soupcon of happiness.

Life on the farm was not always what she had expected. It was sometimes fine, tolerable. Occasionally it became so jarring she felt jabs and scratches of little bits of broken glass dig into her heart. When times were good, just the swaying fronds on the royal palms which lined the dusty drive were enough to soften and gladden her heart. When those times faded, the motes of dust floating in the sunrays streaming in through the kitchen window were enough to make her question how she ever became a farmer’s wife, a canefarmer’s wife at that.

She knew she was being unrealistic. No-one lived a life of pure joy. Days following days of unadulterated happiness could only be found spreading like syrup in the pages of those Mills and Boon novels some of her friends read. Overly sweet and cloyingly clinging smells lingering as the chapters churned predictably until the girl meets the boy, overcomes challenges, happy ever after endings. Oh no. She had never been seduced by such promises. She was a pragmatic woman. Toes in the dust, that sort of thing.

But she had always known she was one of the lucky ones. She married someone she met when they were both in their teens. Looking back, she felt a sense of relief that the notion of romantic love was never needed to sustain her, unlike other women, through long, lonely nights, through weddings attended without a partner.

She and her husband met young. All that guff about the universe aligning, fate being ordained by the stars. It seemed quite banal when other women talked about it, when others wrote about it. But, deep down, she knew. That was precisely what had happened all those years ago. One of those schoolkid crushes had lingered and lasted long enough for marriage and kids. Yes, she was lucky. So lucky that sometimes she wished, just for an instant, that her life had not unfolded this way. So lucky, that, once or twice, she envied her unmarried, childless friends.

Yes, she sure was lucky.

Big brothers and three lessons

Time before the farm seemed so long ago. Growing up, she was a ‘Townie’. One of those ‘baby boomer’ kids who didn’t know what it was like to go without. One of a family of four; three boys first up, then along she came, the baby girl to complete the family. She was the apple of her father’s eye, from the moment the nurse beckoned him along the corridor and pointed to the tiny pink wrapped bundle snuffling softly behind the glass of the nursery. She was the youngest, the last of the children, the only girl. She gave them every reason to spoil her in just about every way.

Home was in the centre of town. Just a bike ride from the tennis courts, the town pool and the library. It was nothing special, nothing grand. But it was a perfect home for a family, from its constantly squeaking front gate to the huge old mango tree blocking the backyard skies. She grew, surrounded by the warmth of meals eaten in the tiny, linoleum floored kitchen, by squealing games of swinging around and around on the rotary clothesline and hours spent reading on the bright pink chenille bedspread.

Some years of her childhood lay in the distant parts of her memory. Others, bathed in a rosy glow, sat fondly in her everyday thoughts. She often replayed the cinema reel of her life. Surely it was not all as rosy as she ed. Just to be contrary, sometimes she prickled her brain with things that went wrong, little misadventures. Did other people do this, or just the fortunate? The unlucky ones are surely too drained to seek out the broken and dull among their memories.

Her life as a baby, then as a toddler, was documented in the black and white photos in the family album. A tiny round-faced bundle held by aunts and uncles. Almost smothered in frills and flounces, face framed by crocheted bonnets or sunshades with patterns of strawberries and ducks. Growing, she toddled past forests of legs belonging to her brothers. Above the scarred and knobbly knees, she knew their faces were topped by spiky crew cuts and split by proud big brother smiles. Sometimes, she saw flashes of those times. One brother loved to toss her in the air and pretend to forget she was coming down until he swooped his arms in underneath her light frame just before she was about to crash to earth.

The oldest brother, eight when she was born, was adept at flicking tiny balls of mud, chewing gum, seeds from the palm trees, or whatever it took to get her to swing around in annoyance and yell. With a grin, he would stick out his tongue and waggle his ears and taunt her further until she ran at him and pushed and pushed at his strong teenage legs until they both fell. He would raise her up into the air and swing her round until she begged him to stop. Or until mum leaned

out of the kitchen window and roared at him to stop tormenting his sister.

The neighbours must have loved them.

She had grown up in comparative luxury. The toilet had been moved inside the house by the time she started school. No-one missed the middle of the night dash down to the outside thunder box at the bottom of the yard. This was one of her middle brother’s contributions to her upbringing. As a light sleeper, he often got the midnight summons to take her to the toilet. To pay her back, once she was settled comfortably in the little wooden shed, he would decamp to his bed. She would then have to make the run back to the house on her own, only lit by the moon and stars.

Surely the neighbours must have loved them.

The neighbours’ lights often came on as she screeched her way past the dogs, terrified there would be a possum in the pawpaw tree or fruit bats in the mango tree just waiting to her on her midnight return.

‘Just the kid next door. Go back to sleep’

School seemed like one long adventure story. Each page was dedicated to the fortunate, the smart-enough kid, the un-bullied. Life at school was off to a pretty good start when your parents saw to it you always ate well. Scrambled eggs, toast soldiers, porridge in winter, pineapple juice from a tin or even delicious warm Milo were all devoured at the crowded and noisy Formica table in the kitchen flanked by a bevy of orange vinyl chairs, all squeaking and puffing when sat upon. Mealtimes always were announced by the noisy arrival of her brothers

who always sensed without being called when there was food to be eaten.

Her mother made sure the uniform she wore effortlessly blended her only daughter’s five-year-old self in with the other thirty or so kids. She had watched her mother push the uniform material through the flashing needle of the new electric Singer sewing machine. Her mother fed the material under the needle and sewed seams up and down for hours turning out three bright blue, cotton uniforms. Then her mother sewed baggy matching bloomers to wear underneath. As she slept, her mother stitched late into the night, turning up the big, wide hems that could be let down when little legs started growing longer.

Her imagination was already firing on all cylinders thanks to her mum who scooped her up every night straight after the dishes were dried and put away. Tickling and squeezing each other, they would settle in the sunroom each night. It was their time to read from the never-ending collection of Little Golden Books jostling for space on the family bookshelf. Mother and daughter would whisper and roar and say ages out loud together. Before she had even started at school, she had breathlessly listened to stories of tugboats and silly puppies and a lion with a thorn in his paw.

Of course, it was no effort to trot to the local State school with at least one brother willing to carry her little cardboard port. Rattling around inside the port were the vegemite sandwiches and apple in a little tin lunch box. Within the first week, she clutched a precious school library book in one hand each day. But there was always another brother keen to take a side trip to the local baker and slip an oozing cream bun or pink iced and forbidden finger bun into the other hand. She took it for granted that the milk monitor, whether it was her brother or his mates, always made sure her quarter pint of school milk was chosen from the crate sitting in the shade of the fig tree, not left in the baking Queensland sun.

Primary school was punctuated by small joys, and some disappointments. A little buzz in her chest would settle into a fizzing sense of rising excitement with the

handing over of a hand-drawn birthday party invitation. The days would drag until her mother held her hand for the short walk to a neighbour’s house where she would the dozen or so little girls in flounced dresses, tightly tied with pastel satin bows around their waists. Legs, long or short, tanned or freckled, would seemingly dangle from the frilled hems until meeting the lush Queensland summer grass or dry winter dirt in black patent Mary Janes with the ubiquitous lace trimmed socks already sagging low. Later, replete with sponge cake and cheerios dripping with tomato sauce, she would bounce and chatter her way home and fall into bed with not a hope of sleep until all the party games had been replayed in her head and all the anticipation of the next party had started.

But with some peaks of excitement came the cold sharpness of disappointment. Such disappointment happened to her no more than four times in her life. Yes, she had counted them and never forgotten. She had seen the little clique crew of girls with heads together under the schoolroom stairs. She knew, without hearing the suddenly-stopped giggles or the hastily composed faces as she walked by, she was not part of something that others looked to be enjoying greatly. Each time when she heard of a party invitation she didn’t receive, two picnics she didn’t get an invite to, and a tennis afternoon that proceeded without her swinging a racquet, her disappointment was so intense as to cause her sharp stabs of physical pain.

Retreating onto her bed and into a book, she tried and failed to lose herself in the pages of Swallows and Amazons, Famous Five, Secret Seven and such like. Seeing those books on her children’s bookshelf could take her back in an instant to her high narrow bed on sweltering hot afternoons when she felt her heart must surely break into little pieces on the patchwork summer quilt.

It didn’t.

She bounced back to her normal self in an amazingly short time. Such is the resilience of the loved and cossetted. She had such little experience of being left

out, being excluded, feeling the loneliness of the uninvited, that these disappointments were fleeting. There was just too much else in her life beckoning her on with promises of contentment and enjoyment.

She would defy anyone to harden their soul against lazy summer afternoons spent on the picnic rug tossed on green thick bladed grass under the most massive mango tree imaginable. The family’s old deck chairs straddled grass dotted with small mangoes, fallen too soon under the canopy of luscious fruit, bursting with the promise of juicy enjoyment.

Well, maybe that was the ‘romantic’ view. She loathed mangoes with a ion, from their overly intrusive smells of ripeness to the sticky sap which raised welts on her arms whenever she handled the fruit. No, she far preferred a Sunny Boy icy treat when she needed cooling down. To her, the mango tree was grown in the yard solely to provide shade as she read through indolent hours.

Of course, there was more to life than reading. Well, only a little more. One afternoon a week all through Grades Three and Four, her oldest brother would be waiting at the gate of the primary school.

‘Get on, Sis!’

She would barely settle her frame on the bar of his bike before they were off. With the energy of the teenaged, he would dink her three blocks to the edge of the local tennis courts. She knew enough to jump off his bike quickly and race towards the beginners’ class on the far court just in case any of his high school mates, or girls he knew, should see him with his sister.

Sometimes, just before they rode back home for tea, her brother would buy her a By Jingo from the corner shop next door to the courts. As she licked its deliciously cold icy freshness, she wondered if he bought it because he thought she was a great little sister. But, deep down, she knew the ice confection was to ensure she didn’t tell Mum about her brother spending most of his time at tennis down behind the Curly Bell spectator stands looming over the courts, holding hands with a tall girl in a pleated tennis dress.

Usually, the younger kids finished lessons early and took turns to bounce old tennis balls down the five steps of the Curly Bells and shrieking as they scooped them up only to bounce them down all over again. She had been running up and down the stairs collecting errant tennis balls when she first spied her brother’s curly hair bent over a blonde head. Obviously, it was a female blonde head. From that instant, it became a secret shared, and knowledge spared from her parents.

If time with her oldest brother taught her about crushes and secrets, when to tell a tale, and when to turn a blind eye, then time with her middle brother opened her eyes in a different way.

‘Come on, Sis!’

He would grab her hand and pull her, little cardboard port bobbing behind, towards the side gate of the primary school as soon as the three o’clock bell released them from the toil of the day. The local swimming baths were just across the railway line. Up the pedestrian over, skinny legs pumping. Across the railway line far below, and down the other side, knees jolting as they jumped and jostled the other kids streaming towards their after-school swimming squad practice.

Her parents must have believed in safety in numbers and enjoyed the naivety of a time that was safer for some. They would not have spared a thought for their middle son and daughter on any of the afternoons they raced headlong towards the promise of cool water lapping bodies overheated by classrooms that were yet to experience the relief of air-conditioning. The parents certainly would not have felt any concern as their children ran towards the chatter and skylarking of friends and good wholesome exercise. They would never have experienced the frisson of fear of what might happen as half their brood of children streaked through water populated by dozens and dozens of idling children, determined squad kids, and skylarking teenagers.

No adult eyes were constantly scanning the water for those who were not yet able to swim confidently. Kids scampered in and out of change rooms with articles of clothing trailing and, on occasions, absent altogether. Sometimes, adults took hastily posed photos of long limbed, freckle nosed children or groups of future champions without any accusations of less than savoury intentions.

Innocence and enjoyment splashed from the pool with the squeals and shouts and directions mingling as a clashing swell of sounds. Eventually, the tropical sun would start to drop like a stone towards the western horizon. Her brother would part with his friends full of promises and boasts to seek her out among the littlies, tired and exhausted from school, from swimming, from just the joy of a life barely yet lived. Time spent with her middle brother taught her to live life with total confidence, leave worry to those with darker imaginations, and find solace in enjoyment that is fresh and childlike.

They would scramble back across the over, past the school and swing into the front yard of home just in time for Mum’s nightly shout. ‘Tea’s ready! Come and get it! Don’t forget to wash your hands.’

If she was lucky, it would be pork sausages, fresh from the butcher that day, with a mound of steaming, snowy, mashed potato, peas fresh from the shell, and

Mum’s gravy, thick enough you could paint the house with it. But, if luck was out visiting someone else, her plate would have a pork chop and cabbage, surely a vegetable not meant to be created. For ‘afters’, her prayers would be answered if dessert was rice pudding with nutmeg on top and apricots boiled with sugar and water. But, if the devil was smiling today, it would be baked egg custard.

Some days, it was the lot of her youngest brother to look after her when school was out. They were closest in age, closest in size and furthest from a warm, loving sibling relationship, at that time.

‘Get here, Sis.’

No treats. No swim. No tennis matches. Head home. Be prepared for a pinch here and there. Look out for a sly push towards any muddy bits of footpath. Steel herself for the most sustained tormenting possible. Her brother’s teasing did not last for the minutes it took for them to walk home where she could escape to the safety of the darkness under her bed or behind the wardrobe door. It did not last for the months when it was his sole responsibility to walk her home. It lasted for years and years until the day it all stopped.

‘Get here, Sis.’

His long arm whipped out and tucked her small body behind his broad back. With her cardboard port swinging by her side, she pushed her head under his elbow to see why the routine of teasing and jokes and half-finished jibes had come to such a sudden halt. Ahead, on the corner where they turned for home, was a huge tamarind tree. The ground underneath was littered with fallen tamarind pods and, today, three huge boys from the local Catholic school.

It was impossible for her to form a logical thought. ‘Cattle Ticks’ were kids who looked and lived just like them, but they went to the local Catholic school, not the State school. She’d never spoken to even one ‘Cattle Tick’ before. She wasn’t sure if they spoke the same way as her family. Her brothers had filled her head with so many stories her knees started to knock just recalling them.

Her brain was so busy spinning aimlessly that it was many thumping heartbeats before she realised the boys and her brother were exchanging a few insults wrapped in words she had never ever heard her brother use before, even when he was mercilessly teasing her. Ooh, he was really going to catch it from Dad and Mum when she got home and told them what he had said…on the street, where everyone could hear him. But how would she be able to tell Dad and Mum? Between her and the safety of the squeaky front gate was the big tree corner, and on the big tree corner, three threateningly large boys were hurling insults at her like Jaffas at a picture theatre screen on a Saturday afternoon. Her brain wouldn’t slow down enough to form a plan.

Her brother’s voice finally broke through the whirling thoughts enough for her to slow down and breathe deeply. He was speaking calmly, reminding the boys they might have their differences, but his little sister was here with him. They were scaring his sister with their yelling. If they didn’t stop and let them walk through the corner, her brother said his parents would surely speak to the nuns from the convent school.

The boys stepped to one side and let them . Sneaking a quick look sideways, she felt they looked a little shamefaced. However, those looks quickly disappeared from each face as her brother deftly stepped to one side and, with a flick of his foot, kicked the school library book lying near the abandoned school bags into the yawning mouth of the stormwater drain.

The words following them as their feet grew wings to take them home more quickly than ever before, were quite similar to the ones she had heard for the

first time this afternoon. The words would stay in her memory forever, along with the knowledge that her youngest brother taught her to be strong, that family will hug you tighter than Grandma’s knitted jumper, and that the last word, or last kick in this instance, is often sweet.

But we all know you can’t hold the hands of time. Another day will always dawn and all siblings, including the sneakiest, most tormenting, bravest and most loving of brothers and sisters will feel the sun of summer on their faces. They will stretch with the indolence of youth and tumble to the table and compose their lanky limbs into a semblance of bodies and reach for the cornflakes.

‘Big day, Sis.’

She knew that was all the she would hear from her family. It was almost like they didn’t know starting high school was the most exciting, unbearably terrifying day anyone ever had to face. But now, oldest brother was an apprentice mechanic, middle brother, the only family member yet to stay at school soooo long, was in Grade Twelve, and Grade Ten was being graced by the presence of youngest brother. So, to all of them, this was just another day as far as school was concerned.

To her, the thought of leaving the primary school years behind was almost too much to bear. She’d loved the times when she had been allowed to walk around the tamarind tree corner, down the block where her cousins lived and across the back street into the school all on her own. She had fond memories of friends and swings and lunches shared. The things she had learned from the parade of teachers would surely stay in her brain for life.

Of dreams and failures

It seemed impossible high school would offer much more. However, her parents had made it crystal clear they expected her to not only go to high school, but that she should ‘apply’ herself and maybe, get a good job as a nurse or in a bank. That wasn’t quite what she had in mind but, to humour the parents she loved almost as much as her pet budgie, she would smile and nod whenever the ‘future’ was being discussed.

She had heard her parents talk to her aunties and uncles about all the kids. Her cousins were an exuberant mix of tall, well-built boys and vivacious girls predestined for jobs in the railway, down at the harbour or lording over counters in local department stores or grocery shops. They were already starting to settle down into relationships that seemed likely to tie them to the town with future children and in-laws. The discussion usually turned to her prospects with aunties keen to know what she would do after school.

The pride in her mother’s voice was painfully clear as she replied, ‘Oh maybe, a nurse. That’s a good solid job and she is such a caring kid. You’ve seen her with the babies. Really, I don’t know, the bank is so respectable too. She gets good marks in Arithmetic and is so punctual and good at doing what she’s told.’

Little did they know.

A small, secret place deep under her strawberry splashed sundress held a tiny little ambition. Not a big ambition worth shouting about, not even a girly ambition to be whispered about in the changing rooms at the pool. Put simply, she wanted a good, solid respectable job where she could conform but be caring as well. She was almost sure what she wanted to be.

A teacher. Now, it’s out there. There were actual words around her thoughts, her ambition.

This was not something she wanted to discuss at this stage. She was proud she had an actual ambition outside of ‘meeting someone’, settling down and having a family. She also knew she would be in for quite a bit of ribbing when people knew how she saw her future. So, she hugged it to herself and kept quiet for now, and let life roll on. The days, the weeks, the months and even the years seemed to keep moving towards her like the waves at the beach. As in primary school, she looked forward to things that were yet to happen. There were parties and sports days, family weddings and fetes. These things came and went just as quickly as waves receded from the shore.

Her life was full, not perfect, sometimes bumpy. Who could forget the spectacular patty cake failure in cooking class? She only turned her back for a moment on the tray of little cases of cake batter. The squeals and giggles coming from the other girls made her spin around to a face full of smoke. She managed to whip the tray of incinerated mounds out of the oven and keep a straight and brave face. It wasn’t until she was in the privacy of her own bedroom that sobs overtook her. The embarrassment of burning patty cakes was huge when most of the girls had been cooking them successfully at home since primary school. Some of them had even won prizes in the local show. Her face burned in memory of the charred cakes.

After all, she justified to herself, why would she bother with the baking at home? Her father and brothers had huge appetites and massive sweet tooth cravings. The family demanded cakes, scones, slices, pikelets, and definitely dessert to follow tea each night. Her mother had always been the cake baker, the producer of pies, the queen of tarts. When an occasion called for people to ‘bring a plate’, others actually checked to see what her mother had brought on her plate. Would it be her fabulous frangipani pie, her delicious apricot and ginger slice or the sponge that towered precariously balancing a hat of fresh cream? She hadn’t felt the need to develop the skills until today when her public failure had left her ego

as flat as a pancake.

That setback was nothing compared to the Speech Night debacle. Her school was very proud of the long-standing tradition of acknowledging its best academic and sports achievers publicly. Towards the end of each year, the local theatre would be booked, mothers would start sewing white dresses or trawling the department stores for something suitable for daughters to wear, and the student body would be lectured about behaviour on the awards night.

She kind of knew what to expect having been a member of the Grade Eight choir dutifully singing a tortured version of a German song learned in language class. She had seen what the night looked like and was incredibly excited when asked by the Deputy Heistress if she would read a short poem, she had dashed off for the school magazine. Several hours spent learning the poem by heart gave her the confidence she needed to be part of the entertainment for the night.

Pride sometimes does come before a fall. But, really, what could possibly happen after all her rehearsing? She crumpled the page where she had handwritten the poem and left it on her seat, then walked up the steps to the stage without tripping. She even made it across to the lectern without mishap; white dress at requisite knee length, white socks topping off the required black patent shoes. She even tilted up her head and looked out at the audience searching for familiar faces.

There was her family; mother and father, plus all three brothers. They were still there, and possibly the only people in the audience not giggling or smirking one whole, agonizing minute later as the Principal grabbed her by the elbow and ushered her backstage.

One whole, agonising minute with her mouth open and not one word able to

leave it. A minute when her brain had frozen more solidly than the blocks of ice the brothers collected from the ice-works each Christmas to chill the beers and lemonades.

It took a while to hold her head up after that night. She saw the nudges cruel students gave each other.

‘Ask her if she’s got anything to say!’

Mercifully, there were only two weeks of school left after that dreadful episode. The long seven weeks of summer holidays wiped her embarrassment from the minds of most and replaced it with new memories. With the buzzing excitement of day trips to the beach and camping trips to the mountain, holiday jobs and new boyfriends and girlfriends, the high school moved on and she was no longer a target of ridicule.

When the next year started, there were new people to meet, new teachers, new students from other schools, and even a new Deputy Heistress. Even knowing most people had not given her another thought since last year, all this change brought a freshness to her life. She felt the collective memory of the gawky girl who had made a few blunders had been wiped clean.

Amazingly, after many years, the high school had bowed to changing times and parental pressure and changed the uniform for girls and boys. Every single person looked different. They attracted attention everywhere they went. The local paper sent out a photographer on the first day and there was an article on the inside front cover about the school that was moving with the times and offering uniforms that were less restrictive and more suited to the climate.

Talk about great timing. New uniform, new girl.

Her thoughts were starting to be guided by her ambition to become a teacher, so she chose subjects to study that were most suitable. She volunteered to mentor younger students, ed an Interact service club and several sporting teams. In fact, she put her name down for just about everything, except helping in the tuckshop. That was a sausage roll too far where she was concerned.

Grade Ten was really looking promising.

The day in May when she met her future husband was definitely the best day of her life so far. Not because of what would come later, but because of the here and now. The seams of her checked uniform struggled to contain the bubbles of excitement threatening to ooze right through her skin and rise into the brilliant blue sky. She giggled with the effort of suppressing a grin as wide as summer and turned to the two similarly attired girls striding beside her. The bubbles of excitement could clearly be seen now as the length of their strides shortened, then faltered, then stuttered to a stop outside the local council chambers.

Bravado replaced excitement and they tugged each other towards the main door just as a tired green sedan pulled up in the car park. With their way blocked by one of the oldest cars they had ever seen on the road, the three girls paused.

Four doors slammed in unison as three lanky boys dressed in uniforms of the high school, thirty kilometres away up the valley, unfolded teenage limbs and climbed out. The driver, obviously a teacher, from the long socks, shorts, and nylon shirt stuck to his back, smiled and swept a bow at the girls, motioning them to go towards the door.

The boys showed no such grace and bolted ahead through the door before stopping and yelling backwards over shoulders.

‘Sir, where do we go?’

The trio of girls smothered smiles as they walked just behind the boys, across the foyer, and followed a large arrow which pointed the way to the Regional Student Council meeting. There was just so much to take in and her level of excitement soared again. Fleetingly, she ed how the Deputy Heistress had asked her and the other two, to stay behind after parade. Worried she had once again hitched her uniform skirt too high or been seen with her hair out, she initially didn’t understand what was being said.

Everyone in the form class had submitted applications last month when the form teacher had first explained about the Regional Student Council. Sounded like a good idea but it was a bit ‘out there’. The local council wanted to hear the ‘voice of youth’ so they were putting together something that sounded like a committee which reached across schools. Only, instead of adults making the decisions about what should happen for the local kids, there was going to be three representatives chosen from each of the local high schools. The council would bring these chosen representatives together to ask their opinions on things such as which books to buy for the libraries, and whether to hold dances just for kids and what equipment to put in the parks.

Her parents always said she had an opinion about everything. That must have come from being the youngest of four, and the only girl. They had always encouraged her to speak up on family matters and told her she should run for form captain. So, when this opportunity came up, the family took it for granted she would apply. Of course, she was interested, and the application was to be completed in school time, so her trying out for the council was a done deal.

But then they heard nothing in her form and whispers started among themselves that maybe only kids from the higher grades were being chosen. At last, one day, the rumours were put to bed. She was called aside after parade.

When the Deputy Heistress proudly told three girls including herself that they were the chosen representatives for the school, she felt a surge of joy. Finally, this was something for her. It didn’t matter she was the youngest in the family, or the only girl. She had been chosen! Right then, she would have boarded a rocket ship to the moon, stepped aboard a plane as a captain, or slid into the cockpit of the fastest racing-car. The feeling of success had been uncaged in her and breathed endless possibility into life.

Pretty full-on emotions for a fifteen-year-old girl in a small town chosen for a committee. But such is the power of promise. The church bells didn’t peal, and cannons didn’t fire, but deep inside her, she felt the warmness of success.

The three girls chosen were encouraged to discuss how best to represent the school, how to gather a feeling of the student body’s opinions, and how to think what the adults felt they should think and say. Just hurry up, let’s go, unleash the hounds, we are sick of waiting.

And now, they’re here, at the council chambers following three boys from the valley into a huge room with more adults than students. Funny thing, that. The girl on her right nudged her, pointing to the middle boy. The one with long, black hair to his shoulders, and baggy uniform shirt, hardly tucked into too-tight shorts.

‘Cute.’

With that one observation, parts of her world shifted and shattered until they settled back with a flurry of hormones into a pattern she had never felt before. Her eyes checked him out from head to toe, and then lost sight of him as the valley boys bolted towards the back of the auditorium and threw themselves into the most far-flung seats. That desire by the boys to restrict the likelihood they would need to take part in the proceedings in any way meant the boy, cute as he was, was out of sight, but not out of mind, for the entire afternoon.

Or he would have been, if only the long-socked teacher had not reefed them by the collars out of the back row and nudged them ever so gently further towards the front. His mutterings about lack of respect and no appreciation for what people do for them floated down each row as the townies giggled behind their hands. Boys from the valley were always good for a laugh.

The meeting dragged on. The townie kids seemed to have most to say. The boys from the valley and kids from up and down the highway had the least. They all just seemed happy to be out of school for the afternoon, for whatever reason. The future of all the teenagers in the town did not rest heavy on their shoulders at all. It may have been that the import of the occasion had not ed in the slightest and the boys were simply chuffed to smell the freedom of a few hours out of the classroom.

Girls from the church school sat upright at the front. Their perfect plaits fell in precision lines down their backs to be imprisoned by satin bows matching their perfectly ironed uniforms. The private school boys sweated silently into their blazers and pulled at their neckties before speaking. These potential future prime ministers and premiers and captains of industry spoke with hints of plummy voices and dreams of big city universities in their heads. It was obviously important to be seen and heard now if one wanted to end up in the right job later.

But enough of them.

She knew the valley boys were lounging behind her. With ill intent, she managed to drop her biro two times and her agenda sheet three times. Each time she hoped to catch a glimpse of the boy who had so piqued her interest but, instead inspected the underneath of the theatre seat and the fairly new fabric of the seat back. She should be paying attention, should be modelling herself on the front seat girls with their rapid notetaking and interested interjections.

The meeting dragged on. Thankful the town had recently installed airconditioning for the comfort of the councillors, she managed to focus for long enough to hear the Chair set the next meeting date for the Regional Student Council. What a relief. She was worried this would be just the inaugural meeting and that a decision would not be made yet whether to continue. At least, with this decision, she knew chances would be high she would see him again.

But fate sometimes can be impatient. Our self-centred futures are not always good at waiting for things to happen in time, totally depending on the course of nature. On this day, her future gave the slightest nudge to say it was impatient for ‘the here and now’ to have a good look at ‘the what will be’.

If it waited for things to happen naturally, she might not meet him for years, if ever.

Without conscious thought, as they stood to leave the chambers, her hand reached out of its own accord and lightly clasped his fingers as he walked past in the row behind her. Instantly, she pulled back her hand, nursing it inside her other hand pressed against the brightly checked uniform on her chest. Her face spelled pure mortification. A millisecond ticked past as he paused, turned, and started their first ever conversation.

‘See you round sometime.’

Luckily, his mate pushed him forward along the row as the blush spread across her face and the remorse spread downwards from the brown pigtails to the leather shoes. She had never been so forward. Her mother would kill her if she heard. She wasn’t a fast girl like the bleached blondes at school who had been known to ask boys to go to the movies or the beach. What had she done?

What she had done with this unprecedented action was start a tiny sensation deep down inside. This sensation was a ripple of pure joy that grew and gathered pace until it split her face in a grin of acknowledgement. She knew, somehow, what had just happened was not just the action of a schoolgirl keen to have a boyfriend. This hadn’t just been her way of meeting a cute boy from another school. It was an action that would somehow, someday, change the course of her life.

And it did. But not immediately as that would be too much like a soppy romantic novel. This was never going to be the teenage version of a bodice-ripper. In fact, it was some months of ordinary school with ordinary lessons punctuated by ordinary games of sport and just one party. The party was in the afternoon, which explained why her parents allowed her to go. The other two parties she was invited to were at night and her parents haughtily said they had heard there was not going to be adequate adult supervision and there could even be beer there.

She was definitely not allowed to go and had to suffer through the tales from her friends at school on Monday. Yes, the adults were in another room all night and the lights were switched down low. Enough said. As for the other party, there was a bonfire on the beach and couples had snuck off into the shadows of the she-oak trees where adult eyes could not see as they initiated themselves into adulthood.

The afternoon party was as dull as dishwater. For all its exalted position as the first teenage party she had been allowed to attend, it was such a major letdown. The teenagers there were even expected to play childish games. She sat aloof and disinterested with one eye on the door. In fact, whenever she was at sport or shopping, she was constantly scanning for one person to walk in, to walk by, to be seen sitting in a car speeding past. In her heart of hearts, she was totally sure she was destined to meet the boy from the student council again.

After all, hadn’t he said he’d see her around? That felt like a promise to her. And a promise it was!

Even though they were at different schools. Even though they existed in fairly small networks and had not yet reached the wider social worlds of work and dances and movies with groups of friends who knew each other. Even though their families kept them close, fate was definitely working out a way their paths would cross once more, and fate could not wait for the next student council meeting to make that happen. So, fate used the cousins.

The cousins have not been a major part of her story so far because they were about on a par with the paint on her bedroom wall. The cousins had always been a part of her life, ever since she could . She couldn’t comprehend life without a cousin or two to do things with. Around the corner, on the way to the primary school, were the two girl cousins. They were Mum’s sister’s girls. The two girls were close to her when they were younger simply because they were girls and close in age and lived five houses away, a safe distance to walk alone. They spent a lot of time playing records and singing in bedrooms and discussing boys and were always thrown together at the kids’ table at the family gatherings.

High school changed that a bit. All three made new friends and were in different classes and played different sports. But, if she was bored, she would still go to

the school oval on Saturdays and watch them play vigoro in short, white frocks, pigtails bobbing as the ‘tipsy run’ rule made them charge up and down the wicket every time they touched the ball with the little fat bat.

The other cousins were a bit further away. They were Dad’s brother’s kids. Two boys and a girl, they lived one suburb over. They shared a love of footy with her and would barrack for their favourite teams as the winter wind whistled through the tall paddocks of cane lining the local football fields. She would ride her bike over with her youngest brother so they could all sit and cheer and gossip in the temporary Curly Bell stands munching meat pies and eating hot chips out of paper wrappings. Their relationship was strong enough that most invitations to her were followed by Mum asking:

‘Are your cousins going?’

As a matter of fact, the answer to that question was a ‘yes’ when she asked if she could go to a party being organised by the local church youth group. All five cousins were going as well. She had been so badly burned by the underwhelming nature of the first party that she invested her hopes heavily in this second one. Like her, none of the cousins attending belonged to the church youth group in question. But the invitation was an open one as numbers were flagging in the youth group towards the end of the year. The group was planning a huge beach party at the local beach only a bike ride away. The faraway cousins would ride to her house where the girl cousins would two of her brothers and herself. The eight of them would be fine together even though the party was going to carry on until late.

It would have been hard for all but the most worldly-wise townie to be blasé about such a party. There would be a barbeque, a bonfire, maybe some Tom Thumb fireworks and sparklers. The only price to pay would be to in singing some churchy campfire songs. But even that dullness would be helped by toasted marshmallows. All in all, this beach party had been building up in

local teenage hearts and minds as the most promising party of the whole year.

It was. For good reason. She finally met up again with the boy she would marry.

In the end, it was such an anti-climax to her. The quest to see him had become a little bit glorified in her mind. It had taken on a bit of glamour. There was even a little bit of sparkly glitter around the edges of her fantasies. In her all-pervading daydreams, he was going to track her down with some sterling detective work and write to beg her to go with him to the school dance. He was going to save her when she was floating underwater at the local pool and sweep her up in his arms. He was going to deliver red roses to her at school. Nah, didn’t happen like that at all.

The youth group party was actually a tad boring. The same kids she knew very well were there. It was a beautiful night, almost cool for September. She wandered away from the group around the bonfire and stood looking out at the ocean. It was full moon. The huge circle seemed to hang in mid-air above the gentle swell. Dark clouds were crossing the sky pushed by a slight breeze. She knew the local farmers didn’t want it to rain right now, but that was just another thing in the lap of the gods. Feeling a hand on her arm, she turned to find her next suburb cousin with another boy in tow. It was really hard for her to concentrate when every drop of blood in her body rushed to her feet all at once. The sand anchored her. She swayed slightly. She tried to look her cousin in the face and make out the words she could see his mouth forming but could not hear. With every last ounce of determination, she managed to focus firstly on her cousin. Then, when it didn’t seem obvious and awkward, she allowed her eyes to look once again at the boy she had met months ago and allowed to occupy many of her thoughts and dreams ever since.

Okay, he wasn’t quite as outstandingly handsome as her yearning memory had painted him. Truth be told, she couldn’t see him all that well. It was dark, there were now clouds ing across the moon and she was still recovering from the

shock of the unexpected meeting. Just as she managed to start processing all this, the moon came out from behind the clouds. She saw her future clearly in that moment.

So, the story was her cousin had met this person when they both played cricket. On opposite teams, they spent hours talking while they kept score at various cricket games and after that had looked out for each other at other sporting matches. The cousin shared the invitation to the youth group beach party and encouraged his new mate from the valley to them. Here he was, and that was the start of the rest of their lives.

For now, and evermore

This was never going to be a sweetheart story. They did not fall into each other’s arms on that moonlit beach. For a start, her parents would have hit the roof. There would have been lectures about being too young to be in a serious relationship, that schoolwork had to be her first concern, that other boys would come along and . . . On and on like a broken record.

Instead, they slowly grew to know each other. Their paths seemed to be on increasingly smaller orbits, so they accidentally bumped into each other at ever decreasing intervals of time. Lack of transport was a determining factor over how often they bumped into each other in the beginning.

A boy from a cane farm in the valley and a townie girl had very little in common other than they were both studying for their Junior examinations. It would never strike either of them to ask older brothers to use their newly acquired licenses to take them anywhere other than to sport. Their parents would have been totally shocked if asked to indulge the romantic fantasies of children they still viewed as the babies of the family.

So, in the end, school came to the rescue again, by guiding the hands of fate. As a reward, and to distract the Junior and Senior classes preparing to sit their final examinations, three of the local high schools organised a picnic sports day and invited students from surrounding areas. The students did not have to attend as it was to be held on a Saturday, but the Deputy Heistress made it clear fresh air and exercise would benefit their young brains, before the last short slog to the exams.

So, with her parents’ blessing, she went. He went too.

It was a perfectly brilliant day in early November that set the scene for their budding relationship. The sun lit the local showgrounds as though the area was destined to be a movie set. Holdens and Falcons pulled through the gates in droves disgorging just what you would expect. There is nothing quite like a hundred or so teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, to fill the air with sounds strangely echoing from long ago childhood.

Squeals and giggles, shouts and yelling spilled outwards as groups formed and reformed and couples connected. The day ran like clockwork with novelty races, ball games and a school versus school tug of war. To even the competition, the teachers also formed a team. This provided the highlight of the day with the Deputy Principal from the valley showing an unexpected and unbecoming flash of underwear as she tumbled backwards when the townies from the State school stepped away from their rope.

It was all fun and fun for all. He found her early in the morning and they played games and ate lunch side by side. Weathering a few curious stares and catcalls, they revelled in each other’s company. As the parade of family cars pulled into the showgrounds and bikes were collected from the grass where they had lain all day under the baking sun, they wished each other luck and arranged to keep in

touch.

The Junior examination results arrived in late December. Her results almost guaranteed she would be able to follow through with her ambition to become a teacher. His results definitely guaranteed he would be helping his father for years to come on the cane farm in the valley. The upside of what looked like a parting of paths was actually a little godsend. He always volunteered for any trip from the farm down the valley into town so he could call around to her home and lounge over the front fence talking. Talking, that is, until whoever drove the overloaded tilly honked the horn to show their impatience to head back to the farm. It was a bit of a drive after all.

He turned up at the front fence often. His brothers would do the run to town as often as they could. Ostensibly, to fetch some farm supplies, but, in reality, they were also keen to catch up with girls in town. A good result all round. But he wasn’t above hitching a ride when his Mum would make the trip for baking supplies, or for material for a new dress, or some more beers for Dad hard at work on the farm. He wasn’t above carrying whatever his Mum bought as long as they could call in for a few minutes of chat over the front fence with the most intriguing girl he had ever met. He turned up so often her parents soon got the drift of what was going on. The brothers and cousins did too. As did the neighbours and her friends and soon it was all around that the townie girl and the farm boy from the valley were seeing quite a lot of each other. That suited them both. Just as it suited them to spend so much time leaning on the front fence among the gerberas and zinnias getting to know each other.

It was almost Easter in her Sub-Senior year before her Mum said he was welcome to sit on the verandah when he visited. That was a massive step for everyone. He walked up the three steps but hadn’t spent many hours on the verandah before he was tucking his long legs under the kitchen table in front of a plate of scones and a cup of tea. Those were the ‘getting to know you’ times that helped her parents agree when he first asked if she could go to a Saturday matinee at the local picture theatre.

‘Are your cousins going?’

She had to ask friends and the cousins about the movies they had seen before they got home again as her parents were sure to ask. Great chaperones the cousins certainly were not, stealing away in the theatre foyer and sneaking back to her side when the pictures let out. Better not ask what happened in the darkened theatre but it certainly didn’t progress past holding hands and a sly arm around the shoulder. They were simply so caught up in the newness and pure joy of what they were experiencing that they sat innocently soaking in the joy of the proximity of the other.

It was some time before they progressed to afternoons at the pool, then to riding their bikes all the way to the beach.

‘Are your cousins going?’

Of course, they were. The cousins welcomed this increasingly trusting freedom just as much as she did. Soft drink bottles were cashed in and birthday money that arrived in cards from grandparents was added to the cash until a giggling gaggle of cousins could buy the latest bikinis from the department store in town. Styles of shoestring straps and tiny frills, daring halter necks and boy leg bottoms were tried on and ired or rejected.

The wait for the next trip to the beach seemed interminable. Somehow, she fitted in the schoolwork, but the hours crept painfully, and the routine of the days stretched until they must surely shatter into a cascade of minutes and seconds, and bury her in their numbers, beyond measure. Somehow, she made time to try on her newly purchased swimsuit a few too many times until she began to worry

that he wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t even notice it.

Mired in the detail and never-ending feeling of waiting, the months of her eleventh year of school fell from the calendar on her bedroom wall with an agonising unwillingness to ever finish. Just let her get on with life….

Life dropped one of those delicious hints of happiness to come when he shyly asked if she could come up to his family’s beach house at the local beachside hamlet. If only she had known what import this invitation carried, she would not have slept at all in the nights after he asked her parents’ permission. Although this held for them both the promise of hours spent in each other’s company, both played it cool.

And, with her parents, they played it straight down the line. It was just for the day, mind you. Just driving up to the little hamlet and back the same day. His parents had some spare time now the cane harvest was over. Like they did a few times a year, they were driving up to check on his uncle who lived at the beach and had asked if she would like to come along for the ride.

Beyond excited, she changed her sundress three times before propping herself in the squatter’s chair on the verandah so she would see the car as soon as it turned into her street. Mum and Dad and brothers three, sat there with her. It was quite the occasion. Introductions and handshakes all round when they finally arrived. She could have cheerfully throttled her Mum when she asked everyone in for a cuppa.

Luckily, his Mum refused, saying that it was quite a drive that day. They had better get going if they didn’t want to drive home when the wallabies were eating at the sides of the road ready to jump out in front of ing traffic. The young pair exchanged glances and inwardly wished in unison for a day that

would stretch two more weeks until Christmas. Well, she wished that, and he probably just wished his Mum would stop talking.

Slamming the door of the car just a bit harder than needed to, she hoped the noise would alert all the neighbours to her departure. She was not leaving on shank’s pony to walk to school, or on her bike with the cousins. No sirree, she was in her boyfriend’s family car being whisked away to an exotic destination. Okay, a beach hamlet definitely qualifies as glamorous when you are sixteen and totally impressed by the world your boyfriend lives in.

As if sitting in the back seat with him was not enough, she soon found many things to marvel over on their way. Fields of growing cane punctuated by glimpses of houses on stilts and huge sheds of tractors and other mysterious farm machinery flashed past endlessly. Wooded hills were all that remained of huge active volcanoes. Each receded from view as the car sped through a cutting in a low mountain range affording them all the first glimpse of the sea off in the distance past the fringes of mangrove trees.

But it was not so much what she was seeing that was making this the most exciting time she had ever spent in a car in her sixteen years. Instead, it was his parents who were actually talking to her about what she was doing and what she wanted to be in the future. They listened to her answers and turned the car trip into a most enjoyable time where she actually felt she was being treated as an adult. Having only known both parents through their son’s stories, she now saw his mother was kind and caring. His father seemed stern but showed a funny side as he told anecdotes about farmers whom he knew and whose farms dotted the way they were travelling.

With such great company, time ed very quickly and soon they were driving along a sandy track. On one side, they ed beach shacks and some fancier homes. There were old tractors with boats still attached fresh from the morning’s fishing. Most houses had hibiscus bushes bursting with red or pink or orange

blooms near their doors. But there were also palm trees and mango trees laden down with golden fruit. Some places had wiry grass, but the summer sun and lack of rain had scorched most of the grass into stalky reminders of a green carpet that was once growing there.

But, on the other side, there stretched for kilometres a sandy beach with kids dotted here and there above the high tide mark, building sandcastles in the hard sand, hunting soldier crabs to the water’s edges, and squealing with pure delight in the tiny ripples of ocean waves. Beyond them, the incredibly blue ocean stretched all the way to South America, or at least to the rocky island standing off the coast.

It was all so unbelievable. She had never been here. Her family tended to drive south on their rare holidays, and no-one had the time to come here for a Sunday drive. It was a hard stab of realisation that, all these years, she had been missing out on this little piece of paradise. Obviously, other people had not been missing out. She just couldn’t take it all in at first glance. There was so much to see with the families and kids and old people on their verandahs.

Meanwhile, the car was slowing and eventually swung onto a smaller sandy track darting down the side of a low shack. She drank it all in through the side window as everyone gathered up belongings and prepared to get out. The shack was low and seemed to be made entirely of corrugated iron from the walls, to the roof, to the shutters. The door opened directly onto a covered verandah, flat on the sandy ground. The shutters were really the windows. They were casually propped open with sticks stuck into the sills, for light and ventilation.

The back of the shack housed a laundry tub. The sandy back yard had a few straggly shrubs of indeterminate types. A path lined with big brown beer bottles stuck upside down in the sand led to a wooden tank stand. Atop the stand was a corrugated iron water tank with large rust spots and a very obvious leak highlighted by green mould. Under the stand appeared to be the outside toilet, its

inadequately secured door flapping in the breeze from the ocean.

She took a few moments to savour this sight overall then opened her door. An elderly man came shuffling from the front door towards the car. The family had taken care to explain to her this was where her boyfriend’s uncle lived. The uncle was the main reason for this family visit. He had spent time overseas in a foreign war and suffered greatly from the experience. Before the war, he had been a major part of the family’s farm. However, his war experiences had resulted in his choice to build a shack to live in at a place that had given him many happy times and fond memories in his youth.

The hamlet had drawn many others over the years with its beauty and now, other shacks and houses clustered around his. It was happily conveniently close to the farms of the valley and north of the town. Farm families didn’t often make it to the beach shacks during the busy harvest season but school holidays and the long Christmas break, when the cane looked after itself, drew families to their second homes like the mango blossoms drew screeching rosellas.

He didn’t mind knowing the population swelled with the seasons as long as noone wanted to mind his business for him. The family gave him the distance he wanted but also kept him close, by caring about his welfare. They made frequent visits to the hamlet with supplies and treats and home cooking. No-one seemed to care that they weren’t asked to stay. It was just such a delight to spend the day with family driving past the paddocks of green lush stalks with plenty of comparisons to their own recent crop. The beach was rich in beauty, and the warm tropical breeze that swept in from the sea had the ability to pick up everyday cares and drop them elsewhere for a while.

By the time her sandalled feet were planted on the sandy track, she had fallen in love. An actual physical coursing of joy rushed through her veins. Pretty unbelievable that she was so easily influenced by the sea breeze tousling her hair, the sand beneath her feet, the ordinary, ramshackle corrugated iron shack.

But she was.

It was due in no small part to her first sight of the uncle of the family. There was something about him that spoke to her and made her feel totally welcome. She actually heard and felt the intake of breath from all three fellow visitors as she tripped forward and grabbed both of Uncle’s hands in her own.

‘Thanks so much for letting me come.’

In later years, she learned this was not something anyone, even family, would dare do. Everyone loved the uncle in their own family way but they also respected his feelings and dislikes. He was a bit of a hermit, living up here at the beach. Living simply inside the bubble of his own company, he often went for weeks without speaking to neighbours. The beach kids left him well alone and the townie visitors were, truth be told, just a little concerned about his long grey hair and tros held up with baler twine. They knew his history and were quite happy to give the ramshackle beach shack a berth as wide as he and they all wished.

‘Well, girlie.’

Beside her, a trio of eyebrows headed for the sky leaving behind wide-open mouths. With obvious disbelief, the three of them, laden with grocery bags and home cooking fell in behind the oddest couple you could hope to see that day at the beachside hamlet. To the family, who knew the uncle so well, this was an unlikely sight. Uncle often spent a whole visit nodding and mumbling. He seldom greeted their arrival with words and, here he was, actually taking her inside by the hand after speaking first. Of course, this totally unexpected turn of

events soon reverted to the usual family visit with Mum telling the gossip of events of the valley and Dad relaying what was happening on the family cane farm. First staring around the ittedly quirky and overcrowded interior of the shack, her eyes returned to Uncle. For the second time in her life, she surprised more than herself by acting out of character. She reached across the rickety table, grabbed Uncle’s hand, and asked if he could show her his home and the yard.

In this moment, a juxtaposition of like souls fell into place. One that would end eventually in a way no-one could have foreseen. She looked forward to the family trips to visit Uncle in a way her parents couldn’t understand. They felt she was talking too much about the old man. Oddly, there were a few trips she later found out she had not been invited on. Even later, her eventual husband confided his mother was unhappy with the way she took over on these visits and almost kept the uncle to herself.

But when she did go, on the back seat of the family car, sometimes with other of his family, sometimes just Mum driving, sometimes just Dad, she was always made welcome. Uncle spent hours with her standing spellbound at his side or sitting on the bare wooden floor at his knee as he told her about the local wildlife.

He told her about the male brush turkey building huge, mounded nests and using their beak to check the temperature for their hatching eggs. He enthralled her with tales of the ghastly practice, long discontinued, of catching dugongs for their meat.

They waited for low tide and walked from a local beach to a small island across sand that would soon be covered by deep water. The family car took them all to the creek where dinghies were launched for fishing trips and they listened to the bellows of massive male crocodiles in the mangroves. Laughing, they slapped at midges and retreated inside the relative safety of the shack.

When the sun shone, they walked barefoot on the beach and collected washed up flotsam and jetsam from far away ships. Hibiscus bushes and yellow allamanda creepers yielded a bounty of colour eclipsed only by the beautiful frangipani blossoms that grew in their thousands on the trees dotting the yard and lining parts of the shore.

When the rains came, they all sat inside on the canvas chairs and eventually gave up any hopes of talking above the thundering roar of tropical raindrops pelting continually on the iron roof. Over and over again, she made the trip to uncle’s house. Not once did she wish away the visit. She felt no rush to leave paradise.

The years ed and the young pair spent time like every couple. They grew to know each other well. They agreed on absolutely everything and shared the same tastes down to loving Chiko rolls and hating dim sims when they ordered tea from the fish and chip shop.

They disagreed on everything and she simply couldn’t understand why he wanted to see Rocky at the drive in and why he laughed out loud when he heard she preferred to go to A Star is Born showing at the posh theatre with the velvet seats in town. They wanted to spend the rest of their lives together and wrote letters on the weeks when work or study kept them apart.

The farm parents sat back and waited to see what time would bring. They had been concerned she was becoming overly attached to Uncle at the beach but that seemed to resolve as simply a strong friendship arising from novelty on both sides. The town parents worried little, happy to wait to see what time would bring. They watched their oldest two sons and the oldest girl cousin settle down into young marriages.

Time ed and the young couple did break up. They spent time with other people and ignored their first loves, always turning away if there was a glimpse of a familiar head in the street. They tore each other apart with cold actions then mended broken hearts with hugs and tears and promises. Each time they reconciled, the relationship grew stronger and more likely to last for a long time, a lifetime. Without doubt, the biggest disagreement in their narrative erupted when her Senior examination results arrived. She had managed to study hard, despite the many distractions. Her results were good enough to study education at the Teachers’ College many hours’ drive to the north.

‘I’ll be home every holiday.’

‘Don’t bother yourself. I’ll be too busy on the farm.’

Life was as frosty as it could be in a climate where blankets are an oddity and bread and sauce have to live in the refrigerator if they are to be prevented from turning green in the heat and humidity. She wouldn’t be the first to speak and neither would he. It was just unfathomable how young love could be so cruelly torn to pieces by the tyranny of distance.

He didn’t understand why she needed to go away for three years or even why she needed to study for a career? After all, wouldn’t they get married one day and then wouldn’t she be busy on the farm with their family?

She didn’t understand why he wasn’t proud of her for seeking to better herself. After all, it wasn’t like they were getting married. They weren’t even engaged. So, in February, off she drove in a little old car painted an incongruous pink and white. It was packed to the gunnels with everything she would need to board with an older lady near the Teachers’ College, as arranged by her parents. She had clothes and books, of course, her cassette player and all the latest tapes,

photos of her family, and every letter he had ever written her. They were tied in a tight bundle by a red ribbon and were sitting on the seat with her ission papers and a handbag full of cash. Her friends had taken up a collection for her to buy some cool clothes so she would fit in at college.

His eyes, disclosing the pain of his surely broken heart, were red-rimmed as he watched her drive off. He had parked at her corner in his brother’s car to catch one last glimpse of her crazy pink and white car as it carried her out of his life. Surely this could not be the end of their plans. As she turned to wave one more time to her family leaning over the chain wire fence crushing the gerberas in their eagerness to catch a lasting memory, her eyes caught sight of the car.

And that was that.

This was surely the end.

Finito for this little tale.

They were severed from each other’s lives by a healthy dose of pride and ambition. But it surely couldn’t end like that. This is called ‘Joy and Happiness’ after all. They have seen plenty of both and managed to keep driving through their young lives with just a few bumps in the road to jolt them awake and aware.

Of course, nothing was ready to end just yet. When the end of semester college holidays began, the little pink and white car tootled back to town, packed to the gunnels again. This time, it did not leave the driveway of her parent’s home and head north after ten days. It was way too busy heading up the valley, three times

in fact. If his parents were surprised to see her arrive, it was nothing compared to the shock he felt. He spotted the car as he rode his motorbike back from a far paddock for lunch. Imagine his thoughts as he climbed the back steps and saw her with his Mum, happily ensconced at the kitchen table, drinking tea.

Their reconciliation was as intense as an unexpected reconnection can be. For seventeen-year-old people with little worldly experience, there were mighty struggles ahead to recover from harsh words spoken and broken promises. It was his Mum’s suggestion they visit the beach and spend a night or two with Uncle. It could have been the thrill of lying together on camp stretchers in Uncle’s kitchen whispering words to heal their rift. It could have been Uncle’s willingness to listen and total inability to give advice. It could have been the simple magic of a place that held beauty in its sandy beaches and whispered promises from the waving palms. It could have been all of those. Or none at all. But whatever happened in those few short days, worked wonders. They left the beach and drove home towards an unwavering belief they were meant to be with each other.

Time ed predictably with the seasons on the farm. Time dragged its slow feet forward as plans were made. He would work on other farms during the cane harvest. He would drive a haul-out tractor that caught the cane from the huge harvesters and delivers the cut stalks to bins waiting at the siding behind a chunky little cane loco. As he watched the loco pull a huge rake of bins to the sugar mill for crushing, he would dream of his burgeoning bank .

She would put aside her dreams of a career and, instead, look for work in town. After a few disappointments with her applications because she had wasted a whole semester up at the college while other girls in her school year filled the positions, she managed to be successful at last. The local high school was looking for an assistant for the library. Her job would be to shelve returned books, to cover new books and check the books out for the students who were borrowing them.

She had to speak out to snag this job. Her age worked against her. This was the school she had attended, so students knew her. But she argued that as an advantage, knowing their names, and her excellent Senior marks were a big plus. Soon the job became familiar, and while it was not ever going to be exciting, she was learning heaps and lunchtimes gave her a chance to read and read. Best of all, every Wednesday, she was handed a small buff envelope with brightly coloured banknotes and a jingle of coins. Some went to her parents for board, some for her car. The majority was deposited in the bank the very next day.

The months and years went by with very few bumps in the road. However, they were both very aware of how close they had come to living futures without each other. So, they made plans. Neither of them could pinpoint a day or night when they made a decision to get married. It just kind of happened. It may not have been formal, but it was set in happiness. They just fell into the habit of making plans for ‘before we get married’ and for ‘when we get married’ and for ‘after we are married’. The families talked that way too and the decision to marry ed into general acceptance.

It doesn’t seem appropriate to commit a lot of words to the details of something already woven into the fabric of life. Their planning eventually settled on a firm date. The church, the reception, the bridesmaids and groomsmen, the honeymoon destination were all decided on and marshalled into existence by two capable mothers who were united in their determination to give their offspring a wonderful start to married life.

The wedding was typical of its time; tears, toasts, and tiddly relatives. The honeymoon was typical of its era; sand, surf and (hah!) a simply splendid time.

After they returned from the honeymoon, the borrowed wedding suit was given back and the white wedding dress dry-cleaned and hung, shrouded in plastic, in the cupboard. Then, married life began in earnest. Years ed in the expected pattern, the cycle of seasons and the arrival of a family. But these are not tales to

hear just now. Hopefully, dutiful reader, you can wait a little longer for those stories. We return now to our young couple who are a little older and certainly becoming wiser.

You have already met her older self. She was sounding a little weary with life, maybe even feeling a bit trapped out in the valley now living in his parents’ house.

But you may have noticed a worldly possession has caught her interest. the cane suite in the furniture shop in town on that longed for Friday? She has always had an eye for beautiful things and a way of inveigling her husband into buying her what she wanted. It wasn’t long at all before the four chairs and low table were sitting out on the louvred verandah.

Bright yellow cushions perched on the seat of each chair, a tea-set she had inherited from her Grandma was set out on the low table and she sat smiling broadly in one of the cane seats. Their closest neighbour had kindly dropped the suite off at the house that very morning. She simply could not wait for her husband to see how her latest purchase looked in their house. She loved the curves of the arms of the chairs, the swell of cane at the front of the seat and the warm honeyed colour. A warm surge of happiness touched her heart.

Had she not been so engrossed in iration of her furniture; she may have noticed how slowly her husband walked up the stairs for his smoko break. He was only working on the tractor in the farm shed today so had taken the opportunity to slip into the local village to collect the mail. Eventually, she saw him standing in the doorway. Her eyes dropped to the letters and papers in his hand.

The telegram he held with trembling fingers stated baldly his uncle had died.

Neighbours had found him in the beach shack lying silent and cold in his bed. She slumped on her cane suite and sobbed as though her heart would surely break. But life went on and it was several months before he again drew tears to her eyes as she sat in her favourite cane chair on the louvred verandah.

This time, he had been all the way into town at the request of the family solicitor. It was a Friday, but she had stayed home because one of the kids was away from school with the flu. She was feeling calmer, if not a little cross about missing a trip to town and had no inkling of how her life was about to change. Her husband had important news. Uncle had eked out a very basic existence. He had been happy with his beach shack and his fortnightly pension from the army. After the special time when Uncle had helped restart their relationship, they had repaid him over the years by making small modifications to the shack which made it more comfortable for him. The corrugated walls were lined, and glass louvres replaced the push-out shutters. The floor was linoleum and there was a new stove. The bathroom was entirely indoors, and they had added a bunkroom for sleepover visitors. Topped off by a new roof and smart new coat of paint, the shack was almost unrecognisable and provided Uncle with welcome comfort for the rest of his days.

He had left mementoes to all his family and to her, he had given his most precious possession, the beach shack. In shock and disbelief, she cried. Then laughed. Cried again. Hugging her husband tightly, she told him of her disbelief anyone could be so generous. Already, she was planning how their new family would enjoy this incredible gift. She wished there was a grander word than happy, as happy could not begin to describe the joy and excitement she was feeling. Somehow, losing Uncle had made this happiness even more heartfelt. She smiled and sank back down into her cane chair to contemplate what was to come.

Disgust

It is time for a change of pace, determined reader.

It would be untrue to the way real life plays out to pretend we all live forever in a state of joy and happiness. The impossible, unachievable ‘happily ever after’ is only the stuff of fairy tales. Our lives all need some balance, or we would teeter constantly on the precipice of what should be, at least in our own minds. So, life helps to keep us balanced and pulls us back from the edge of fairy-tale unreality. Inevitably, the darkness sends splintering stings into the lightness, to remind us of how life really is and help us keep a grip on reality.

After all, we need clouds to make us long for the sunshine.

Bit heavy, eh? Just setting the tone for telling you about a part of her life that is more like lemon drops than marshmallow, more like prickly pear than frangipani blossoms.

This part of her story calls once again for the cloak of indifferent distance. It helps to keep the pain at bay. If only we were all perfect people who knew what best to do to make others be perfect too. But we all have those foibles that sometimes cause us to act or react in ways that hurt others.

Sometimes, we never recover from the hurt we cause.

Sometimes, we never recover from the hurt caused to us.

We spend our lives in wonderment that others have behaved in such a disgusting manner.

We keep on wondering why they trample so on our feelings.

Disgust

An emotion of strong aversion, repugnance

Disgust is also known as dislike, hatred, offense,

repulsion, indignation.

Disgust is the feeling you get when you lift your shoe to see something brown and squishy on the sole.

Friends, families, and locals

the cousins?

There were the two girls ‘just around the corner’ and the two boys and a girl ‘in the next suburb’. That was our new bride’s side. On her groom’s side, there was a boy cousin who was his aunt’s son. Well, it seems family ties really do bind and the relationships with cousins either followed her into her marriage or raced up the aisle before her adding more young people to the mix. At this stage of the lives of the intertwined families, there were more similarities between all the cousins, and her brothers, than differences.

Being close in age and having grown up in similar circumstances, they had shared most of their young lives. The partners who came along, the partners who stayed, and the partners who settled down, and helped produce the next generation, generally had backgrounds of farming lives or small-town childhoods that gave them plenty of experiences in common. If there were any jarring notes in this ever-growing crew of close and distant relations, it was that several of the new partners didn’t gel quite as well as the extended family would wish. There was one husband who had spent all his growing up times in the biggest of cities. This background had kindly provided him with more knowledge on any subject than every other person he met, apparently. He shared this knowledge, and loud opinions, at every family gathering.

At barbeques, his knowledge of cooking meat was legendary, or so he told them. At family weddings, he gave his opinions on politics until even the uncles scurried back to the aunts with complaints of the young blowhard. At the saddest occasion in recent years, the family gathered to bury one of their own. He voiced his arguments for cremation and against burial as they stood between rows of family plots in the cemetery at the end of the valley. It was a local joke you were never regarded as a ‘local’ unless your grandmother was buried in that very same cemetery. He failed the ‘local’ test by two generations. After his opinions were whispered among the family who stood there that day with the sun beating down on grieving shoulders and the humidity rising from the newly dug grave-plot, he found his audience became more or less limited to his wife as family invitations dried up as quickly as a sun-shower on hot concrete.

And then there was the creep.

Of course, they never called him that to his face. But when two or three of the young wives, cousins, sisters or nieces, got to talking, they each had a tale to tell. He had been around the town forever and had a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man. Older than many of them, he was best mates with one of the far-side of town cousins. That was how he kept turning up at family gatherings, with an invitation or not, good manners didn’t matter to him.

He carried himself like a Lothario and looked a little like Errol Flynn, if you were squinting into a rear-view mirror in a speeding car. The girls laughed at the cream he used to hold his hair so firmly that palm trees would blow down in a cyclone before even a hair on his head moved. His signature move was to comb it back and into one of those duck tails you laughed at on Happy Days. Her mother called him a ‘bodgie’ but even those rule-breakers walking on the wild side had their standards, and that didn’t include him. He’d worked on his biceps so his short shirtsleeves were always tight. Maybe he was worried he would get sand kicked into his face at the beach if he didn’t look tough. Of course, he had a packet of Craven A cigarettes tucked into one folded-up sleeve.

His confidence was so strong he didn’t need a personality. He just oozed an opinion of himself that was so off-putting he could part the crowds of Saturday shoppers by simply walking down the main street of town. The girls sighed as he ed by, but not in delight. Week-ends were his time to really feel alive and he usually cruised up and down the main streets of town eyeing off the girls, music from his car bouncing off the glass windows of every store in town. Whenever he made his presence felt at a party or family gathering, the males tended to slide from their haven around the barbeque back to wives and girlfriends. Many a partner’s protective arm slid around a girlfriend’s waist even before he had made it to the fold-up chairs scattered in a messy circle around trestle tables and the barbeque. The tales about him were too numerous. Everyone had heard of the times his remarks had bordered on the provocative or he had stood, leering a little too drunkenly, lurching towards one of the young girls. His beer-soaked

breath had sprayed into one too many faces and he was resolutely placed on the outer.

He would never be family. He would never be a friend and he would never be invited back after the insults hurled at one reluctant hostess when he had been asked politely to leave a party. The males had shouldered in until they stood intimidatingly close, the night he told a family matron she couldn’t cook for nuts, was always stingy with the drinks and that he only turned up at her home (uninvited, ) because she had so many good-looking young girls in her family who were ripe for the picking.

That was the end of him.

But he shared his fame for upsetting the family with one of the more recent wives. She wasn’t quite in his class of outcast as she had actually married into family, she was a female, and she didn’t always set people’s teeth on edge with her behaviour. But it didn’t take long for the whispers to get out she couldn’t or wouldn’t cook and was ing shop-bought lamingtons off as her own whenever custom required a plate of food be brought to a family gathering.

She brought a hot chook from a local cafe and ed it off as her own by sliding it into a Corning Ware dish and carrying it proudly into a barbeque wrapped up in a clean tea towel. Her husband of a few months was seen lining up at the fish and chip shop every Friday night. They ate a counter meal at the pub on Sundays, and she was seen loading her trolley with baked beans, tinned spaghetti and, even, TV dinners. She was falling far short of society’s expectation of young wives, particularly as several recipe books had been proudly displayed among the gifts at her well-attended engagement party at the local bowls club.

Her most heinous crime was committed on the occasion of a Grandma’s

seventieth-birthday afternoon tea. Several dozen of the clan had crowded into the tiny cottage that had housed generations of hard-working men and their careworn wives. The latest of the couples who lived there had recently retired from a life of hard work, in the railway workshops and in the hospital kitchen. Together, they were getting to know each other again after years of busyness and being swamped in the struggle of child-raising. This Grandma and Grandad saw her seventieth birthday as an ideal way to show off to the clan their retirement projects of ionfruit vines, choko vines, a Queensland nut tree, grapefruit as big as footballs and chooks that clucked from sunup to sundown.

They were both as pleased as punch with their little cottage, the garden and Grandma’s baking and couldn’t wait to welcome the family to this rather special occasion. There were mums and dads, aunties, uncles, cousins by birth and marriage, a sprinkling of young men and women, as yet unwed, and the obligatory ragtag collection of kids and babies.

The long trestle table covered with a white sheet was set up in the backyard under the jacaranda tree. As guests poured in, they trooped the length of the yard to deposit the fruits of their baking on the table before seeking out the guest of honour to wish her happy birthday. Women gossiped and men talked under the tank-stand until family news and the news of the world had been ed on and mulled over.

A whisper going around the town was ed along but was stopped in its tracks by a soft-hearted matron. The subject of the gossip had picked up the plate of scones she had arrived with and was headed towards the birthday girl to offer her one. Those close enough to hear were a little taken aback as she insisted the birthday girl try one of her scones, made from her own mother’s family recipe. Mouths fell open, but not in anticipation of a scone, as the whisper had been about these very scones.

One of the aunts had witnessed them being purchased that morning at the Boy

Scouts’ cake stall in the main street. Hours later, here they were, being ed off as homemade, and from a family recipe. The instant hush over the gathering must have tipped off the young wife that her subterfuge was now out in the open. She fled, plate of scones still in hand, to the front yard. The cousin’s wife and her ‘home-baking’ were not missed at future family gatherings. But the cackles that rose in the backyard that afternoon certainly eclipsed those from the chookyard as the mums and aunts demolished one girl’s reputation as quickly as she had tried to build it. But as the new wife had giggled with the others, she felt more than a little embarrassed for the scorned girl. The aunts and mums had been disgusted by the audacity, trying to off someone else’s scones as her own. But, down deep, this new wife keenly ed her own struggles with cooking. The burnt whiff of shame from the patty cake incident way back in high school home-economics class had followed her for years. Cooking was an expectation in these towns, in these times.

Little girls in this area grew up standing on a chair at the kitchen table, tea-towel tied around their waists, mixing cakes, licking the wooden spoon. The smell of sugar, eggs and flour was strong in their little nostrils. The new wife had had little interest in cooking and baking growing up and had turned to her books instead. He mother hadn’t minded too much that her only daughter showed complete indifference to learning to cook. She had reconciled herself years ago to the realisation her daughter had interests outside the sphere of homemaking. So, from the new wife, there was a bit of understanding for the embarrassed young girl who had just fled in tears, a shared history.

Friendships and failures

So, she reached out to her. The girl had recently married her husband’s cousin, after all. They had been to the wedding, of course. It was soon after their own wedding and she was interested to see what others made of their ‘big day’. Both sides were off the land, the cousin was on a farm, quite close to her husband’s family’s, up the valley. The girl came from the north of town and had attended the same high school as she had, travelling down daily on the silver rail motor

and then by bus.

Several years apart in age, both girls had known each other by sight. But then everyone knew each other by sight back in those heady days of high school. She was a bit of a what was commonly rereferred to as a ‘conch’, a conscientious student. She had also been in plays and committees and on the infamous student council. With a background in tennis and swimming, she had met many of the other kids in the town, both older and younger than herself, and had kept up some of her early friendships to this day.

In fact, she and her husband were sitting with people she had known from school at the cousin’s wedding reception. Held at the local cricketers’ hall, it followed a fully blown service at the Catholic church. The happy couple sat at the head table. She was resplendent in a lace gown, from the big city down South, no less. He wore a tight-looking suit hired locally and seen at several previous weddings. Together they painted a picture of expectations. The wedding was everything the bride’s mother had wanted it to be. The young bride and groom’s choices had little place amongst the decorations and food that were grandly chosen by the new two mothers-in-law, acting in complete agreement.

In conversation with two friends from school, they learned a little more about the bride and shared some things about the groom. All agreed he could expect to be told what to do and the bride would be the one telling him. Among their champagne-bubble giggles floated quite a bit of truth, as you will see.

In the next few months, the newly-weds seemed to move in the same social circles. They bumped into each other on week-ends, at the beach, the movie theatre, and once, on a hike up the mountain range to the waterfall for a swim. So, in the end, shared history, a common lack of cooking ability, and family ties led to the empathy she felt about the incident at the family gathering with the bought scones.

That night, in the double bed, under the mosquito net, she told her husband how she was feeling. Mostly, there was a little worm of fear that grew inside her that whispered it could have been her, embarrassed and ashamed, and fielding the glances of disgust. He didn’t really understand how someone else’s problem could mean so much to her, but, in the ways of one learning to be a husband, he suggested she get in touch with his cousin’s wife.

She felt a bit of trepidation when she first reached out to the new bride. After all, they weren’t great mates at school and she and her husband were only at the wedding because the two men were cousins. But, in the valley, there was little need to stand on ceremony when it came to developing friendships. School ties were bound even more tightly here than they were in the big snobby private cityschools down south. If you had been to one of the tiny primary schools scattered through the cane fields, you were always going to be friends with the small number of people who were there at the same time. It’s hard to walk away from someone who had shared your vegemite sandwiches and given you a pastizzi when said sandwich fell in the dirt under the school building up on stilts among the proudly waving cane stalks.

If you were older, of course the people who farmed close by expected invitations to your house. Everyone took it for granted that neighbours could call on neighbours if help was needed with a harvest. A fractious baby was often soothed by a neighbour in the absence of one’s own mother. Neighbours could always be called upon to pick up something you needed, or had forgotten to pick up, from town.

In the valley, ties formed at high school were brought even closer. And both of them had already travelled many kilometres to bucks’ nights and hens’ nights, shower teas, and various other pre-wedding celebrations for friends they had carried close since school days, even if they now lived far apart from each other. Her hesitation to make the phone call would not be understood by any of the valley locals. Even though the cousin’s new bride had disappointed the family,

they would not let that stand in the way of a hand extending friendship. The phone call she made that day was to reach into a distant time, like the telephone wires carried on the stout poles marching up and down the valley. It would extend into the future in most unexpected ways.

At first, the phone calls were initiated by her. At least once every two or three weeks, she would pick up the handset to call across the kilometres to his cousin’s farmhouse. Her husband’s cousin was his aunt’s boy and their farm lay nestled in the foothills of the mountain range that rose majestically from the flat farmlands at the head of the valley. That farm was relatively small. It seemed to grow rocks as easily as it did sugar cane. His cousin had inherited the farm and its problems when his parents had retired early to town, spirits broken by years of hard work and bad financial advice. By contrast, the bride came from a farm to the north, nestled on fertile soil, close to a running creek which seemed to escape the water thieving power of even the driest years. Her family was prosperous and very popular, known for their generosity and hospitality. The harvesters who still cut cane by hand were always willing to work on her family’s farm. They knew her father was a fair boss. He paid well, and the cutters’ quarters were shaded by poinciana trees and bordered the creek. Life on her family’s farm had done little to prepare her for her new life at the head of the valley.

The new bride quickly developed a whine of disappointment in her voice. During the calls, she showed no reluctance in sharing tales of machinery breakdowns, cane lodged against other stalks by freak windstorms, difficulties with harvesting contractors and on and on in a wallow of unfulfilled dreams and wifely disappointments.

The day after the cousin’s new bride lost her dog, she made a phone call herself, for the first time. With tears choking her voice, she hiccoughed with grief as she told of her anger and sadness. The day before, with her husband out on his tractor spraying weeds, she had looked for her dog before retreating inside. With the cousin out working, his new bride’s favourite way to idle away time was to flick through pages of fan magazines in the cool of the house through the long,

still afternoon. She had sent her husband off with a packet of shop-bought biscuits and a Thermos full of tea, so she had no plans to be disturbed until she raided the pantry for a tin of baked beans to warm up and serve on toast for tea.

The dog in question was more of a puppy really. Her sisters had given it to her as a wedding present. She absolutely adored it. It was tiny, fluffy. Black and white random splotches splattered it from its ears to its tail. The pup was such a comfort. She would allow it to rest on her feet when she curled up on the couch.

The warmness of its tiny body helped to soothe away the slights and letdowns of everyday life. She had even sneaked the pup into the double bed with her. But she always made sure to pop it down under the bed when she heard her husband. After switching on the pump to irrigate the cane, he always stomped loudly up the stairs in the small hours of the night to scare away snakes. If he felt a warm spot in the bed when he was able at last to get some sleep, he said nothing.

Domestic peace was too fragile to smash with an accusation. Besides, he had his suspicions about the cause of the warmth. Despite protesting the gift was quite useless and would never be any good at chasing rats in the tractor shed, deep down he loved the dog too.

The day before she had made this grief-stricken phone call, the pup was nowhere to be found when she went looking for its company. She ferreted around among the spider wrapped beams under the house and peered behind the mango tree dripping with blossom. She even looked in the doghouse her husband had insisted on building. The pup avoided it and she had rationalised it needed to be cossetted by her while it was still growing. After all, it was never going to be the big farm dog her husband would have preferred.

She ventured outside the wire fence that bordered the house yard and down the

rutted car tracks. Calling desperately, she even stepped into the farm shed and peered hopefully among the tractors and oil drums, calling constantly. Aware of the carpet snake that sometimes ventured in to the shed to help reduce the rat population, she tried to calculate whether the snake was large enough, or the pup small enough, to be the conclusion to her fears. Not seeing any evidence to concrete that fear, she retired upstairs and waited for her husband’s return.

He spent hours after tea that night searching. Searching everywhere a tiny pup might hide in fear. Searching everywhere a wild kid from town out hooning on a motorbike may have accidentally hit the tiny scrap of black and white. Searching everywhere a neighbour’s tilly may have reversed too quickly down the track and dispatched the little pup. His fears grew bigger as the night grew darker and there was still no sign. Shaking his head, he couldn’t meet her pleading eyes. He couldn’t trust himself to speak to soothe her with reassurances the pup would come home in the morning.

His memory was too tormented by the stories being told at the bar in the local hotel. He’d popped in for a cold pot of beer last week-end, just in time to hear the words now wrapped so tightly around his heart that he was scared to speak, even to his terrified wife. He felt little pieces of his heart had broken off and would surely betray his fears by tumbling out from his mouth if he spoke.

She sat in the chair nursing her hopes the pup would return. He went straight to bed and dreamed all night long of dingoes. Living close to the foothills, as many locals did, they were familiar with the stealthy attacks by the wiry dogs that used the cover of darkness to sneak down through the bush to the bottom of the mountain range.

The farmers had told s of recent attacks and the livestock they had lost. Chickens in pens were fair game for the night-time poachers and household pets had also disappeared. The farmers were used to the harshness of nature and spared few details in their talk of the savagery of the dingo attacks. He

shuddered in his sleep as his imagination peppered his dreams with howls and cries as the dingoes crept silently down from the foothills and onto the farms.

He woke next morning and slipped quietly from the bed, trying hard not to disturb even a molecule of the air in the room. Still in his pyjamas, he crept down the stairs and to a locked cupboard in the shed. Slipping the key into the lock and easing the shotgun from its rack, he found the box of shells and loaded the gun. Shouldering a shovel, he headed for the foothills. He needed, above all things, to find the pup before she did.

He found the pup second.

The dingo had found it first.

There was nothing to do except dig a shallow grave and mourn the tiny pup. His thoughts were clouded with disgust for the animal that had killed for enjoyment and not even to sate its hunger. The walk back to the farmhouse seemed even longer than ever as the knowledge of the job still ahead of him dragged at his heels at each step.

She was sitting at the kitchen table. The only sounds were the ticking of the wedding present kitchen clock and the desultory tinkle as her teaspoon hit the side of the teacup as she stirred and stirred. Not even the mindless chatter of the radio could cut through the thick anticipation of grief sitting like humidity in the air of the kitchen. Her eyes finally met his. He shook his head. In that moment, they felt loss but also, a common understanding grew between them. He had grown into the role of the protector, the person who does the difficult jobs. She was grateful she had been spared some of the shock by not finding the pup’s body. She was free to just sink down into her grief. But being young, it was grief she needed to share. In this way, when others knew about her loss, it would

become real.

Her mother was first to hear the news, then her sisters. Then, of course, she needed to talk to her husband’s cousin’s wife who would surely want to hear the sad story. She sobbed and hiccoughed and wrung the sad little story out like a wet handkerchief until every single drop of grief had dripped down the telephone line. In the end, the loss of her pup had elements of a peculiar social triumph for her. People were sympathetic. The stories in the street that week were about the young bride at the end of the valley who had lost her pup to one of those dreadful dingoes.

How sad. Poor girl. How scary. What a thing to happen to a newlywed.

And so, she became a little less of a social pariah. It is amazing how a surge of sympathy can change one person’s opinion of another. It is certain that empathy can bring us closer. There was an almost palpable need to cheer up the end of the valley cousins. They would surely appreciate an invitation to come to tea. Of course, the sad cousins did appreciate the friendly invite. It was an unqualified success with the two less than successful cooks happy to eat sausages with mashed potato and pumpkin and peas fresh from the kitchen garden. The cousins shared beer and boasts on the verandah.

That first invitation started a tradition of fortnightly teas at one farmhouse or the other. The tea was always simple and sometimes quite late as teatimes were dictated by the demands of the land. But as time ed in a blur of seasons and harvests, the bond between the four of them grew, if not closer, then it certainly became more comfortable. The sight of the four of them with feet up on the verandah railing on any given week-end was as much a part of the scenery as flocks of galahs flying in from the west.

But there was another friendship growing on the favoured farm closer towards town. The long hours spent in the farmhouse were a treasure she kept to herself. Only a girl who had grown up in a small house cluttered with three older brothers could appreciate the soft quietness of a farm house. She had boarded briefly in the large town for her failed attempt at college, but those days had been steeped in homesickness rather than in appreciation of quiet solitude. At last, she had the luxury of time spent as a newlywed. This time was divided by oceans of peace and quiet and independence. It was lulling her into a sense of deserved stability, of being home.

This is probably an appropriate time to tell you where this home of her heart could be found. When they married, and after the honeymoon of blissful promise, they picked up the wedding gifts and her trousseau from her parents’ house in town. In her little pink and white car, they turned westward and drove into a fertile valley divided neatly by the fences and headlands of cane farms and bisected by a fast flowing, blue river on its way to the ocean.

They drove for almost an hour before turning into a gateway with huge wooden upright posts topped by iron wheels that were long ago retrieved from a derailed sugarcane bin. Bumping down the track, the farmhouse came into view. It wasn’t their house of course. Her husband tooted the horn to let his parents know they were ing, and the car continued on down a track that grew more narrow and closer to a paddock of towering sugar cane. He should have stopped at the first house, of course, but the thrill of taking his bride to their new home was greater than even the thought of seeing his parents after his first absence from them.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was in reality only three minutes driving, they rounded the edge of the paddock and were greeted by the sight of a newly painted, high set house, sitting proudly on its stilts. The corrugated iron roof was taller than the highest cane-stalks and an open verandah around three sides held promise of coolness and shade. The paint was a little unexpected as it had been sitting fairly sadly in its old coat when they last saw it. Obviously, his parents had taken advantage of their honeymoon absence to tart the old house up a bit.

An old house, it certainly was. Apparently, years back, his parents and father’s brother had tly inherited the farm. They decided to work it in tandem, sharing everything. They built two houses, far enough apart for privacy, close enough together for family. Then a world war intervened. The uncle marched off to fight for his king and country with adventure in his heart. Father stayed home to run the t protected industry farms with his fallen arches firmly on the pedals of the tractor. After two years overseas, the uncle had returned but found he didn’t fit well into his civilian clothes and the demands of farming were reminding him too much of the regimentation he had wished to leave behind when he left the army. He stuck it out on his farm for a while in appreciation of how the farm had been cared for while he was overseas. Months ed. Then he walked over to his brother’s verandah one night and changed the course of the family’s history. He had no wife, no children and no wish to spend the rest of his life on the farm. His future didn’t lie in growing the long stalks of cane for the sweet juice within.

That night, the decision was made allowing uncle to give his share of the farm to the brother who had cared for it for so long. Both farms would become one large concern for the future to nurture and to keep in his family. In return, uncle would move to a beach hamlet half an hour’s drive from the farm. If this returned soldier could be helped to establish himself in a little shack, he could withdraw from daily life and soothe his soul near the idyllic beach. The initial shock was great. After all, this was the family farm and the departed parents had dictated their wishes it be tly run by the two brothers.

But both men understood each other very well. There was no way they could stand to see each other suffer in future and so agreement was reached quickly on the verandah in the humid night to a chorus of fruit bats screeching as they raided the mango tree for its ripening fruit. As the dark cloud of screeching bats rose into the sky to find other trees to raid, the brothers sealed the agreement with a handshake.

For a while, the farmer let the unwanted farmhouse to itinerant workers. When it was empty, the kids played in it, running, shouting down the long central hallway. When they grew older and had other interests, the spiders, a few field mice and the occasional possum were the only occupants. The newlywed’s brothers were much older than he as his arrival had come as a surprise later in life to his parents. These growing boys had both started their working lives on the family farm and continued there for years as

their father was working much too hard and could not manage on his own.

As soon as it was possible without upsetting the family applecart, both boys decided to leave the farm and look for work in more exciting places. The youngest son was old enough to help their father now. With the boys and their wives gone, there was deep peace on the farm. The father and youngest son worked well together. He still lived in his childhood bedroom until his future was changed by the girl from town. In the hush of the paddocks of growing cane, the second farmhouse stood quietly, having never reached its potential as a home. The day their youngest son announced his engagement, the parents whispered quietly in their bedroom. The next day, they beamed proudly as they asked their son if he and his wife-to-be would like to live in what they still called the ‘Uncle’s house’ after their wedding. That was an offer no young couple could easily refuse. Not only the opportunity to save some money but the chance to live close to his work as he would continue helping his father made the offer attractive to them both.

That is how he stayed home on the farm and she moved up the valley to the home of her heart.

The time she spent alone in the house was not wasted. Like any newlywed homemaker, she added touches to make it her own. Her brand-new electric Singer sewing machine hummed its way along the hems of metres of curtains to flutter and fly at the casement windows. Wedding gifts were proudly arranged on

the buffet in the corner. Tupperware containers jostled for space in the cupboards. Books marched along planks ed by concrete bricks until they could afford a bookshelf.

It was a knock at the door of her new home that heralded her first meeting with her neighbour from the closest farm.

It was a knock which announced the beginning of a truly enduring friendship. Over the following years and months, this knock would signal a chance to down tools, put the kettle on, and retire to the cool of the verandah for a natter and a gossip. To see them sitting there, you would wonder what on earth could make these two into the best of friends. There were several decades between them in age. The new bride had a face full of wonder and hope for the future and the woman next door showed her life’s journey in every line creasing her face.

In the beginning they were just neighbours. For that first visit, the woman next door had walked down a short track, crossed a creek on steppingstones, pushed through banana trees and found herself on the front steps of the second farm house. After the initial surprise wore off, the new bride was very grateful the woman next door had popped over.

Truth be told, the quietness was starting to grate on her nerves. She knew she was always welcome at his parents’ house but the first time she had walked up the track, his mother was not home. When she mentioned this to him at teatime, he threw his head back and laughed. According to him, the parish committees would not exist, the elderly would not be visited, the young mothers would not know what to do, if it weren’t for his mother. If she was at home, you’d find her tending her vegetables or the chooks, picking fruit, making jam.

By the time he started describing his mother’s new ion for sewing clothes

for orphans, her eyes had glazed over. So that was that. She wouldn’t find company down that particular track. As a matter of fact, she decided she would only venture to the parents’ house if her husband was in tow. She needed him to shield her from the glare of his mother’s achievements. He had certainly not told her about this before they married. It was a wonder the woman found time to sleep.

With this in the background, visits from the woman next door were very welcome. If the surface of the friendship was scratched, it would show that not only were they neighbours, but they were both a little lonely. The woman next door would not it to anyone that she missed her children so terribly now they were grown and gone. The new bride was not meant to be a replacement for them, but she was a wonderful distraction.

So, after the acceptance by each other of the warm overtures of friendship, they took it in turns to wander through the bananas and the stream to each other’s house at least twice each week. The woman next door took to sharing cooking tips and recipes. She was careful and discreet enough to wait a little while to do this. After finding yet another stew blackening a pot on the stove, she made her first offer. Next visit, she brought the fixings for a stew and prepared it step by step in the bride’s kitchen. In return, the new bride helped with pruning her bougainvillea creeper that was slowly swallowing the chook run. She took cuttings for the neighbour to plant in her garden and even pushed the mower around the house yard when the neighbouring farmer was laid up in bed with a bad back.

Over the years, the friendship grew and even followed them up the stairs of the main house. The move to the main house was totally unexpected. His parents had walked up the front stairs of the second house one evening in Autumn as the crisp breezes stirred the dying leaves of the frangipani tree and dropped them to the ground below. For the second time in his life, they surprised their son with an announcement.

It hadn’t escaped the young couple’s notice that his parents had been taking trips to town more frequently of late. That night the parents told them they had been visiting the family doctor who had ordered tests and a visit to the specialist. The news was not the worst, but it could turn out that way if the father did not take a bit more care of his health. The years of working long, hard hours had been compounded by the disappointments of a life on the land with falling sugar prices and increasingly indifferent seasons. The cyclone that blew in behind the range last year had flooded all the creeks leading to the river and taken several paddocks of good growing land in the rush of water. They didn’t think they could continue to farm through such hardships and besides, his father had reached the age where townies retire from work.

The farm was to be their youngest son’s gift for the taking.

The parents would move as soon as possible. They had scoped out a new-fangled retirement village concept. The sellers were spruiking little homes to buy on their own piece of land where there would be room to grow flowers and vegetables and people to help with the maintenance. His mother was very taken by the thought that there would be new friends living close enough for a chat and a gossip. His father was just taken by the thought of living an easier life. It seemed the two older brothers were not playing any part in this consideration. They had both made decisions removing them from the farm’s future. Neither had shown regret or remorse since they had moved away.

The main house was also the youngest son’s gift for the taking.

This news was such a shock to both of them that there was no desire to sleep in the double bed that night. They talked into the wee small hours and on past dawn. The second farmhouse had been their only home for the first five years of marriage. Now there was an offer to leave it behind and move just a short distance, but a huge step in of solid comfort and respectability. It was just three minutes’ drive in the tilly down the dusty farm track to a much grander

house. His mother’s level of domestic skills had ensured the main house gleamed from ceiling to floor in every room. Every labour-saving device and every modern fitting could be found there.

It was far beyond any shared dreams of the future that had ever been whispered in the double bed. There was no need for argument or prolonged discussion. This was the offer that would set them up for a grand future. With this opportunity, he no longer would see the future as a worker. He would be the farmer. She would be the farmer’s wife. The debt owing on the farm was so small, just a few fine growing seasons would see them good. The farm would be owned outright. Still aged in their twenties, a gift like this was like winning first prize in the Golden Casket art union.

Of course, they would continue to care for the uncle living contentedly in his beach shack. The word of his parents’ decision spread like a fire through the cane fields of the valley. By the time she popped into the post office at the nearest town only a day after his parents’ announcement, she was besieged by locals wanting to know if the news they had heard was true. Belatedly she realised she needed to let her parents know the news before it had reached the big town. She trembled as she pushed the coins into the receptacle of the public phone box but the joy in her mother’s voice soon soothed her.

‘Do the cousins know?’

Many coins later, she had discharged her duty to inform her family of her good fortune and had started on her husband’s relatives. If only she had thought of letting everyone know the news earlier, she could have been sitting in her own lounge room when she phoned her husband’s cousin. Even over the phone line, in the very public telephone box, the emotion in the cousin’s wife’s voice was cuttingly obvious. The phone line to the stony farm further up the valley vibrated with suppressed rage.

‘Well. We won’t be coming to tea anymore. You’ll be too grand for the likes of us.’

If she had not been so taken aback by the jealous and spiteful tones, she would have pointed out the cousin himself had been blessed when he had taken over his own parents’ farm years ago. They had also moved into the big town for reasons of health and misfortune. Luckily though, she didn’t mention this, as thoughts of a comparison between the farms flooded into her brain. They could not have been more different and both women realised the fact.

It took seconds to create the rift and more than a few years to even begin to repair it. It would seem a cane toad never loses its bumps and the same nasty streak that had led the cousin’s wife to lie about her cooking all those years ago seemed to have resurfaced. The cousin and his wife didn’t accept the invitation to locals and neighbours at the housewarming barbeque several weeks later.

They weren’t missed.

The tales were creeping around the district and had already filtered back to the fortunate couple. No-one could say for sure the tales had started with the cousin or with his wife, but the accusations were cruel. They heard it said that they had cheated the uncle out of his share of the farm. Most people didn’t realise he had given that away when he retreated to the beach shack. They heard they had stopped the brothers from coming back for their share. Laughable really when the brothers were so busy shaking the dust from the farm off their boots, they didn’t wave or glance backwards as they left years before.

The most hurtful was that the young couple had bullied and cheated the parents

out of the farm because they had set their sights high when they first married.

The father had been very private with the news of his declining health so the move did indeed come as a shock to many. It had been a major shock to the young couple too, so that rumour was certainly sinking in the creek. It was a testing time for them both. Fortunately, the hard work involved in finding ways to manage the farm single-handedly and the hard work in packing up and moving to the main house strained their muscles and occupied their thoughts.

The edge had been taken off their excitement by the cousins’ envy. They retreated into everyday life and didn’t really miss the Friday afternoon catch-ups. Tongues seemed to wag in their favour with neighbours and friends readily accepting their good fortune. Soon the scrutiny of the gossipers found more salacious news and moved on to spreading other gossip far and wide. In the end, it was a baby who healed the rift. If only for a short time.

Babies and bitterness

Through the six years of their marriage, the routines of life and its occasional surprises, had carried them from day to day, week to week, year to year. Early on in their relationship, they had discussed how wonderful it would be to have a family one day. A little boy for him and a girl for her. That would make their lives complete.

When that particular stork did not visit the farm, they were not too concerned. They were both still young and healthy and happy. Apart from his unmarried uncle, both sides of the family had been blessed with adequate or generous numbers of offspring depending on who was doing the counting of heads.

As the years ed, they did sometimes discuss why no little feet had arrived in their lives to patter along the broad verandahs and the dusty furrows. But life was full, their hearts were full and that was one worry they would not breathe life into. Besides, his cousin from up the valley and his wife hadn’t started their family yet either.

They weren’t the only losers in the race to perpetuate humanity.

All in all, it was a little bit unexpected when, given their frame of mind, her morning coffee was no longer a delight. The bathroom dashes in the morning could not be explained away by the Chinese food picked up from the Takeaway down the valley. The doctor confirmed suspicions. His congratulatory smile was echoed on the faces of the two most surprised and overwhelmed young parentsto-be in the whole of town that day.

Her life became a nesting rush of sewing in the morning, reading pregnancy books all afternoon, and knitting at night for at least a half hour before she nodded off to sleep in front of the latest Married with Children episode on the television. His life did not change at all. Until several months later, that is.

She had kept her grin from the doctor’s surgery on her face during the following months. Becoming a mother just felt so right to her. Everything had settled down in the pregnancy, apart from being unable to stomach the thought of cooking meat for her husband’s tea. Almost the only clues their family was about to increase would be the baby’s room that had been converted from the guest bedroom and her slowly expanding figure.

All was well with all.

Her mother and brothers were fussing as they should, his parents and brothers were happy for them and the cousins up the valley had stayed away simply sulking. In a moment of deep contemplation, she had wondered whether her news had hit deeply at the cousins. She wasn’t sure if they weren’t ready for a family or had tried and failed. Either way, she hoped her news did not hurt them.

Baby arrived in a bit of a hurry. The drive into the big town was an agonising trip in many ways as she didn’t want to deliver her baby by the roadside. The nice, clean sheets on the hospital bed had figured largely in her daydreams. She had always imagined herself as a new mother leaning against a pile of pillows surrounded by iring family and bunches of flowers; her face wreathed in smiles, her hair curled sweetly on the collar of a delightful negligee. The only thing missing was a row of bluebirds singing.

Believe it or not, that is exactly how it turned out.

But only for a short while.

All too soon she was back at the farm. The edges of the wonderful dream of the perfect baby had started to recede as she walked up the front steps behind her husband as he carried the precious bundle. The rest of the dream disappeared in a puff of disbelief as her husband left her surrounded by the flowers and gifts they had been given at the hospital and returned to his work on the farm.

As if to sense the weight of expectations placed on her by its mother, the baby opened her tiny mouth and produced a mewling wail that would not stop for more than minutes at a time for the next few months. Or so it felt to the newest mother in the valley, surrounded by love, totally alone, and absolutely terrified by her lack of knowledge.

Several weeks of broken sleep, endless walks up and down the verandah and wearing a nightie all day ed. After five nights in a row of baked beans for tea, she woke one morning to feel the new parent despair lifting like the winter fog that rolled down the valley several times a year. One moment all looked murky and misty. The next minute the sun shone in a defiant ‘I told you so. It’s a beautiful day’.

And so it was.

Her energy returned in fits and starts. Her confidence lifted and her mood improved. The house was clean again. There was a routine to the day for her and for baby. Well, not every day. She ventured down the stairs and into the paddocks of the farm. She drove to the nearby town and eventually into big town with her baby girl in a new-fangled baby capsule on the back seat. Life as a mother was almost everything that she had dreamed it would be. It didn’t take much to change that dream.

It started on the day the cousins from up the valley arrived to heal the rift. It was now several years since there had been the unpleasant stories about how they came to be given the farm. In all that time, they had not met these cousins face to face. But babies have been known to change the course of history and this baby certainly changed the family history.

Early that evening, the little family of three sat out on the verandah. Off in the distance, a neighbouring farmer was burning his cane. As a townie, the beauty of the leaping flames as they spread through the paddocks then died down so quickly, never failed to delight her. It seemed so contrary to burn the crop but she understood the reasons for reducing the weeds and flushing out the vermin. When her husband burned his paddocks that were ready to be harvested, she took dozens of photos of the fierce flames. Some of them were hanging proudly

in frames on the walls of the lounge.

The baby snoozed. Little audible puffs of air every so often came from her mouth. Both parents viewed this remarkable achievement and wondered if other babies were as clever or looked so cute while they slept. At the sound of an approaching car, they dragged their eyes from the bassinette in time to see the cousins’ car pull up on the driveway.

They were still musing about the purpose of this visit as the couple called out and walked up stairs. Their silhouettes were as black as the cane ash that fell from the rapidly darkening sky. But they brushed the ‘snow’ from their shoulders and laughed as they held out a gift for the baby as if no more than days had ed since they had been together.

Inside, with the gift opened and the tiny clothes held up for iration against the baby, they started to sink back into the easy comfort of their former relationship. The parents’ old clock on the wall soon ticked away two hours. A row of empty stubbies marched along the side of the kitchen table. Baby was asleep in her own room and some standards of conduct were starting to slip with the age of time and consumption of beer.

A few comments caused raised eyebrows from the hosts. A few loose words spilled out to sour the atmosphere. When the husband asked if the cousins could see themselves with a little family soon, the truce between the four shattered into a thousand sharp pieces. Rearing to his feet the cousin spat words like watermelon seeds. Apparently, the hosts should not have been so cruel as to throw their fertility in the face of his wife. With rants and shouts and eventually tears, the story was told.

Since the night of their wedding, the pair had tried hopefully and then

desperately to start a family. Eventually, tests had shown she was as barren as their rocky farm. The bitterness had surfaced when they saw the easy inheritance of the highly productive cane farm, they were visiting that night. Tempers had cooled with the age of several years. Now, the arrival of the new baby had ignited a flame of jealousy that could not be ignored. They had attempted to let the baby heal the rift and had come for a peaceful visit in the spirit of congratulation.

The smell of failure sat on the night air. The harsh words trailed behind them as they stomped down the stairs and were only cut off by the slamming of the car doors in unison. Fired by the belief that the fortunate cousins had only had a baby because they couldn’t, their indignation followed them speeding down the drive. Their loud departure woke the baby. She cried out in fear. This rift was even deeper than it had been before. As both couples saw no fault on their side, there was no ground for reconciliation.

One couple put down even deeper roots on their farm. The other couple severed their ties to the land. They loaded some essentials into a brand-new caravan and the six-cylinder sedan they bought to pull the van and towed their lives away from the valley. A backwards glance would have seen the SOLD sticker plastered across the ‘For Sale’ sign at the farm gate but neither of them had any desire to look back.

They left the district. They left their former lives. First heading to the big town, they then turned their sights southwards. Over the next few years, the tales filtered back up the valley that the cousins who departed had been seen picking melons, picking grapes, forever on the move. To those who had not moved on, these tales seemed to tell of souls seeking to be soothed. Constantly moving on was their way to escape the past and ignore their desire for friends and a family of their own.

With all this sad history, it was a great surprise one afternoon when a car and

caravan trailed dust up the drive between the royal palms to the main farmhouse. She walked out to greet her visitors with a toddler clinging to one leg and the newest baby, a boy, tucked under her arm, asleep in his bunny rug. When she recognised who it was, her first impulse was to head back inside. Too late. They had already spotted her and tooted the horn in greeting. She sat in the squatter’s chair. Her oldest child climbed up to sit on the outstretched legs of the chair while she sank back against the canvas struggling to compose herself. To her, it felt as though something had started relentlessly picking at an old scar, a wound long healed. It was not in her nature to be afraid, so she plastered a smile on her face and mustered up a greeting of surprised pleasantries.

From experience, she knew enough to let these cousins drive the conversation. Their tales swelled and droned through the long afternoon. The baby woke. The toddler went to sleep. Eventually her husband came home for a smoko break. After recovering from his initial amazement, he morphed into a genial host. As the long stories of the huge amounts of money earned and fabulous scenery and good fortune finally wound down, the atmosphere felt lighter than it had for many years.

Time apart was giving them all gentle bandages to wind over their wounded pride.

It was a totally unexpected turn of events but not totally unwelcome to all four adults. The cousins were invited to park their caravan under the mango tree and hook the van up to the house electricity. They stayed a month the first time. The women spent their days in the lounge and kitchen. The evenings were spent with the men on the verandah while the children slept inside. The men were happy to work the long days in each other’s company at a such a busy time of the year. Being together in the evenings became a routine that was comfortable and easy. The conversations ambled to and fro while the frogs sang deep songs of the wet season to come.

This first visit established a pattern that was to extend for over a decade. The cousins would return to the valley at least once a year and park their van on the farm. It wasn’t always at the same time of year but the visit was always unannounced. On each visit, they were friendly and helpful. Their tales from their travels and work elsewhere became less boastful over the years, and spite was no longer present in any of the gossip they relayed.

Bad blood runs forever

On one more occasion the ghost of past emotions slipped with malicious intent into the room with all four of them. That was after ten years or so of the annual northward treks by the wandering cousins who had left the valley life behind them as they escaped their tortured imaginations. It was undeniably a time that would not be chronicled in the annals of the family.

Life on the farm was mired in the routine of the seasons. It was measured by the days the children spent at school, punctuated by all too brief week-ends. She was feeling her aloneness and often sat in silence just wondering. How else could her life have been lived? If it wasn’t for Saint Friday, there were some weeks she felt she would disappear into the walls of the house and no-one would notice she was gone. To her, the one small excitement in life seemed to be when she went all the way to big town with her husband on that most sainted day of the week. If it wasn’t for this day and the promise it held, she would surely become covered in mould by sitting so still. That was just a slight exaggeration.

But anyone could see she had sunk so deeply into a rut of housewifehood that the next car up the drive would run over her and bury her forever on the farm. As though by her morose imaginings, she had somehow made a car

appear, she heard a noise from the drive. Someone was coming to the farmhouse.

Of course, it was the cousins.

Not so much the ‘dreaded’ cousins now, after all this time. As a matter of fact, the way her life had been treating her made them very welcome cousins. Rousing herself, she smoothed down her hair and rushed to the top of the steps. In the recesses of her brain, she hurriedly worked out what she could give them for afternoon tea. She hadn’t been to the shops and couldn’t be bothered baking, after all her efforts to provide so often for the school tuckshop. So, SAO biscuits with tomato and cheese would have to do.

At least she could settle them in the recently renamed sunroom on the beautiful cane suite. After sensing her mood and her reaction to the cane suite on one of their last trips to big town, her husband had surprised her by buying it. It was the furniture of her dreams and she took every opportunity to arrange herself on the chairs with the sunny yellow cushions, for hours at a time.

Somehow the cousin’s wife managed to suck all the joy out of the bright little room with the frivolous furniture from the instant she lay eyes on it. Her first snide remark implied some people seemed to have plenty of money to spend. Her second remark cut straight to the heart of her source of envy; she wondered how people could buy such things with only one worker in the family.

But there was a determination in this farmer’s wife not to have any negativity associated with this gift that meant so much to her. She blinked back tears and served SAO biscuits, without tomato. The three of them chatted idly until her husband came home. The freeloading cousins stayed for a much shorter visit that year even though no harsh words were exchanged. There was a little hard part in the heart of the farmer’s wife shaped just like a certain piece of furniture and an unwillingness to totally forgive a sharp tongue’s damage.

The cousins didn’t turn up the next year. No loss. They came the following year, hard on the heels of the news that the uncle had ed away. All and sundry knew he had left the beach shack to the farmer’s wife. This time the cousins played a different tack. They flattered and cajoled and played a devastatingly long game. Most had forgotten the uncle who had died was uncle by marriage to the cousin as well. His mother and the farmer’s mother were sisters. In the eyes of the cousin and his wife, this amounted to a high degree of family entitlement.

When the cousins had first heard the uncle had died, the news barely caused a moment’s sadness to them both.

But, when they heard of the beach shack being left to the farmer’s wife, the jealousy grew and grew.

‘She was not even a blood relative.’

They stoked each other’s indignation until the spite and fury had a life of its own. In the flaming fire of feelings, missing out on what should have been rightfully theirs, all of it, a plan was formulated. They needed to rekindle the quartet. This was the first step. They were back together on the farm. Becoming close again, they offered to help ‘tidy up’ the beach shack. With the offer gratefully received, the four adults, with kids in tow, set off for the beach hamlet.

It had been a dozen or more years since the cousins had last been there. Visiting uncle had never been important to them. The hamlet had grown. Prosperous farmers had built more imposing houses with an eye to retirement there to indulge in idle days of fishing and crabbing. There was a general store, a bowls club, a post office, and a large caravan park. The sea still shone from wave crests

rimmed with diamonds. The sand burned bare feet. The air was filled with the sounds of people enjoying life.

Just as the farmer’s wife had done more than twenty years previously, the cousins fell in love. Their love was rooted in envy and fertilised by jealousy. They wanted this little piece of paradise so badly you could almost believe they could have killed to make it theirs. However, they were more circumspect than that.

So, that as week-ends rolled around, the cousins pitched in and helped with repairs to the shack. As they all hammered the sagging eaves, swept sand from the doorway, and weeded around the hibiscus bushes, they flattered the owners about what a gem of a retreat the shack would be for the little family. They even sweet talked the neighbours into sharing a feed of fish with them. The place was simply idyllic and totally at odds with the dark thoughts growing hour by hour within the hearts of the visitors. The smiles and chatter masked true feelings so well, the farmer and his family believed all was well between them.

This new pattern continued through the next annual visit. Time spent at the beach was just the antidote for the hard, physical work on the farm and the grind of child-rearing. Shoulders relaxed as the cars approached the hamlet and cares seemed to wash away in the tropical sunshine or torrential downpours. Whatever the weather, there was fun to be had at the beach. The kids simply loved the shack and the bunkbeds, and the long nights playing card games. Each day the kids both disappeared for hours on end with friends old and new.

The third year after the beach shack had changed hands seemed a little different when the cousins arrived for their annual visit. Both seemed a little on edge, a little less reluctant to chat and more reluctant to help around the house and farm. There seemed to be an invisible gulf opening between the two couples. Of course, the host couple was totally unaware the visiting couple had spent the past two years formulating and fine-tuning a plan. This plan was designed to change

the course of fate regarding what they saw as a wrongful inheritance. The beach shack would be theirs if all proceeded according to their plan.

When the usual trek to the beach was suggested, the cousins said they would tow their caravan to the beach with them. They had thought they could hook the van to the house power and sleep in it to give the family more room inside the shack. Besides, the caravan was airconditioned and the shack could be overpoweringly warm on still, humid nights that kept sleep at bay.

They also wanted to move on after the beach to visit the wife’s parents who were still farming north of the big town. It seemed like a great plan. A plan that would benefit everyone.

Especially the scheming cousins.

When the beachside break was over, the family packed up ready to head home. The cousins waved them off and swung into action. They brought a toolkit out of the van and changed the lock on the front door of the shack. The windows that had never needed to be locked in the safety of the hamlet, now sported big silver catches when closed from the inside. While he started the engine of their car, she planted a kiss on the front door and gave it a proprietorial pat. They headed back to the highway and turned north. When they had reached her parents’ farm, she used their phone to ring the family and thank them for their hospitality.

They would stay with her parents for a few weeks, she stated. But after tea with her parents, they retraced their steps to the beach and set themselves up for the next part of their plan. Boldly, they moved into the shack and propped a For Sale sign on the front of the van.

With a bit of luck, the two at home on the farm would think the cousins were still at her parents’ place. With more luck, they would sell the caravan and draw very little attention to the fact that someone was living permanently in the beach shack. The most precarious part of the plan was very dependent on what the cousins knew of the family on the farm. In all their years and all of their dealings the two on the farm had maintained a down to earth honesty. They both oozed integrity and lived by the tenets of good behaviour and doing what is right. Not making a fuss was part of their everyday lives. This understanding was the delicate part of the plan that had been nursed along for three long agonising years. With bitterness and envy jostling for prominence in their hearts, the cousins were relying on the farm to keep the family busy for a couple of weeks at least. By the time they visited again, the cousins were hoping that shame and embarrassment at being outwitted by their own kith and kin would triumph. Somehow, with their addled sense of justice, to the cousins, their plan made perfect sense. The farmers would come to the beach and find the shack locked up tight. Not even considering this circumstance had been brought about by the cousins, they would try peeking in windows and talking to the neighbours. When realisation dawned, surely a major feeling of embarrassment would overcome them and they would not want to cause a scene in public. Maybe they would ring her parents’ farm only to be told the cousins had not been there for some considerable time.

What to do?

About this time, the cousins would arrive back at the beach shack from their day at the creek setting crab pots. The farmers would look bewildered. The cousins would produce the key and start to open the door. They would start to invite them in but stop and state the shack now belonged to them. After all, they had been living it for ages. The locals would all nod at them. They would be part of the hamlet.

By this time, according to their scheme, the farmer’s wife would be sobbing. Too ashamed to fight publicly, her family would pile back into their car and return to

the farm. The grand plan pretty much ended there. The arrogance and spite of the cousins was so strong they truly believed this imagined skirmish would be a battle that handed them the spoils they desired.

As it happened, it wasn’t a skirmish, and it wasn’t a battle. There was no blood spilt on the golden sand. Instead, the woman next door was at the post office the day after the cousins opened the front door of the shack with their illegal key and squatted. Her surprise, as she bumped into the farmer’s wife, was obvious. Surely, the family was still at the beach. Why, just that morning her sister who had retired to the hamlet had mentioned she had seen a For Sale sign on the cousin’s caravan parked right outside the shack. Whatever was going on?

Well, what went on right then was that the farmer’s wife broke the speed limit for the first time in her life. Arriving home in record time, she used the rusty bicycle in the farm shed to ride down the headlands to the far paddock where her husband was ploughing perfect drills for planting cane. The two of them stood in the fertile soil, perplexed heads together. It didn’t take long to hazard a guess at what was happening. A phone call to check if the cousins were indeed still visiting her childhood farm confirmed the subterfuge.

‘No, they only stayed for tea. They’ve gone.’

The feeling of helplessness in the face of evil-doing sat on their shoulders as they drove at speed towards the beach. The cousins’ plan was to provide them with the luxury of several weeks of idleness at the shack before potential discovery and inevitable confrontation. Not taking into the efficiency of the bush telegraph to spread news quickly led, in part, to their downfall.

So, it was that they were both dozing on banana lounges in the shade of the mango trees when the farmer and his wife pulled up at the side of the shack. The

caravan with its taunting sign blocked the view of the ocean but they certainly weren’t here for the scenery. Shortly after, a screech of brakes heralded the arrival of the local sergeant of police who had also driven across from the valley.

In the end, there was little to be said. The cousins conceded defeat at first sight of the long arm of the law. The confrontation existed more in the withering looks ed between those present. The cousins handed over the shiny new door key and wore the glares of a small crowd which had gathered while they attempted to hitch the caravan hurriedly to the car, while fumbling with fingers fattened with failure.

As the cousins finally disappeared around the corner, followed by the police car, the neighbours dispersed. Turning to one side, for the first time in his life, the farmer spat into the dust. Even that could not rid him of the feeling of deepseated disgust at the actions of the never to be seen again cousins. Her disgust sat at the bottom of her stomach, weighed down with disbelief and disappointment. It wouldn’t dislodge for many years. Pure disgust would rise up through her heart each time she heard those cousins mentioned throughout the many years remaining in her life.

Anger

Are you still paying attention, dedicated reader?

Then, please buckle your seatbelts for a bumpy ride ahead as dabbling in this deep and dark emotion threatens equilibrium and plunges an ordinary life over the precipice to a place where control is lost and fury stokes the fire of rage.

Oh, good heavens. What is this tale turning into? Surely such raw and uncontrollable emotions will not affect this ordinary woman on a farm living an ordinary life?

You haven’t been paying attention then.

the deep and wounding feelings of disgust the cousins caused with their dastardly deed? She struggled to recover from that setback. The incident with the beach-shack serrated her soul. On those sharp edges, some daily occurrences became caught when they should have simply faded away.

Minor interactions were mulled over and became inflamed. She could not let imagined slights her by. Each night she replayed and dissected the day’s events, using them to stoke the fire of her lack of acceptance, her temper.

It was her age. But even that was no excuse.

As her children became teenagers, she matched them, sulking fit for sulking fit, and temper tantrum for temper tantrum.

Where had the happy home gone?

Anger

An emotion of extreme or ionate displeasure

Anger is also known as rage, resentment, umbrage, bitterness, fury, exasperation, temper, petulance

It is the feeling that overwhelms you when a fire engulfs the house you have just completed after years spent renovating.

In the beginning, the change in her was subtle. It went unnoticed by most, although sometimes her husband threw a sidelong glance her way when her answer to his idle question was a bit snappy.

She had always considered herself a fairly even-tempered person. Likely it was the teasing throughout her childhood by the three older brothers that toughened her up. The little slights and disappointments of the early years hadn’t seemed to sting for overly long. Sure, there were those times when she felt as though she had been left out of a special invitation. But she had recovered quickly.

Of course, there were also the times that were excruciatingly embarrassing when they happened, but she had figured those things happened to everyone. They had never tipped her over the edge. Even though she was hurt at the time, her reactions had never been dipped in pure anger. Even that awful time with the deceitful cousins had brought on disgust, not anger.

But as the years had ed, she had become a little snappy. Her reactions to even the mildest of everyday annoyances could cause her to become cranky. The children had learned quickly you would be on Mum’s bad side if you left a banana in your lunchbox to moulder away or, if you didn’t hang up your towel after a shower.

Leaving your bed unmade as you hurried for school was tantamount to a hanging offence. They knew Mum had always had a way with words. Now she used them as little weapons. Once they both forgot to check on the casserole cooking all Saturday in the slow cooker on the bench. Mum was off helping set up exhibits at the local show. Her reaction almost took off their heads.

They saw the regret in her eyes even before she had finished haranguing them for the spoiled meal. By then, it was too late. Both gave her a wide berth for a few days.

From being cranky and snappy, she descended deeper. Soon the family and one or two friends were regarding her as having a bad temper.

A snake slid into the chook yard one evening. When it was found the next morning, its belly was grossly fat with one of her best laying hens. Grabbing a fallen branch from the mandarin tree, she dispatched the snake with venom in

her eyes. It certainly didn’t bring back her layers but it got the anger out of her system.

Over time she easily recognised the part of her that was definitely bad-tempered. She justified it to herself by saying sometimes life gave her a bit of a bad trot. There was still lots of good in her. She loved her family as much as anyone else loved theirs.

True, both of their children were growing up. No longer adorable babies who needed her, they were teenagers who definitely tried her patience. Sometimes their demands dragged her to the end of her tether.

Both kids had learned to drive the old farm tilly as soon as they were tall enough to see over the steering wheel. It was helpful in a way. They could take smoko down the paddock to wherever their father was working. He worked a little slower these days so any time that was saved was worthwhile. They might be sent to fetch parts or tools from the shed or to deliver workers who came to help with the planting or the harvest to the paddocks. Both of them knew farm kids were lucky in this way and they should never abuse the trust their parents held in them.

Most days are trying

It was the woman next door who alerted her to seeing the tilly driving on the next farm over again. Apparently, her daughter had taken a fancy to being independent. Her best friend lived two farms closer to town. Instead of riding a bike, she had waited for her mother to leave to collect the mail then driven via headlands and along a well-used minor road to the other farm.

When her parents found out, they sat the daughter down and talked about the risks she had taken and the punishment she would face. Neither of them had ever raised a hand to harm either of the children. And all four in the family knew in their hearts that punishment would never be physical. But her mother’s words that day and the look on her face caused deep wounds on the daughter’s soul.

The son was developing into an excellent runner. He was tall and slim and the wind had to chase after him when he took off down the athletics track. He had many successes at his primary school and even held two age records for the fastest sprint time for a boy his age at the little country school. But it was when he reached secondary school he came into his own.

Seeing his potential, the Physical Education teacher ensured the boy started training and was not just relying on his natural talent. He was shown how to start a race, how to run like a veritable gazelle and how to finish well. He started spending hours watching VHS videos of successful sprinters. In time, together with two other promising runners, he was selected to go to a regional sports carnival. The school sent home information notes and permission forms.

Two parents could not have looked prouder as they signed for their boy to compete at the next level.

He didn’t finish in the first three placegetters that time. But that didn’t fully explain his behaviour when he returned home. He didn’t want to tell them all the stories they wanted to hear about going to the big town and staying overnight in a motel room with his friends. He didn’t want to talk about meeting boys and girls from other schools at the big barbeque put on by the regional sports association. He retreated into himself and barely spoke at all until he was out on the tractor with his father the following week-end.

Once the words did start, they tumbled out so quickly they were mixed up with each other. His father told him to take a deep breath and to start again.

With sobs and shudders, the whole story was eventually told. At the barbeque, the coach of the boys who was also the Physical Education teacher at the local valley high school, had taken him to one side.

The boy’s first thoughts were that he was being singled out for his running talent. He basked in the glow of the older man’s praise. When the man offered him a swig from his beer, he ed his parents’ rules and refused. When the man suggested the boy him in the motel room that night, as the boys’ room was very crowded with three strapping youths, he again refused. It had seemed a strange offer. When the man’s hand dropped onto his knee, he jumped up and sought the company of his friends and didn’t speak for the rest of the night. The trip home up the valley the next day was a silent one.

You could almost say the teacher’s actions that night in the big town cracked open a Pandora’s box of emotions and unimaginable reactions. When his parents discussed it that evening, his father was stoic but deeply cut that a trusted professional had crossed the line. He was devastated his boy had been exposed to such a seedy, disturbing intention. All the short life of the son had been lived within the protective boundaries of the family. Although independence was granted to the daughter and son, all knew the boundaries of the farm were the limits of what they both should do at that age.

Going to secondary school had been a big physical and emotional step for both children. It had also forced the parents to loosen their protective ties. Experience had taught them the school could be a place of joy and disappointment, friendships and bullying in among the academic learning.

But that was what you did, wasn’t it?

Parents pushed the baby birds out of the nest knowing they would learn quickly to fly. Parents sent their children to school knowing they would grow up and learn about life. These parents were devastated by the turn of events.

She showed her grief in big, sobbing gulps as she questioned whether she could ever let her boy go to school again. She questioned whether any teacher could be trusted, or the bus driver, the tuckshop lady, the scout master. Her growing anger fed on generalisations and her own feelings of having not protected her son.

It was a cruel slap from life. It caught her just when her equilibrium often failed her in everyday small crises. It came just at a time when her small amount of control over her emotions was likely to snap at any moment. Her internal struggle was visible in the tears cascading down her cheeks. The struggle continued but settled into a steely resolve in her eyes and an achingly strong clench of her jaw.

The signs of her anger could have been missed by anyone who didn’t know her.

The school principal did know her, however. He had known her since they shared the same classes at the secondary school in town. Both headed off to teachers’ college at the same time. She returned home, but he started on the rounds of small country schools. He established a strong reputation as a fair teacher and worked his way through the ranks. Returning to the region and securing a position as principal of the valley high school seemed like a triumph to him.

Until now.

Across from him at the desk, sat the mother of two of his more capable students. She had welcomed him to his new role early on. He depended on her as a member of the Parents and Citizens association. She had proved a voice of reason in some heated arguments and come up with some great fund-raising ideas.

The woman facing him now was light years in demeanour away from the dependable person he had known, both girl and woman, for almost thirty years. The way she held her head and the set of her jaw signalled some internal turmoil. Blinking away unwanted tears, she shared what had happened to her son and what else could have happened to her son at the hands of his teacher. In words dripping with angry venom, she spared no detail of what she thought should happen to the teacher. The principal stopped her mid-sentence as he feared for both her state of mind and the legal ramifications.

After an extensive discussion, he managed to take some of the heat out of the maternal anger that longed to protect her son in any way possible. He promised she would be able to make a written statement. He would call in the officers from the education department who knew how to deal with this sort of thing. When she started to sob, as though her heart must surely break, he called for a cup of tea and slid the box of tissues on his desk towards her. He implied the teacher in question may not be working in schools or with children anymore.

Lulled by his assurances and exhausted by her outburst, she slowly regained some control of her emotions. Pushing her anger down under the surface of courtesy and manners, she shook his proffered hand. As he opened the door for her to leave, she nodded as he said he would be in touch when there was some news about the situation he could on to her. She nodded again as he assured her that her son, and daughter, would be perfectly safe to continue their education at his school.

With a semblance of control, she drew back her shoulders, tilted her chin towards the brilliant blue sky and walked towards the carpark. On the way she took a detour that led her past the tuckshop. She poured the whole sordid story into four willing sets of ears. Even as she turned the key in the ignition, she imagined she could hear the story of the teacher’s misdemeanour spreading like molasses through the classrooms and staffrooms of the school. Dark, smelly and sure to stick, it was a story guaranteed to be shared.

If she felt any guilt about what she did that day, her anger ate it up. She felt justification in her retaliation. When she heard the teacher had not taken any further classes after morning tea on that day she went to the school, she felt some vindication for her overt action. Obviously, he had felt guilt and couldn’t stand the fall-out from the rumour mill. Cruising with intention past the teacher’s quarters in the back street of the little town the next week, she saw the building he had occupied was closed and empty. Part of her heart felt as closed and empty as that building and it would be years before she could openly trust men who showed what she perceived as unnatural interest in teenagers or young children.

She stewed on the incident for days, but her son soon returned to his normal, happy-grumpy-happy-grumpy self. It seemed a bit self-indulgent to feel angry about something when the ‘victim’ had moved on. She moved on as well and settled back into a semblance of normal life shaped as ever by the seasons on the farm.

Time’s age marks her heart

With her own age daily reflected back at her by the bathroom mirror, lit by the unflattering sunlight which streamed through the casement, and the increasing inability of her children to fit their long limbs into any reasonable space, the age of time was well marked in her household. This led to a sadly growing

awareness she tried to suppress. Both sets of parents, living in town, had also been unable to hold back the years.

Visiting them weekly, she saw time was marked by wrinkles and stiff limbs, grey hair and slowing speech. There was enough of the optimist in her to feel all four had many good years left to live. Indeed, this seemed highly possible as they marked out their years with a caravan trip here and there, visits to far-flung relatives and even a cruise of a lifetime through the South Pacific. Daily, they made the hours speed by with line dancing and card games, visits to sporting clubs, for the lunches, not the poker machines, and avidly watching sport. The few health issues they had in earlier years had been rubbed out by easing the burden of daily work.

It was no great surprise, but still a nasty shock, when her mother rang one day with news of an accident. All four had taken up playing golf in later life. This had more to do with the camaraderie of the clubhouse than the exercise chasing a white ball around nine holes in the fresh air.

Apparently, her father had missed his footing when as he climbed out of the golf buggy. With his leg caught in the buggy, he had fallen awkwardly. This probably wouldn’t have fazed him ten years ago. But at this time of his life, he had been let down by brittle bones and was now in the public hospital with a fractured leg. No more rounds of golf in the foreseeable future. Not even drinkies at the clubhouse.

Luckily this wouldn’t be an issue. Her parents, like his parents, also lived in a custom-built retirement village. Their home would cater for his injury with the lack of stairs and wide doorways. Even the shower was easily accessible. Still and all, the news gave her a jolt and she hurried to the hospital, stopping only to pick up chocolates and magazine for the patient.

In a way it was good to be able to fuss over her father. She was able to return a little of the attention they had lavished on her with since the day she was born.

Her mother was more than capable of sitting by the bedside but her daughter’s presence did give her a chance to slip away and do some little jobs that needed to be done. Soon it became a regular occurrence and she made the long trip to big town every second day for the suggested two weeks of her father’s hospital stay. It was a chance for her to get out of the house. Truth be told, she looked forward to the long drive she could make on her own without having to wait for Saint Friday.

To make it even more worthwhile, she would sometimes duck into the haberdashery for a length of material or some such, or pick up some groceries, even pay a bill.

Towards the end of her father’s expected stay in hospital she felt quite weary. On her last visit, she promised to see him the next week when he was safely back home. Her mother and the in-laws were picking him up the following morning. She was sure they could manage one man with a plaster cast.

Arriving home at last, she flopped down in her favourite cane chair and started to mentally list the jobs she had neglected while making all the trips to town. There weren’t many but she was too tired to start now. The shrill of the telephone jolted her awake and she was startled to hear her mother’s voice.

Her father had taken ‘a bit of a turn’ in the hospital and the doctor was concerned he was not responding to treatment. It was nothing to do with his leg but more about his age and lying still for two weeks had caught up with him. Her mother knew she had only just arrived home but thought it best if she made the long trip down the valley to the big town hospital, as quickly as she could.

‘Hurry, dear.’

At first, she felt only a mild sense of worry but soon it was winding itself into fully blown panic, tinged with fear. By the time she left a note for her husband and raced down the high stairs to the car with the engine still ticking as it cooled, the worry was feeding on itself and throwing all sorts of possibilities and scenarios into her brain. Reversing out, she headed down the track. The fear for her father made itself obvious by the jerky movements as she drove the car town-wards.

Slowing only slightly as she flew through the small towns of the valley, she prayed the local policeman was at home eating his tea and not sitting by the side of the road with his speed camera. She was almost starting to feel a sense of relief that she would arrive at the hospital in record time when a flicker of movement caught her eye from the right.

Everyone who lives in a sugarcane farming district knows the cut cane must be transported to the mill after harvesting. Some cane areas used trucks. The chute of the harvesting machine spits a steady stream of cut cane into bins towed behind tractors driving up and down the drills like slaves as they service the huge, hulking harvesters. The bins are then towed to ramps where they are loaded onto trucks to make the journey to the nearest sugar mill.

The valley mills that serviced her district used cane trains to take the bins full of harvested cane-stalks for processing. The bins are dropped off by the locos at the sidings for the contractors to collect. Once full, they are returned to the sidings and collected in their turn by the locos. The locos were strong and efficient so the long line or rake could be several hundred bins long with each carrying from four to six tonnes of cut cane, depending on its size.

All these facts had been talked about over her kitchen table for more than twenty years. They shunted through her head as the flicker of movement resolved itself into the loco of a cane train. In the instant of her recognition, the flashing signals at the side of the highway switched on. Every valley resident knew once the signal was triggered, you simply stopped and waited. She knew of people who had lost concentration or tried to beat the train to the crossing. Mostly that was where their stories ended. The signal she saw that night flashed a warning to her that speeding towards the big town had come to a halt.

There was nothing she could do but wait for the train to . Her frustration boiled over immediately. Clutching the steering wheel, she cursed and cursed. The valley was a patchwork of farms and a spider’s web of tramlines for the cane trains. The tramlines cut farm boundaries and roads with angled abandon. It was just her dreadful luck to have come across a train at that time. Only she knew the possibility that a life was ebbing away in a hospital bed in town.

Her heart beat in double time as the slow progress of the bins across the road seemed to move in a time warp. She usually counted the bins and the minutes so she could jokingly complain to her husband how the cane train had delayed one of her trips to or from town.

Clunk, clunk, clunk. The never-ending noise of the steel wheels grated against her nerves so badly her hands shook. The fury welled up as she yelled at the unknowing, unseeing procession in front of her.

‘Don’t you know how important this is to me?’

Her head dropped down as she willed the train to leave her life. The welcome

flicker of the tail end signal flag riding high on the slave engine showed at last. Her painful restraint at the crossing was about to end. She needed to make a huge effort to put the car back into gear with hands that now trembled with fury. Afterwards, she could never recall the rest of her drive to town that night. The pulsing anger she felt at being held up for so long at the crossing had put her brain into a state where she operated the car by a kind of remote control. Nothing ed in her brain for the many kilometres she had left to reach the hospital. The next thing she could actually recall was seeing her mother’s tear-streaked face as she ran into her father’s room. The empty bed, the brothers with bowed heads. She was too late. Excuses didn’t matter or help. She had been too late to say goodbye.

Later, on a little side road near her farm, she gave vent to the pent-up anger she had hidden from her grieving family in the hospital room. She screamed and yelled her fury to the gum trees and pounded the seat of the car until her fists were sore and reddened, and her throat was hoarse. When she was able to regain some control of her emotion, she drove home to share the saddest of news with her family. A little piece of her died that night along with her father. Another little piece of her hardened into bitterness.

The woman next door sensed there was a lasting change in her. The joked-about temper was obvious more often and there had been some gossip around the way the cane train had made her so angry that night. She had complained to a few too many local people. Usually, they were the very same people who needed the cane trains to help them earn a living, so she certainly gained little sympathy from them.

Friendship fuels her fire

To help her friend through this rough patch in her life, the woman next door extended many invitations. The kindly neighbour hoped that being off the farm would help to pull her away out of the hole of pity she was staring down. So it

was that both her neighbour’s and her own family found themselves at the local waterhole one sunny, peaceful Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t actually the neighbour’s, but you had to drive through their land, opening and closing two gates, to reach the waterhole at the base of the foothills.

The place held a kind of unique attraction for some of the people who knew of its existence. It wasn’t as flashy as the river which ran to the west from the top of the mountain several kilometres up the road. Lots of people knew about that river and stood on its bank in quiet numbers hoping for a glimpse of the shy platypuses. They watched them diving in the water looking for a feed of worms, insects or the odd yabby. That river was a lot grander than the waterhole with its huge boulders to sit on and bask in the sun. The mountain river had experienced tumultuous floods during some wet seasons and carried huge fallen rainforest trees down off the mountain with its torrents.

The waterhole also wasn’t as fancy as the gorge nearby with its impressive waterfall and boulders as old as the world that you could slide over as the burbling water carried you downstream. The gorge was a bit difficult to access which made it all the more attractive to thrill-seekers from the big town. The climb up the ravine on a narrow path lined with jagged rocks made the thrill of jumping into the freezing water even more desirable. Even with the knowledge that Search and Rescue teams sometimes had to make the same climb up and down the narrow path, carrying on a stretcher, dare-devils who had lost their footing or their way, the adventure was still worthwhile.

This waterhole by comparison with the other natural water features was small in scale. However, it was huge in the promise it held out to visitors to laze away hot afternoons in peace and solitude. It was nestled amongst a section of remnant rainforest in a flat area at the base of the foothills. There were just enough tall trees to throw shade from the western sun. The area was dotted with many closegrowing small shrubs and ferns, homes for small animals.

The stream was not very deep at this point and practically slithered over the small rocks and pebbles as it burbled its way toward the big blue river. It was an ideal spot for lying on your back with the water covering your overly warm body and your eyes gazing up at the tree canopy as it filtered the overhead light.

There was something about the place that seemed to grab time as it rushed in with you and calmed you down until your heartbeat was as slow as the wait for Christmas Day. The hardest thing to do at the waterhole was to make sure you got home in time for tea. The hours could vanish quickly with nothing to show for the age of time but a feeling of total relaxation. Many hours had been spent here over the decades by local farming families who knew of its existence. It seemed as though the special place drew from its visitors a promise not to talk far and wide of its beauty.

Of course, that started to change as more families moved to the valley. Secrets are harder to keep in a crowd. Even people from the big town were sometimes seen cutting through the neighbour’s farm to reach this little oasis of calm. Noone minded as long as the newcomers made sure they closed the farm gates and took any rubbish back home with them.

The woman next door often heard engines in the distance as she went about her daily chores. The polite visitors beeped their car horns in greeting or waved their fingers above the steering wheel if they ed close by the farmer as he worked on his tractor in the far paddock. The farmers put a homemade sign on the gates to warn when it was harvesting season. The harvesting contractors had enough to watch out for with the electricity lines which could make with their behemoth harvesters. They didn’t need to have to look out for carloads of daytrippers.

Increasingly, both she and the woman next door had heard recklessly revving engines and been concerned someone unfamiliar with driving on dirt tracks could drift off a corner and overturn. The buzz of dirt bikes also made her

forehead crease in concern. She knew local boys were skilled at riding as proud dads often had them in the saddle of a minibike when they were barely five years old. But even valley boys were prone to showing off if they were in a group, or with girls they were keen to impress. She could sometimes see a head bobbing above the growing cane in the distance as they stood upright on the pegs of the bikes and sped towards an afternoon of fun.

At least she had a long-held confidence in the behaviour of the kids from the valley. After all, they were simply following in the tracks of their parents who most surely had spent idle afternoons at the waterhole. On the other hand, she had a growing mistrust of the people who had somehow heard about the spot and decided to drive the many kilometres from town to the waterhole. She wasn’t sure if they were always there for innocent enjoyment. She didn’t know them. They didn’t know the farm or the farmers.

On more than one occasion, the farmer found the chain-wire gates across the track gaping open when he ventured past the far paddock. There was often litter on the dirt track. The bottles and cans and fast-food wrappers were discarded without care for the land. Once, he found two young steers from a neighbouring farm. They wandered idly down the dirt track after a section of fence had been knocked to the ground. Someone had taken a corner too fast and not made any attempt afterwards to stand the fence post back upright, or to tell the farmer likely to lose stock.

All of that was far from the minds of the two families that afternoon. The woman next door was right. So often this wise woman was. The woman’s wisdom knew that, for her, the calm surroundings and the presence of so many people she loved, were just the medicine to soothe her angry, grieving heart. Her heart was still so raw after her father’s death. Teenagers frolicked and splashed in the shallows like young children. Adults floated in the middle of the waterhole on old, inflated tractor innertubes.

Everyone felt the relaxing power of the place. She could almost sense the moment her angry soul started to heal, ripple by ripple. Time stood still that day and probably would have kept them there until the sun had dipped behind the mountain as it tipped another day towards night. Unfortunately for all, the day did not proceed as hoped. At some time in the slow and lazy day, who knows when, noises from the paddock made them aware other people were also looking for a way to enjoy their day. The waterhole was small but certainly big enough to share. However, the two carloads of teenagers who arrived did not look keen to share.

Piling out of the cars, they unloaded several eskies from the boots. The clinking noises of ice and glass showed they had come prepared with beers for the hot day. They called out cursory greetings and moved upstream. All went well for quite some time until her teenagers, intrigued by the increasing level of noise, moved closer to the group around a bend in the creek. Rushing back to the adults, they couldn’t wait to spill the news the teenagers were not only drinking from the glass bottles while lying in the creek but they had appeared to have left their clothes on the bank and were skinny-dipping.

Now don’t believe for one moment that farmers are prudish. Both the men and women had seen plenty of other folk in their birthday suits and getting up to all sorts of hijinks more times than any of them cared to . The flea in their ear spoiling their day was that these kids were visitors. There could have been families with young children there, and besides, everyone knew you don’t take glass into running water with rocks where it could smash and cause untold damage.

The menfolk thought they did a reasonable job of pointing these valley truths out to the teenagers from town. The teenagers disagreed. They told the men in no uncertain they knew their rights, and the waterhole was theirs to enjoy as well. The abuse and swearing threatened to escalate in the young minds already affected by alcohol, so the men took the prudent path back to their families after reminding the visitors they should not drive home in that state. Sitting waiting in

the water, she was livid when she heard what had happened. Their good idea had certainly turned sour. Fortunately, even her anger was unable to sustain itself for long.

The next day dawned like most in the valley. The day stretched from perfect sunrise to outstanding sunset with just a splash of darkness against the sky caused by a rare cane fire. The sight of the green sprouts of newly planted billets of cane poking their way through the furrows reminded her that life goes on. The paddocks of growing cane tricked her mind to think they looked like a rolling green ocean she could walk across. Most of all, her soul was soothed by the mature stalks that proudly tickled the sky with their purple tasselled plumage. The farm around her somehow felt so nourishing.

Further fuel for the fire

She sat gazing out the louvred windows one afternoon from her favourite spot in a cane chair. Sitting like that in the sun room, she could see her husband way off in the distance spraying fertiliser up and down the rows of young cane. The tractor with the big boom arms made it easy to see even at this distance.

If she craned her neck, she could also see her neighbour’s husband. His tractor was bright red, so it was just visible over the top of several paddocks of young cane. She idly watched his progress up and down the drills then realised he had stopped for some time on the far side. She mused he must have stopped to nibble on some of his wife’s delicious scones. Flicking idly through the latest women’s magazine, she lost all interest in humdrum farming procedure and immersed herself instead in tales of faraway film-stars.

Talk about the unexpected. But was it all that unexpected? Unbeknown to all but the combatants, the life of the neighbours had changed forever not long after she

had lost interest in her watching game. The neighbouring farmer had indeed stopped his repetitive driving of his tractor up and down the drills. He had stepped down from the cabin when he noticed a wallaby lying awkwardly in the drain by the side of the track.

Barely breathing. The injuries to the wallaby were extensive and very recent. The farmer returned to the cab of the tractor for the old shotgun he carried in case of snakes and some such. He put the wallaby out of its misery and returned to the tractor. Only a heartless driver would maim an animal on someone’s farm and not even get out of their car to check on it.

Sure, wallabies were seen as pests. But it wasn’t up to the carload of visitors he had seen careening towards the waterhole to decide that. They weren’t locals by their car, or by their actions. Making up his mind to set them straight, he drove the tractor through the open gate and down to the waterhole.

He was ignored at first. Hard to believe they didn’t notice the arrival of the large red tractor. But, a skinful of alcohol will help a person ignore just about anything. With several minutes ticking by as he stood there being ignored, his frustration grew. Returning to the tractor, he retrieved his shotgun. He did something very foreign to his nature. He fired the shotgun into the air.

That got their attention alright. The echo of the shotgun faded with their squeals and shouts. Four pairs of eyes turned to see who had intruded on their fun. He fully expected even people who lacked rudimentary manners would at least listen to a person who was holding a gun. He started to tell them about finding the wallaby and stuttered to a halt. They were laughing and mocking him.

He tried again and only the trees stood still and listened. In the waterhole, the visitors returned to their shouts and squeals. Harnessing his frustration, he

shouted at them. Loudly. More loudly than ever in his life. For a moment, they stopped. The oldest member of the group stood up in the water. He put his fingers to his head and pulled one leg back through the water and mimicked the stance of a bull. Through the laughter of his friends, he started to snort.

The farmer’s eyes were rivetted to this strange, imbecilic behaviour but he was caught off guard as the fellow suddenly charged up the bank. Acting like a bull on the attack, the dripping wet fool circled the farmer again and again. The farmer knew he had no control of this situation so stepped slowly backwards.

He forgot about the fallen tree.

Much later the local policemen worked out that he had simply fallen backwards, straight over the log. His head had hit the side of the group’s esky and he had been knocked out. What they also found out later was that the stress of the situation and the physical stress of the fall had brought on a stroke. A clot from elsewhere broke loose and travelled to his brain, stopping the blood supply to the part that helped him speak and move his right side.

Not that anyone there at the time cared at all. There may have been some panic in their actions. They certainly would have shown surprise when he disappeared over the log and did not reappear to dust himself off. They may have simply been showing blatant disrespect for another human being just as they had shown for the animal they hit. Whatever prompted their actions, they scooped up their belongings and piled back into the car. Yelling obscenities, they reversed past the tractor and fishtailed back down the dusty track leaving both gates flapping in the breeze.

No-one ever knew who those visitors were that day. Many people knew the impact it had on the farmer and his family. It was deemed a possible accident by

the policeman who came out and took a look. When the neighbour’s wife had wondered a while at his lateness, she had put the plates of tea in the oven to keep warm and had gone out to look. She started driving along the paddocks but soon spotted the big red tractor at the waterhole. That seemed so out of character for the farmer. He surely wouldn’t have chosen a dip in the rapidly cooling waterhole over the attraction of his tea. Panic tightened her throat as she strode down from the track with her torch barely able to pick him out where he still lay behind the fallen tree.

In the ambulance on the long drive to the big town, and in the hospital, she simply held his hand and prayed. Everyone prayed: the farmers in the valley and friends in town. His kind and gentle soul was too valued by all. They didn’t want to lose him. When he eventually woke up, they knew they had lost him, or lost the man they knew. The doctor in charge held the hand of the farmer’s wife as he delivered the news. She took little of his information in. It was days before she could process that her strong and capable husband was unlikely to work his farm again. He would have to work hard over many months to even walk or talk, if he was lucky. Lucky! Huh!

The news sent shockwaves through the peaceful community. Before the policeman had finalised his investigation and given his report on what may have happened, the gossip threw many suggestions into the humid air. But, in all the talk, there was never a suggestion his misadventure had come from anything untoward on his part. There was no way he was down near the creek tending a hidden marijuana plot or meeting a local woman. He had been such a strong, upstanding man, a gentlemanly farmer.

She ed her neighbour as she often had seen him, extending his hand to help his wife across the little creek. He would always open doors for women to through and he baked a mean fruitcake he insisted everyone enjoy with lashings of butter. The man she knew had gone, taken by an unexplained and unexpected incident.

Life had been so cruel to her beloved neighbours. Her anger had been simmering slowly for months, for years. You’ve seen what can happen. It sat just below the surface of her skin, waiting to burst through like some pustulate boil, like mango sores rising out of with oozing sap. Yes.

A terrible occurrence like this was all that was needed to bring her angry emotion to the surface.

Using rational thought, she weighed up how to channel her rage for maximum impact. She ruled out ways of helping the neighbours. The husband would be in the rehabilitation hospital for many months. His wife was driving the long road to big town every day to sit by his bedside. The local farmers had organised a roster to continue work on the farm.

She struggled with her thoughts, trawling for a way to stop such a wicked thing happening to anyone else. In her mind, a thought became solid. She could prevent people, everyone, from using the waterhole. After all, if people hadn’t been coming through the farm to access the waterhole, they could have all been living in a bubble of safety and security. As soon as she had resolved to prevent people from tracking through the farm, she had already worked out possible ways of doing just that.

She enlisted the help of her teenage kids. Together in the farm shed, between the time they got home from school and when her husband came home at the end of the day, they cobbled together a solution. Using fence palings and wire, they constructed a new pair of gates. She loaded them into the back of the tilly and went back up the high stairs, content with a job well done. The job to erect the gates over the access track was a little more difficult. On her own, she wrestled both gates onto the ground from the tray of the tilly. With fencing wire and pliers and a strength she didn’t know she had, she managed to attach one gate to the fence post by the side of the track. It took some ingenuity and a fair bit of cursing before the other gate was solidly wound onto the trunk of a sapling.

The gates didn’t latch in the middle. They didn’t actually touch each other. That didn’t matter too much as she used a large sheet of plywood stretched across the gap in the middle to hold each gate. Stepping back, she wiped sweat and dirt from her forehead with the back of her hand. Red letters shouted her handiwork from the sign. It warned the land was private property and advised the track was closed. The corners of her mouth curled at the small wording in the corner which proclaimed this was By Order.

By whose order? Her internal demons screamed loudly. It was by order of sane human beings, by the locals who actually farmed the land, by families who wanted a peaceful and safe existence. She railed against the injustice of her neighbour’s misfortune and turned for home, content with what she had achieved.

The next day was Sunday so she drove over to her barricade early. This was war, after all. She positioned her camp chair under the lean shade of the sapling and sat down to wait. The day was hot. The rain clouds were gathering, and you could smell the holidays in the air, so it wasn’t long before dust appeared further down the track. As soon as she saw the first car of visitors slow down, she stepped onto the track.

There was no need to tell them what she was doing. The gates, the sign, her presence made that very clear. That day she was showered with abuse and by stones as cars hurriedly turned around and sped away. One group claimed they understood how she felt and although they didn’t know the farmer, they were disgusted by the litter left along the track and at the waterhole. She only had a half dozen interactions, but they left her feeling exhausted. As the sun dipped low, she headed home to her family.

One of her brothers was a surprise visitor the next week-end. He had taken his

family to the gorge but turned around when he saw the number of cars in the carpark. Looking for a peaceful swim, he had ed the waterhole near his sister’s farm and turned down the dusty track. After they both recovered from the shock of seeing each other unexpectedly, she shared the whole sorry tale. This was the third brother; the one who taught her to be strong and to aim the last kick well.

His visit gave her enough courage to keep turning away the invading hordes, or, at least, several carloads of visitors. His visit also gave her unexpected publicity. On his return to town, he made it his business to ring some s and eventually to use the phone number he was given to call the editor of the big town newspaper. He declared there was a public interest story happening up towards the end of the valley every week-end.

His voice was tinged with pride as he related that his sister was trying to rebuild shattered peace and safety in her community by erecting a barrier across a dusty farm track and to prevent visitors from using it to access a waterhole in the foothills. Well, it so happened the week ahead turned into a slow news week. The sugar prices on the international market were high, no gripes there. The roads were comparatively quiet, no accidents, thank heavens. The weather was hot, but no records were being broken. With no possible blaring headlines on the horizon, the editor ed the call from the fellow who had a strange story about his sister up the valley.

Yelling down the phone, he ruined the week-end plans of his most junior reporter. Putting aside thoughts of spending time with her boyfriend, she spent Saturday afternoon opening her eyes on her first trip into the valley. When the reporter arrived at the gate across the track, saying the local guardian, the lone protestor, was surprised, would have put it mildly. The woman who waited near the locked gates could not have been more taken aback if the mayor himself had arrived. It took some convincing on the part of the young reporter before our protester would even answer the questions being asked.

But after many quiet minutes spent in the shade of the sapling, and with no more cars turning up, she relented. The rational part of her brain reasoned that an article in the big town newspaper might just act as a deterrent to those people who travelled all the way up the valley in search of a cool place to relax. She thought knowing the story would help people to understand the issue. Eventually, the numbers of people who drove out would dry up completely and no palls of dust would hang over the track and farm. She wouldn’t have to face the disappointment of the people.

You know she was so, so wrong, don’t you?

If she thought a newspaper article and accompanying photograph would cool the situation and make everyone agree with her, she was making the biggest, poor judgement of her life. On the Monday morning, indignation rose in steamy clouds above open newspapers all over the big town, and across the valley too, after the courier delivered the daily rags mid-morning. The photograph of her in her old yard hat and gardening shorts as she pointed peremptorily at the words on her homemade sign seemed to inflame townie tempers even more than the sensational words chosen by the inexperienced reporter and ed by the hungover editor late on the Sunday night.

Yes, yes. Some people agreed wholeheartedly and there was a lot of sympathy when people understood the link to her next-door farmer’s accident. But even some of the people who argued her side, over morning-tea cups in the shops and offices, tempered their . Many people felt she had overstepped the mark by a country mile. She had taken on a cause that was not hers to drive. Rich landowners think they own the whole world.

There were a few who had been to the waterhole in their younger lives startled to hear of the littering and the abuse that had preceded the farmer’s accident. They loved the beauty of the spot and felt it should be limited in some ways so large numbers of people were not despoiling it. Then there were those who felt they

had the right to access it whenever they wanted it. They took to the telephones and they wrote like their opinions actually mattered to everyone else.

The editor of the paper basked in the furore that bubbled up each day for weeks on his pages. The mail bag bulged with letters to the editor. Each wanting it to be known, in print, how they felt about this madwoman, the poor soul up the valley. The local television station smelled a good filler for the Six O’clock news. They sent out a reporter to interview her and got the scoop of a beer bottle being thrown and narrowly missing the cameraman. Not by her, of course.

She wasn’t sleeping well and startled at every small noise. Her husband and kids were ive but privately felt it had all gone a bit too far and was starting to be a bit embarrassing. This all played on her mind as she sat through the heat of week-end afternoons shaded only by the sapling. It was starting to feel like a runaway train. She hadn’t thought it through when her intense anger had caused her to react and stop access to the waterhole.

Obviously, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life like this, and she really had no wish to continue on indefinitely. It was almost Christmas and she had plenty of things that needed to be done at home. Some of the locals had stopped acknowledging her when she went to the post office and she just hated that. She hated what this whole episode had turned her into. The photo in the paper and the television interview had made her look less like a warrior with a cause and more like a harridan who wanted absolute control.

She was sitting in her puddle of December sweat and a healthy dose of self-pity when the choice of what to do was taken from her. She heard and saw a car approaching at a fair rate of knots. Making up her mind to make her mark, she leapt from the camping chair brandishing a branch a windstorm had dropped beside the road the night before. She intended to sweep the branch around as the car slowed before the gates so she could make her points about appreciating and caring for nature.

She never had the chance. Instead of slowing to a stop, the motor of the car revved loudly. Startled, she hesitated in her stroll to stand before the gate. This probably saved her life. The occupants of the car had all the windows wound down. Their heads bounced as the car swept forward, they cursed and swore and yelled abuse as the momentum of the car carried it straight through the flimsy barricade. The wood splintered into hundreds of pieces which were flung into the air.

Fortunately, she had moved out of the immediate path of the intruders but fell as she scrambled off the dirt track. The remnants of her barricade rained down on her, and the track, as she lay sobbing in shock. She could hear the car reversing back and forth, obviously turning to take the track back to town. The car stopped near her. Thinking they had come back to help, she reached up so they could hoist her to her feet.

No chance of that.

In the final indignity of the whole shameful incident, one of the people scrambled out of the car. Picking up her sign from where it lay in the dust, he threw it like a frisbee into the cane paddock nearby. With some final coarse suggestions about what she could do now, he pointed out she was not the boss of them. The car departed in a cloud of dust and stones, fishtailing in a final salute of disrespect. She was oh so angry. But more than that, she felt the bitter taste of defeat rise up her throat and into her mouth. It was all too much. She could not go on like this anymore.

An hour or so later, or it may have been an eternity, her husband came to look for her. She lay, still curled up, under the sapling that had been the witness to her total descent from the high and mighty defender of the cause. Her anger had seeped into the ground along with her grudging tears. This was not what was

supposed to have happened. She was not this person.

She certainly was not that person for days afterwards. She retreated totally into herself and sat unseeing, but with her eyes turned towards the neighbour’s farm. From her cane suite, she was unable to see the scene of her greatest failure. But, in her mind and in her heart, her misadventure festered and swelled.

Late on the third day after that soul-destroying event, the black storm clouds swelled over the mountains. Thunder rolled its warnings and the afternoon turned as black as night. Flashes of lightning split the sky to the west and signalled the promise of a downpour. When the storm came closer, the casements rattled in their frames, the power supply shut down and flashes lit the house up like midday sun. Thunder rolled in and threatened to destroy the heavens.

The long-awaited rain fell in rattling drops on the iron roof. As it thickened to crashing sheets that swept across the paddocks and blotted out even the nearby farm shed, she rose from her chair. Paying no heed to the stinging rain, she ran down the high stairs until she felt the now soaked brown grass beneath her bare feet. Slowly at first, then with momentum, she turned in a circle. Arms outstretched, face turned to the sky, she let the rain soak her body, let it wash away her pent-up angst. Under the torrential, tropical rain, she felt her muscles relax, as her mind soothed. Massive relief washed through her while she stood in a downpour that marked a fork in the road for her.

After a welcome shower and a change of clothes, she ed her family in the lounge room. Looking at each face in the flicker of emergency candles, she felt the calmness and peace which had been missing for some time.

This felt like family.

This felt like home.

They would be so happy to have her back.

Love

Whew, are you still there, devoted reader?

You may have found the ramping up of her emotion was a bit harrowing for you. It was definitely a tad unexpected. But just stop and imagine how it was for her. You and I know and accept life is just full of ups and downs. Honestly speaking though, her life had done little to prepare her for the groundswell of bitter anger and the impact it eventually wrought on her life.

Yes, yes, we all that time when the cousins caused quite an upset. Do you also how that particular crisis was averted to a large degree by a mix of good luck and the local communication network? Somehow, she had been largely buoyed through life by good family, good friends, and good luck.

When she felt life change, as many women do after a lifetime devoted to family and work, anger had snuck in through weaknesses in her strong armour. Just look where that landed her. Thank heavens she had been given a helping hand. Her emotional maelstrom had reached its climax during the weeks of oppressive heat at the year’s end. Locals called it ‘mango madness’: craziness that occurs during the season of unbearable heat and humidity. Mother Nature had sent a welcome storm to break the cycle of madness and never-ending hot days.

Enough of all that. She’s feeling better now and so should you be. Maybe now you need a little bit of sweet balm for the soul to keep you reading.

Let’s talk about love. Love of all kinds.

Love

An intense feeling of deep affection or fondness for a person or thing

Love is also known as adoration, attachment, devotion, fondness, ion, infatuation, dotage.

Love is the emotion that squeezes your heart when your child is born or when your mother smiles at you.

When the storm stopped her descent into the deep despair her anger had caused, she looked up. Her eyes gazed at the flicker of the candles on the glass louvres. The candles her family had lit against the darkness. Like a moth drawn to a flame, she felt a strong attraction of love and affection draw her back to her family.

Her strongest love had always been for her family.

Love sustains

She needed to return to that bond. And so, her journey to healing was commenced that night in the welcome rain. Later, feeling clean inside and out, she sat in the circle of her family’s love. She felt such strong waves of

reminiscence, she almost convinced herself she was about to die. Her life within this family flashed past her eyes. Her will to live grew stronger with each memory as they carried her back to contentment.

She had been married to her husband for almost a quarter of a century. She had been married longer than the years she had lived before they met each other. There was no way she would describe their relationship as romantic on every single day of those years. Though she would shyly it their lives together had certainly started out that way. Yes, it was a story familiar to us all.

The exciting times from when they first met as teenagers through to the inevitability of their marriage were tinged just a little by rose coloured glasses and smooshy romance. Those were the sunshine years. Even the times when they had broken apart had only served to strengthen the connection between them. Certainly, they always came back together like a pair of opposing magnets.

Their wedding had been such a wonderful day she had convinced herself that it was what she had been dreaming of since she was a young girl. But truth be known, she had never been one of those girls who fantasised daily about white tulle and lace. She hadn’t been sitting in the canvas seats at the valley picture show dreaming the profile of the boy next to her was that of her future husband. Look as you might, you wouldn’t find her practising her signature using her boyfriend’s surname. She just wasn’t that kind of girl.

But as they fell in love, something happened out there in space. Maybe some space junk collided. Maybe a war was won in a galaxy far, far away. Maybe, yet another man walked on somebody’s moon. Whatever happened, the stars crossed and the future for the young couple set them in an orbit of attraction to each other. She found the cute boy she first saw at the student council meeting was growing into a really decent man. With or without the lace and tulle, she wanted to spend her life with him.

When it eventually became clear to both of them their futures were destined to be shared, the wheels of wedding preparation stirred into action. The level of organisation for a wedding at that time was irable but very specific. Both mothers had a high degree of control and very carefully curated each aspect. They had the knowledge of which aunt’s cousin could be trusted to make the wedding cake and which sports’ club had the best rates for providing a reception venue. They knew it was much better to buy the dress material locally and sew the bride’s and maids’ dresses at home. After all, they knew the horrors of dresses that were the wrong size when they arrived from down south or didn’t arrive in time.

Piece by piece, the parts of the wedding day were stitched together. How was it possible that all this organisation would run smoothly? Who can we borrow the wedding cars from? Who will decorate them with bows and ribbons? How can we sit people at the reception tables who will actually talk to each other?

‘Are all the cousins coming?’

In the end, the day was perfect. But the day didn’t really matter after all. The right people did the right things.

People cried and people laughed.

At the end of all the fuss and frills that day, they were ed together as man and wife. They didn’t think it was possible two people could be so in love. Surely, no other couple in the entire world had felt like this, ever. They floated, completely surrounded by their little bubble of ideal love, which would last forever and ever.

Of course, it didn’t.

But before the bubble of romantic impossibility had threatened to burst, something else replaced it. They grew strong and forgiving bonds that seemed to stretch and strengthen through whatever life tossed at them. Even when they were cross or angry, the bond held them steady. When something out of the ordinary happened, they sought each other out to share the news with their partner first. When something sad happened, they clung to each other.

When they were happy, the happiness multiplied in the other’s company. They shared the boring stories and the secrets of their day in the big double bed under the mosquito net in the big, high house.

She was happy with the love they shared. He was happy too. Life had been kind to them, and the first years of marriage ed by so quickly in a cycle of work and seasons. They didn’t notice they and others were growing older. They weren’t even totally aware the longed-for family had not yet arrived.

Before they were even married, the decision had been made after long and adoring conversations that they would fill their old farmhouse with a family. In their little bubble of love, they both wished to have children just like them. The children would grow up and work on the farm and then take over when their parents were much, much older, if that could ever happen.

A girl for her and a boy for him.

The people who just love to organise other people’s lives had left them alone for the first few months of marriage. But then, having decided the young couple were being a bit slack in their duty, they started to ask questions.

‘Do you want kids? Are you trying yet? Are you waiting a while? Any news yet? You are not getting any younger you know.’

The chorus of intrusion didn’t worry either of them at first. The organisers eventually found other people to boss. The newlyweds got on with getting used to being with the one they loved. They became used to sharing things, asking what the other person wanted to do on the week-end, which movie to see, which parents’ retirement home to spend Christmas at, or whether to just stay home.

Being married was a lot harder than just being in love.

But in a few years, the questions inevitably started up again. Cousins in the big town were producing broods of offspring. There had been a few wet seasons in a row with thunderstorms and blackouts and it showed in the population boom in their extended family of brothers and cousins. The couple bounced the family babies on their knees at barbeques and wished they were theirs, but instead laughed and handed them back when they cried or filled their nappies. Of course, they then pretended they were glad to do so. In reality, they wanted to hug them tight forever.

She knitted and sewed tiny clothes and stored them in her wishing chest. After a year or so, she took them out and gave them to the next cousin who produced an heir. Her husband sat with her and murmured reassurances until she dried her tears of disappointment and loss and got on with life.

When it finally seemed that her dreams would come true, she reacted like most young wives do. After the initial surprise and excitement, she spent a lot of time dreaming of the future with a baby in the family. Between dreams, she worried the tiny soul growing within her was going to change their lives in ways as yet unimaginable.

How could her heart possibly grow big enough to fill with love for a baby when it was already so filled with love for her husband?

When the baby arrived that night in the big town hospital, her question was answered. The first look at her daughter’s tiny face eased away all her doubts. The love of a mother for a child is sometimes frightening in its intensity. It certainly was for her that night. She hadn’t known she would feel so strongly about a tiny, bald-headed, red-faced squirming scrap of humanity.

As the waves of visitors descended on the hospital room smiling their congratulations, the overpowering love morphed into a fierce protectiveness. It felt like a physical wrenching when visitors, even her own mother, demanded to nurse her baby and picked baby up in their arms, ‘goo’ing and ‘gaa’ing for no good reason. The further the baby was from her arms, the more it hurt. This was a ridiculous emotion. She just couldn’t credit something so wonderful as the birth of a child, could also hurt her so strongly.

The shutting door behind the laughing gaggle of visitors was usually the signal for the new mum to burst into floods of tears. Well, the nurses patted her shoulders gently and told her this was exactly what happened to new mums. She had to learn to surf the tide of emotions and how lucky was she to have a perfect little baby girl and things would all settle down once she got home.

Love and family ties

Well things did settle down. She eventually got used to the swelling feelings of love she felt whenever she looked down at the tiny face of the newborn. She got used to being a mum. The broken sleep and continual demands wore her down but she kept on. His cousins from up the valley with their warped perceptions upset her greatly but that was how life played out.

Next time around, she knew what to expect as a son was added to her little family. She felt the little stings of perceived insults and upsets just as keenly. But, once again, her heart showed the incredible capability mothers have to grow and grow with the love of a child. Of course, there were many moments, minutes and days when she was so worn out, exhausted and cross that she could have given them both away to the pixies (just joking - maybe).

Life and love are built of the strength we draw upon to get through trying times. So, when they sat on the wide verandah looking out over the paddocks of thriving sugar cane, they felt the love they shared for their two children surround them.

They knew they were blessed. Later when the baby cried in the night and fussed and wouldn’t settle, those were the reserves she drew on. Heaven knows, by the time the day dawned in some of the early months of the babies’ lives, her reserves were so low she could only sleep if her husband held her close in the double bed, murmured to her, and stroked her arm gently, until her eyes slowly closed.

An unexpected thing helped her cope when the early days drained her. On the occasional week-end when the pressures of farm work were less, her husband would pack the whole family and the spare nappies and bottles and juice and biscuits and old towels and spare clothes (have we got everything?) into the family car and head up to visit the uncle who lived at the beach.

It was a comparatively short journey but it helped the whole family escape from everyday routine. Spirits lifted and the toddler chattered excitedly as they got closer to their destination. After unpacking the spare nappies and bottles and juice and biscuits and old towels and spare clothes from the car, she would fall into the welcoming arms of his old uncle.

The bond between the uncle and her had grown and strengthened as she grew from girlfriend to wife to now, a new mum. She felt fully at home when she and the family entered his beach shack. He showed with every movement and the kind gaze of his eyes, that her comfort was at the foremost of his thoughts. He settled her in an old cane chair as though she was the most precious piece of china being put on a shelf.

As he put the old jug on to boil for the first cuppa of the day, it wasn’t just the thought of hot tea that made every aching muscle, every jangling nerve in her body start to relax. Her husband had known from the first meeting that these two shared an uncommon bond. Sensing these visits were balm to her soul, he would settle her with the baby in her arms and head out the door hand in hand with the toddler, leaving her to the uncle’s kind ministrations.

When father and daughter returned to the beach shack, the sight which welcomed them was heart-warming. Baby was softly muttering in her arms, fast asleep. By her elbow would be a quickly cooling cup of tea in an old enamel mug. Across from her would be uncle wearing a smile which split his ancient face in two.

Not everyone understood the strong attachment she and the uncle shared. The general consensus was they had nothing in common, that she was looking for another father figure, that he still had an eye for a pretty girl. But the love between them was not seated in such worldly concerns. She had always regarded

him with a total lack of judgement about his lifestyle.

From the beginning, it was clear she simply enjoyed and looked forward to his company. In return, he appreciated her guileless affection and was simply pleased to have someone he liked, to talk to for hours and hours.

While her husband sat by the window in the shack or while he walked on the beach with their daughter, she chatted and chattered about all manner of things. She talked about the babies and the farm and what she had done on her last trip to town. She talked about things she had seen at the movies and in magazines. She talked about her parents and cousins and friends.

He listened and his heart grew increasingly fond of this woman who had unexpectedly become such a huge part of his life.

One day, the car from the farm pulled up outside the beach shack before dawn. They didn’t unload a child’s worth and baby’s worth of things from the car. Instead, she popped quickly into the shack, emerging with uncle on her arm. She bundled him into the front seat and squeezed into the back with her children. Off they went.

This was a very unusual thing as uncle rarely left his home. He was practically a hermit. She was possibly the only person on earth who could have coaxed him from the shack so easily. Her husband drove.

The kids and their mother in the back chattered and giggled. Soon uncle was smiling with the sheer novelty of being in the car. They didn’t go far. The sun was barely above the horizon in the east as they bumped along a rutted track

towards a neighbouring beach.

Her husband had heard about something quite amazing when he was last at the pub. He wanted to share it with his family and uncle, so had suggested this early morning expedition.

With baby dozing in her arms and the toddler clinging to her skirts, they pushed through scrubby trees until their shoes touched the dry sand at the very top of the beach. Before them were dozens of wallabies spread across the firm wet sand. It was a strange sight they saw before them. The three adults stood speechlessly and appreciated the spectacle of animals in quite an unexpected place.

None of them had ever seen wallabies grazing like this on a beach. To the wallabies, it was their usual daily breakfast buffet among the salt-encrusted seaweed.

The painted sky and the island just out to sea made the whole scene a somewhat surreal painting. She stood clutching the baby and holding her husband’s hand. Uncle’s hand came to rest on her shoulder and squeezed. The moment was complete.

The adults were content to stand in spellbound awe just drinking in the beauty.

They were completely silent on the short trip back to Uncle’s beach shack. It wasn’t often of that family were short of words, but the beauty had made talk unnecessary. The farewell from Uncle that day seemed a little more heartfelt than usual. In her heart, she was glad they had included him in the little trip. She felt he would be happy too.

He sometimes appeared a bit reserved when they visited him and overt displays of affection were reserved for just some family . But from their long conversations, she became aware he had never felt a moment’s regret about leaving behind his share of the farm. The damage done to him by the war was not physical. But sometimes, late at night or in untoward situations, he felt the pain of what he had seen and done. The pain rose readily to the surface and he would seem to others to be surly and unfriendly. He had known this would have been quite difficult for him to manage back on the farm, and that had guided his decision to leave.

From then on, he had become accustomed to his own company for most of the days and most of the weeks, unless family visited from the farm. He rejoiced that he had somehow known the beach would help him heal. That proved itself correct, day after day, as he combed the high-tide mark for all those odd things the ocean returned to the land. He dragged his haul back to the beach shack and used it to deepen his connection to the place.

The round glass fishing net floats hung under the tank stand. The washed-up nets he found were also there or draped on the walls of the shack.

The brown beer bottles were buried, neck down, in the sandy soil. They defiantly marked the paths around his shack. The beachcombed ones were supplemented by his own after regular afternoon tipples.

He also found crab claws and fish frames. His walks were long and rambling as he laughed at the antics of the soldier crabs as they scuttled sidewards or poked at the jellyfish blobbing on the sand. He collected coconuts by the dozens and piled them by the shack door.

It was this obviously strong connection between place and man that she felt when they first met.

Seeing the beach and the hamlet through his eyes helped her to feel the same. Every story of the place he shared with her deepened her understanding of what it meant to him. She grieved when big storms ate some of the sand on the spit and sucked it back out to the ocean. She felt his pain when he found dead seagulls and shared his excitement when he spotted crocodile tracks just down the beach from his shack.

Through this sharing, she grew to echo his love of the beach.

But to her it meant something a little different. To her, it was not an escape from any horrors. It was more a way of washing her mind clear of everyday fidgets that tended to bog her down. When she was younger, the fresh sea breeze had swept the cobwebs of study and learning from her mind. As she grew older, the minor irritations of farm life disappeared at the beach.

Now, when she felt every cell of her body and mind were tied in baby knots, a visit to the beach helped her to break free and to be herself again.

She loved to walk from the high grassy shore, through the dry sand above the high-water mark. Kicking at the seaweed, she stood for ages on the firm wet sand as the tide retreated. Digging her toes into the sand until her body tilted forward, she would fix her eyes on the far horizon. Several rocky islands drew her eye. The seabirds wheeled and cried in the sky. The lapping of the gentle waves was a daytime lullaby. Never ceasing, the waves ran up the beach then retreated, over and over again. They glistened with an energy that filled her soul.

Of course, the beach was rarely hers alone. She would nod and chat to the hopeful fishermen. To herself, she hoped none of the gleaming silver fish would be hooked that day. She would sometimes watch the children on the beach, even when she had her own in her arms. The sheer joy of their running, shouting games spilled into the day and to the ocean dipped sky. Sometimes, she found evidence of parties with bonfires built up, then burned, then buried. She ed when she had been at similar parties and smiled secret smiles.

Then there were the messages. She found names scrawled in the sand with broken branches and washed-up sticks. She found ‘I love you’s and a few mischievous ‘Help me’s. Once an ‘I see you’ started her heart racing. In the same spot, she found ‘Wave to me’ and ‘Look up’. She did look up and saw two old ladies in deck chairs waving energetically at her. Kindred souls. She looked forward to this game and found several more messages before they stopped. There were no ladies, no deckchairs and a For Sale sign on the grass. Whatever could have happened?

A few visits to the beach brought rain and wind. She wouldn’t take the children down to the beach on these days. She always went by herself.

No trip from the farm to the beach would be complete without her feet being planted in the sand. She would shrug herself into a parka. She would race across the road, through the sting of rain on her face to feel her toes grab hold of the wet sand. Hours later, still wiping sand from her feet, she would smile.

The beach was her perfect place, and she would love it all her life.

She must to tell her husband she wanted her ashes to be scattered there. Oh…that’s a bit maudlin. There’s plenty of life left in her yet and plenty of things to do. In fact, she had a special something she simply loved to do in those

stolen moments when she was home alone and at least some of the jobs on her to-do list had been crossed off.

Beds made. Tick.

Breakfast dishes washed up. Tick.

Ironing done. Tick.

Tick.Tick.Tick.Tick.Tick.

No-one could accuse her of neglecting the house or her family. No-one could begrudge her this silly little secret ion. She knew this latest craze of hers, this time-wasting pursuit could be frowned upon by some. But she just loved having a time that was all hers. In that time, she was the master, she was the mistress, she was totally in control. Anything not meeting her exacting standards would soon die.

Snip.

Oh no, you weren’t thinking she had evil thoughts in her mind, that she was involved in wicked pursuits, that she had blood on her careworn hands?

Surely not. This was a time in her life when contentment was settling on her soul like a comfy quilt, wrapping past injustices and angry thoughts in its softness.

Things were starting to go well. This little pastime was her reward to herself. She didn’t need to do this every day. It would be a little cruel if she did. But she did like to watch. She did like to go down the high back stairs and in underneath the house up on stilts. There in a corner, she would stand in the slanted rays of sun sneaking in through the tall battens lining the downstairs area. It was a time to ire her bonsai plants.

Oh, how she loved the tiny perfection of the trees and bushes in miniature. She adored how the slender little branches with leaves so small managed to look so old and young at the same time. The row of bonsai plants marched in perfect order along a trestle table propped up against the eastern wall of battens.

She had full control over these plants. They in no way resembled the lawn surrounding the house. That had to be humbled into smooth green submission with the fury of the motor mower’s blades every time it threatened to swallow the garden hose and hide an army of snakes advancing on the house. As for the palm trees she loved to see parading along the driveway to the house, they were past humbling. Without warning they would drop fronds that could sometimes slice into the soft ground or pepper the ing cars with dozens of rock-hard palm seeds.

The easiest to humble of all her favourites were the tropical potted ferns dotting many of the higher surfaces inside the house. All she had to do to make them behave was water and fertilize them, remove the dead fronds, move them out of the sunshine and mist them with water on dry days. They were simply a little temperamental in their needs, not hard to control.

But the bonsai? Now, that was where she could exert her full power. Every once in a while, she would shake the dirt from their slender roots and trim them, just a tiny bit. Trim the little branches too. Such power in the scissors she wielded. She was actually stopping them from growing. Not killing them, not stopping them dead. Just convincing them with her delicate little cuts as they sliced through the

growing bits, they had grown enough for now. She was freezing them in time.

This was certainly a heady power she evoked downstairs in the slatted light. Other people indulged in showy gardens full of bright foliage and flowers in season. Most people had a jacaranda tree or poinciana tree or African tulip to dominate their yard and demonstrate their love of nature. Velvet smooth lawns ringed by golden cane palms and majestic queen palms showed a family had loved their garden for many years. Current trends showed in the garden beds with plantings of snowflake bushes or bromeliads or caladiums or hydrangea or yuccas or whatever was the latest plant in the nurseries.

To her, these vistas were a true delight to ire when she visited friends’ gardens. She drank in the heady colours and exotic smells and said all the right complimentary things. But in her heart of hearts, she yearned only for her tiny bonsai treasures. She secretly judged the others’ showiness and heady perfumes against the little plants under her house, completely under her control. She loved that thought!

Sometimes, life made her leave her little secret behind. The big world was calling her. If the day was a Wednesday she was in for a busy day. She had to get all the routine chores done quickly. Get breakfast on the table, get her son off to school, make sure the daughter didn’t have any university tutorials in town today. Then she’d pop the washing in the machine downstairs (Hi, little plants). She would give the house a lick and a promise and head to her neighbour’s house.

Love and the neighbours

Wednesday was now routinely the day she gave the woman next door a break. From the moment the man next door had been found after the terrible time down

at the swimming hole, his wife had barely left his side. When the doctor had given her the news at the hospital that her husband was unlikely to walk or talk again, the neighbour’s wife had determined to spend all her time with him. Fortunately, one son was able to take over the majority of the work on the farm with the help of casual labourers from the district when needed.

That became a bit superfluous when the word got around. Farmers near and far turned up unexpectedly and simply pitched in to get the jobs done around the farm. No-one seemed to be too busy to help. They all seemed very eager to lighten the burden of worry for the couple. The big red tractor could still be seen moving through the paddocks although unfamiliar strong hands gripped the steering wheel.

Not long after the debacle of her barricade across the access road, a sign appeared down at the waterhole simply stating that the area was closed to all. As word of the incident with the farmer had spread so widely, eventually cars stopped turning up there. People were unwilling to prolong the issue and respect for the farmer kicked in collectively after everything that happened. Not one swimmer floated away a hot afternoon in the rippling waters for many, many years afterwards.

With the farm taken care of for the immediate future, the biggest concern was to help the recovery of the man next door. He stayed in hospital for six weeks while the medical teams did their darnedest to get him up and going again. His efforts to work with the rehabilitation specialists were feeble, to say the least. The speech pathologist needed a lot of convincing to continue her work with him when he repeatedly turned his head away from her and stared into the hospital car park.

With his wife on one side, he made small attempts when the physiotherapists tried to get his leg moving again. It all seemed too hard and his sadness was palpable. The social worker suggested he might be missing the farm. In the end,

her perception led to him being released without any real progress. But it did mean his wife willingly and joyfully drove him back home.

There was a sense of expectation in the car as they approached their farm. Glancing sidewards at him as she drove, she noticed a lone tear make its way down his cheek.

She prayed it was a tear of joy and not tears for the man he used to be on the farm. The former proved itself true over and over again once they were home. He had hated the hospital environment and couldn’t wait to be home, whatever shape he was in.

There were cars all over the front lawn. The door of their low-set house was open. A ramp inclined up towards the door. There was a smell of baking coming from the house as the neighbours and friends surged forward to welcome him home. His tears started in earnest as he looked up towards the tree covered hills that meant so much to him. Inside the house, the high regard his community held him in was evident.

The handier neighbours had installed ramps front and back and made several modifications to the house to make living there as easy as possible for him. Some of the women had taken over the kitchen and had produced enough food for the freezer, refrigerator and pantry to make the woman next door’s jobs a little lighter for weeks to come.

There was a welcoming party planned but not too many beers had disappeared down the farmers’ throats before it was obvious to all present how tired the couple looked.

With gentle hugs and well wishes, the crowd left for their own farms. Alone at last, she wheeled him to the big bed and tucked him in. As she kissed him goodnight, she promised their love would see them through this rough patch, just like it had so many times before.

It might seem a bit simplistic, a little bit overstated, but this farm had pulled through quite a few tight times due to the strong love this couple of neighbours shared. They weren’t the type to gush or buy extravagant gifts. He had only bought her flowers when their babies were born, and she had forgotten their wedding anniversaries and birthdays more times than she would it. He had chided her forgetfulness initially but when he also forgot, she didn’t bother reminding him. They were just confident and secure in the love they shared for so long.

It had helped them through the tough times when he had been estranged from his father. The man next door had grown up on this very farm but had not lived there all his life. He had been the oldest of three sons. As they grew, all the sons were expected to help on the farm. In the back of their minds as they grew older, they started to wonder how the farm could possibly be left to all three of them. The farm was a good size and more than adequate to provide an income to the family of five. If life proved fortunate for all three sons, they could see themselves wanting to carve the farm into three portions to their new families.

If the father still lived when the sons married, they wondered if it would instead be divided into four smallish parcels of farmland. Even as young boys, they were aware larger tracts of land were needed to make sugar cane production economically viable. This was something they talked about when they were alone but never in front of their parents.

As the boys grew, the parents also put considerable thought into this dilemma. They called their oldest son aside and explained to him, that after they had died,

the farm would be his alone. They had investments they would settle on their two other sons. No-one would miss out in any way, and the farm would remain intact. They would like it if he asked his brothers to help him farm but that decision would be his alone.

For months, he hugged this secret knowledge to himself. He had a growing inkling this decision by his parents could cause great friction between the three brothers. In times of quiet, he would gaze out at the foothills and the mountains rising majestically behind the farm. He would picture himself as the farmer: the person who would make all the decisions needed to coax the shoots of cane through the fertile earth and up towards greater heights. The only thing he needed to complete this perfect dream was a wife, a family.

All three sons were still agonising and arguing through the teenage years. Like any siblings, there were moments when they thought and acted as one. There were a lot more times when every word, every action was sure to annoy one of the others. One Saturday, the middle brother asked the other two to cover for him. If dad came looking, he was down the far paddock checking the irrigation pipe wasn’t leaking. In reality, he was riding his pushbike several kilometres to call on one of the girls who was in his class at the valley high school.

The oldest son, who would become the man next door, was jealous. Spitefully he told his brother no-one would be sneaking off like that once he was the person in charge of the farm. Two sets of eyes looked at him aghast as he felt the bitter regret of what he had said. He turned his back but couldn’t retract the words or wipe the wounded looks from his brothers’ faces.

‘What do you mean? What ?’

That night after dinner, all three sat down with the parents. It was the youngest

son who broached the delicate subject. When the father realised what had been said, he roared at his oldest son. He sent him from the room with a threat ringing in his ears. The oldest son would need to find himself a job elsewhere. If he couldn’t trust him to hold his tongue for a few years, then he wouldn’t trust him on the farm for a few years either.

‘Come back when you’ve grown up. When you reach twenty-one. If you reach twenty-one. Come back and we’ll see if you are a trustworthy man.’

Bitter tears of regret washed away all his prospects of the future as he tossed and turned all night. As the cold light of dawn broke over the hills to the east, he jammed a few clothes into an old school bag and walked off the farm without a backward glance. As he reached the main road, his last action was to bend and wipe the dust of the farm from his shoes.

He walked for a short time until a local recognised him and pulled over and offered him a lift. Ten minutes later, he walked up the driveway of a mate’s place in one of the towns in the valley. They were good mates, but his heart was in his mouth as he knocked at the front door that day. His mate’s mother swallowed her surprise and told him to come inside while she woke his friend. Both boys sat on the narrow single bed for hours mulling over what was the biggest event yet to happen in their young lives. Shortly before lunch, they shared it with the mate’s mum but left out the reason why he had left home.

He didn’t want to spoil his chances.

His chances were good. He’d chosen the right mate. The mate’s mum was a single mum and felt happy to have some more company around the place. The agreement they reached was he could stay there as long as he finished school that year. It was only ten or so more weeks. If he was still around, he needed to

look for work to pay her something towards his board and lodging. Sounded like a good deal to all three of them. None of them spared a thought for the family back on the farm who had found an empty wardrobe and an empty bed where they expected to find their son. They certainly had not cooled down since the argument the previous night, but they hadn’t expected he would leave so quickly.

But Monday dawned as it always does. With it, came news that spread like a cane fire as the local women came to town to do their weekly shopping. By evening everyone knew the farmer had thrown his son out on his ear. The boy was living at a mate’s house. What had he done? The rumours covered every eventuality, every possible scenario.

They were salacious and sad, provocative and just simply the products of a gossip-starved community.

Only the boy and his family knew the whole story.

It took only a few days for the rumour mill to move on to new stories. But the single mother in town was becoming a little worried about what she had taken on. The boy had barely left his bed in the sleepout except to drag himself to school. He wasn’t eating and he wasn’t studying. She shared her concerns with friends and, one day, a friend offered a solution.

The friend knew of a local farmer who had just one daughter and fought a neverending battle to get someone to help him out once in a while on the farm. The farm was not a large one but it was too much for the farmer as he had lots of other interests. He knew the tides by heart and could hear the fish biting from kilometres away! It didn’t take much convincing for the farmer to take the boy on when he heard the story.

Love determines many futures

That was the start of the longest, slowest burning romance ever. For when he rode an old pushbike all the way from town and up the track to the farm shed, he was just seventeen years old. Upstairs peeking through the louvres on the back porch was the woman next door. Back then she was just thirteen years old and only just learning that

boys were strange creatures who were often hard to understand.

So, there was no immediate falling in love, no crushes on each other. At first, they only nodded from a distance. In the last few weeks that he spent at high school, she saw him often but they both nonchalantly ignored the other. When her friends pressed her for details of the Grade Twelve boy, she shrugged her shoulders and denied even knowing his name. Then school was over for the year and her father held a cut-out party to thank the people who had helped him with his harvest.

She stayed inside with her mother baking sausage rolls by the dozen but never ventured out to the shed where the clinking of beer bottles grew louder as the light grew less. The boy now wasn’t needed to help on the farm for several months. She had no idea what he did over the long break. She was busy with Christmas, and friends, and books. He was busy celebrating the days of summer holidays with mates who were getting ready to go off to University. That was not his future.

Early the next year, he showed up again at her parents’ farm. He had some jobs over the break but it was customary for business and farming to slow right down

over the long hot and usually wet summer period. He still needed money to live. Her father took him back on and set him to work at some jobs around the house. He proved very handy.

He fixed the chook pen and cut back the bougainvillea scrambling up the tank stand. This set up a pattern for the coming years. He worked for ten months of the year on the farm, then disappeared for two months or so before quietly riding back up the drive on his pushbike looking for work.

The first time he worked in the house was to put up a set of wooden shelves in the kitchen for her mother’s teapot collection. It had spilled out of its original cupboard. That was the first time they chatted, as she sat at the kitchen table drinking sugary sweet lemonade and demolishing a plate of pikelets. She ired his back as he stretched and hammered.

She slid into a daydream about his arms and how they would feel around her when he asked for a drink of water. She invited him to sit down but his manners and respect kept him standing. They started to talk and he asked her about school. Seems he didn’t miss school at all, but he had been quite attached to some of the teachers and wanted to hear the stories.

From then on, they became each other’s favourite person in the whole world to talk to on long afternoons after school. She would barely be home for five minutes before she would fly down the back steps and over to the shed, hoping to find him there working on some piece of oily machinery. If he was out in the paddocks, she would scowl her way back upstairs. Her mother would greet her with a warning that she was spending too much time down at the shed. She needed to he had a job to do and she was still at school. He had four years on her. She was still a kid. But her father would say late at night, ‘She’s lonely, love. Leave them alone. They’re just good mates.’

They became the best of mates and continued to fill in the hours before tea with idle chatter of Fidel Castro in Cuba and Billy Graham’s crusade in Australia and how sad it was Donald Bran has retired from cricket. The massive loss of life when a plane crashed near the big town held their attention for days. They both grieved as they had known boys returning from boarding school down south who were on the plane.

He gave her some advice about mathematics homework, and she took out his splinters when a log he had carried slid through his hands. She baked him scones and madeira cake and he brought her the juiciest mangoes from the trees in town. Every action, every word seemed harmless but served to bind them closer through familiarity and growing understanding of each other’s likes and loathes. She was still a kid, a teenage girl. He was still not a man. The years, however, were changing the only obstacles in their inevitable path.

Of course, there came a time when the words between them hit just the right spot and the sunlight streaming through the shed made her hair shine like a halo. His arms moving strongly as he repaired the tractor and her laugh when he told an unfunny joke, all contributed to sweeping away the last of the obstacles to actually falling in love. It was sweet, unhurried and very private. Both were aware the situation they found themselves in was one that had been provided through the trust of her parents.

It was very possible her parents would be totally disapproving. Their daughter who was still at school was falling for her best mate. This mate was not only estranged from his family but had been welcomed by her father to take on responsibility beyond his years. By the time he was twenty, he was virtually running the farm while her father indulged his love of fishing and crabbing. Hitching the tinny to the back of the farm tilly, her father would shout instructions about what needed doing on the farm then disappear until the sun went down.

No doubt it never entered his mind that his helper was finishing the jobs at top speed so he could wander down the farm track to meet the school bus that brought the daughter home. Hand in hand they would wander back towards the house. It would take her mere minutes to dump her school port and hat and rush to the farm shed after telling her mother she was going for a bike ride or to check the chooks or play with her puppy. They would share the little tales of their days in wonder and awe at what they were both feeling for the first time.

Until she reached her final year of school, this was simply a sweet little secret they shared. It was a simple romance that no-one else knew about. They both felt there would be too much disapproval from other people if all and sundry knew the farmhand and the farmer’s daughter had fallen in love. But as she reached towards seventeen, something changed the direction of what was happening between them.

One evening, watching television as a family, her mother had turned down the volume on the set. That was quite unheard of. Her parents said they wanted to discuss something with her. Fear of what they had discovered put her heart in her mouth. Maybe the young lovers hadn’t been as unobserved as they thought all those afternoons in the shed.

Her blood was thundering so loudly in her ears she had to ask her mother to repeat what she had just said. They wanted her to make her debut. Really? She had thought they weren’t interested in such a thing and they had thought she wasn’t interested. But, to her parents, it was something quite important. It mattered to them. Their only daughter needed to be launched into society. It was an old tradition but here in the valley they loved a good tradition.

Her parents were keen for her to make her debut at a school debutante ball. She would spend months practising the steps of the dances and her curtsey for when she was presented to the official party at the ball. She and her mother would choose or sew a long white dress, fairly simple, with her shoulders covered.

Together with low-heeled white shoes and a simple bouquet to complete the picture, she, along with twenty or so of her peers, would present the ideal face of virginal young womanhood to the community. They would present a set number of traditional dances for the entertainment of the smiling, proud families and friends. The girls would be called out to the front, one by one, to be presented and make their entry into society. There was just one slightly large stumbling block as her thoughts flashed with approval on the whole affair.

Girls making their debut needed someone to partner them to the ball. The girls were not like Cinderella. They couldn’t go alone. The partner could be a brother but she didn’t have one of those. He could be a cousin but hers were all quite old. He could be a boy in her class at school. That was a possibility. It could be her secret young man. Not a hope of that. No-one knew (big breath out, in relief) and they certainly would not approve. She could almost hear the murmurs of surprise and disapproval that would fill the hall if she was on the arm of her father’s farmhand on such an occasion.

Not surprisingly, her parents had the problem covered. Her father’s friend in the big town had a boy of just the right age. He was willing to be driven out to the valley high school for all the rehearsals and her parents were paying for the hire of his suit. Several months later she discovered he was also being given a deposit for his first car to sweeten the deal.

It actually turned out the deal did not need sweetening. The first time they stepped from their respective parents’ cars in the school carpark in time for the first rehearsal was a watershed in their young lives. He stared at her like she was the only girl on earth. In return she flushed crimson with the pain of her first crush. That decision to make her debut really put the cat among the pigeons.

The rehearsals gave the perfect excuse for her to spend less and less time at the farm shed. She felt so torn between her old love and the excitement of the new. Just seventeen, she didn’t have the experience to manage her emotions, so life

became totally out of control as her heart ping-ponged between the man on the farm and the boy at the dance. Neither of them was aware the other even existed.

She was totally drained by her emotions. Having no-one she could confide in blew what she was feeling out of all proportion. Her schoolwork started to suffer and her mother worried the debutante ball was too big a distraction to a girl in her final year at school. But this sort of thing had happened before. History is littered with tales of people distracted from the path of true love or tempted by the new and fresh feeling of a crush. So, she spent sleepless nights in her single bed and worried through lessons at school. She spent time at dress fittings with her mind in a whirl.

The good thing about crushes is that they usually don’t last. It is their saving grace in a way. As the weeks of rehearsal wore on, she got to know her partner much better and saw through some of his flashy ways. Nothing could take away from his good looks, but other girls had noticed those looks too, and he paid just as much attention to other girls as he did to her. By the time the ball came around, they were just friends, just partners for the night, and there would certainly not be any broken hearts when they didn’t have any more reasons to be with each other.

When she looked back on that time, she was just grateful she hadn’t made too big a thing of her infatuation. It was just part of growing up. It was very plain to her that her strongest and lasting feelings were still for the young man on her farm. There was nothing to do except make her debut and hope her life could return to normal.

The debutante ball was on a Saturday night, so the young farmhand was not going to be around. But he was waiting when she stepped from her parents’ car at the local hall. He stood under the trees and felt his future become clear as he watched the girl in her white dress. She caught a glimpse of him and smiled at his presence. As she danced throughout the night, she felt a surety settle on her.

There was no need for her to be part of any society. Her future lay right here in the valley with the man she was now sure she loved.

Love begets pain

All they had to do now was wait; for each other, with each other. She was waiting to get older. So was he. He planned to return to his father’s farm in several months’ time when he turned twenty-one. But they were young, and it was hard to wait.

By Christmas, she knew she was expecting a baby. When she told him, he was overjoyed but apprehension showed in both sets of eyes. What would their parents say? It would be such a shock and, such a disappointment. But they loved each other and hatched secret plans in the minutes they could spend alone together.

Her parents were not totally shocked or totally disappointed. They liked this young man but were concerned he could not their daughter, let alone a baby when it came. They talked long into the night and decided now she had finished school she would need to find some work locally until her pregnancy started to show. She hadn’t had any aspirations to go to University or Technical College or move away for further study. With what was happening to her, she would stay home on the farm baking cakes to sell. That would make a little bit of cash to help with the baby.

They weren’t ashamed of their daughter but didn’t want local gossip to destroy her. She was still so young. When baby came, they would arrange for baby to be adopted. Best to grow up in a loving family who had the means to a child. Marriage was not even to be considered until they had worked through this difficult situation.

He was not happy with this at all but there was little choice in the matter. His only avenue was to return to his father’s farm, now he had reached the age of maturity and the adulthood his father had mentioned more than four years ago. His return to the farm echoed that of the prodigal son. In his absence, the younger brothers had shown absolutely no interest in helping on the farm.

His parents had concerns about the future gnawing away at them each day. Farming was such hard work and their oldest son had held all their hopes and plans for the future. There had not been a day since he had left so suddenly that the father had not regretted his stern words. When the young man’s twenty-first birthday came and went, they were puzzled. Had he forgotten the threats, forgotten the promise?

Then late one afternoon, he reversed the route of his angry departure and rode his pushbike up to the house. His parents knew almost everything that had happened in his life over the four years. They had heard on the grapevine how he achieved well in his final exams. They knew where he was living and they knew how hard he had worked on the far neighbour’s farm. The only things they didn’t know about were the girl and the baby.

Pushing the past behind them, mother, father and son embraced at the top of the steps. His mother was keen to point out she knew he would return. His father wanted to know all the ins and outs of the other farm’s operations. Over dinner that night, he made peace with his brothers. They were delighted he had returned because it released them from any ties or responsibility towards helping the father on the farm. Proudly, he told them all about his girl, but not about the baby.

The reconciliation was happy and sweet. The father made it clear he wanted him back under two conditions. He was not to leave the other farmer in the lurch

workwise and he was to give his father another five years on the farm before it was his to own. It seemed this unexpected and complicated situation could possibly turn out for the best. When he returned to the far farm, he talked some more with her parents.

Until the baby came, things would continue as arranged, except he was free to go back to his family farm whenever his father needed him. Until decisions were made about marriage, he would still live in the town and she would live with her parents. With all of those arrangements, they were now free to wait until the baby came. After baby had been given to adopting parents, they planned to marry and help out with both farms until such time they could move into his family home.

Until the baby came….

That seemed to stop time. They were in a smug little cocoon of growing love, ever more in love with each other and waiting. The only problem was that the baby they were growing would not be theirs. She was too young and circumstances too difficult, according to her parents. Sometimes they wondered if his own parents may have held a different point of view. Maybe if they had been told about the baby, they could have convinced her parents to help the young parents-to-be to keep the child.

But it was not to be. The final months ed quickly. He doted on her and she just loved the state she was in. Few arrangements were made beyond having the local doctor call in to check on her a few times. No booking was made at the hospital in town and her mother bought only one set of baby clothes. Her mother asked her each morning how she was feeling. Beyond warning her not to even think of any attachment to the baby, that was the extent of it all. The baby was not totally unwelcome, but subtle actions and comments from her mother made it clear that her pregnancy was simply something she had to get through and then get on with her life.

The night the baby decided to arrive, she happened to be home alone with her mother. Her mother rang for her aunt who had six children of her own. She also called the local girl who was so good with caring for the wildlife and baby animals. The girl was very calm and would help settle her daughter as she laboured to become a mother. Both women arrived with time to spare to help deliver the red skinned, squirming bundle. She held the tiny body for less than a minute before the three women whisked the baby from the room. She listened for the baby’s squalling cries as she dissolved into floods of tears herself.

That was that. Move on. Get on with your life.

She was up and about the next morning. She walked downstairs to greet the new father as he arrived for work. She had big news. That day, and in the months and years afterwards, they talked secretly and softly about their daughter. They pictured the joy they had created for her adoptive parents. They described her to each other and imagined her life as she grew. Each year, for as long as they lived, they spent a time of wonder on the day of her birth, making special wishes for their first-born daughter.

This incredible love the young mother and father carried was never told to another soul. Even through the closest of times when their neighbour became their friend and ed them in so very many ways, they never chose to disclose the secret of the baby they weren’t able to watch grow up. Even when they ed their neighbour through her sadness and times of anger, the story of their first baby they loved so fully and gave away, was not used to help soothe her soul. It was a sad little burden, as light as a newborn babe, that was not shared, even with their closest friends.

Fear

You may agree, discerning reader, there was love everywhere in her life. It seeped into many of the nooks and crannies of the places where she lived: visiting and lifting her up through the occurrences of everyday life. It had an enduring quality. Some of her love lasted all of her adult life. Some of her love only came back when she most needed it. Love cradled her and ed her. It got her through those most difficult of times. It lured her through the becalmed seas of discontent that keep us so still in our lives that we sometimes wish to slip below the glistening surface and never again emerge.

Love buoyed her soul. It kept her floating and smiling, opening her arms to those she was closest to and to those who needed it the most. She carried it with her and left dollops of love like sweet cream as she shared her smiles and gestures. She gobbled it up when others offered her love.

But every precious loving moment brought her closer to a devastating realisation.

When you allow love into your life, you must be aware fear will follow. The two emotions are co-dependent. Opening your heart to love leaves it softened and ready for the piercing shafts of fear.

For every baby-smile that warms your heart, a cold voice of fear reminds you of all the terrible things that may befall that baby. For every wonderful day you spend with family and friends, fear warns you there may never be a next time.

Rather fanciful thinking. The brave will fight that fear. They don’t give it a voice. They simply refuse to listen. The brave conquer anxiety and push it from their conscious minds. We already know she is not brave all the way through. She finds it hard to face up to those niggling, nagging voices within. It happens whenever she feels that her life is on an even keel, when she is happy, when she feels love, she has the devil of a job to keep fear away.

Fear

An unpleasant emotion caused by exposure to danger or expectation of pain.

Fear is also known as cowardice, timidity, anxiety, nervousness, apprehension, trepidation.

Fear is the emotion that clamps hard onto your heart when an unexpected knock at the door wakes you in the middle of the night.

This was the day she was holding her breath for. This was the day when she would feel young again. Heaven knows she loved the little scrap of humanity in her arms but he was like a human piece of rope tying her to the house. The two months since his birth had seemed like they would…never….

The days, and nights, since she had proudly carried their son up the steps and into his home, had seemed quite interminable. She was usually up before the sun when he cried shrilly, demanding to be fed. She would sit bone-weary staring out through the louvres. Her eyes were blind to the beauty of the distant mountains,

the waving stalks of cane shooting their way skywards. She didn’t feel the cooling breeze on her arms when she jumped out of bed in her nightie to meet his demands and needs.

She only knew she had a job to do as a mother. Again! Surely the first days with her daughter had not been this hard, this trying, this difficult. Right this instant, she doubted she took up the space of a molecule of air. His insistent cries were creating cracks in the peace of the world for her to slip through, unnoticed by anyone. Every part of her being, focused on this perfect child, as was every part of his being devoted to her. She was his mother, the absolute centre of his universe. But still, she felt herself slipping down the plug hole when she emptied his bath water. Still, she felt herself fluttering on the breeze, pegging herself on the clothesline, as she pegged out the never-ending baskets of washing to dry in the crisp winter air.

There was no memory stored away in her soul, reassuringly reminding her it had felt like this when her daughter was born, almost three years earlier. This twentyfour hour a day tiredness glued her feet to the ground with every step she took. She hated living in the high house and trudging up and down the stairs to the laundry beneath. The woman next door had offered to pop a load or two of washing on each day but she had to refuse. Her neighbour would end up being tied to helping because the work involved with her darling son just never ended.

Her toddler daughter was raising herself these days. Fortunately, she was a calm and self-contained child who played with her toys and murmured to herself continually in a sing song voice. She had taken on the care of the doll her parents had surprised her with when mum had been in the hospital. Mummy had had a baby and she had one too. Her daughter seemed to sense the lack of attention she received was a result of the arrival of her brother. But it didn’t bother her and she was happy to snuggle up next to both of them on the old couch as the baby fed for hours.

Her mother, her friends and the woman next door had all assured her this time would . They pointed out, now, she had two children to care for and did not have the luxury of caring for just one baby.

What luxury?

‘You’ll be through this before you know. He’s sure to sleep through the night soon. Why don’t you give him the bottle? Put some Weet-bix in his bottle. A little bit of brandy settles them down. Take him for a drive down a bumpy road. Have you tried putting him in bed with you? They’re only babies for a short time. Give him a dummy. Play music’. On and on and on droned the wellmeaners with their advice while she screamed silently inside her head for them to shut up.

As long as there are wives and mothers, the advice will be freely given. Some of it fell on her deaf ears. Some of it seemed silly or too hard. But when her mother held the baby in one arm and her in the other arm she listened. After all, mother knows best. That was where she learned exactly how important it was to care for herself as well as the baby. She also learned the longest night seems shorter if you have something to look forward to.

That night, in the big double bed, she shared her mother’s wisdom with her husband. He had been tossing and turning for two months as well. Worried sick that his wife was not handling the second baby at all well. He also felt totally hopeless. Just talking that night settled at least some of their fears. He felt pleased she was approaching the corner of hardship as far as looking after baby was concerned, if not yet already turning it. Silently, he pledged to himself to help her however he could.

The rides aren’t the only heartstoppers at the show

Turned out, the solution at this particular time for her was simple. She would like to go to the show. Not the big town show but the one that had been held for the past twenty-five years or so in the little local town. It was an absolute highlight of the social calendar for young and old, locals and visitors. Falling as it did in the middle of the crushing season, it gave the local farmers and their families a day to draw their breath and enjoy meeting with friends and family.

It was a little bit of everything for everyone. She also thought it must be positively the best show in the world. After all, as a youngster in the big town, she knew everyone had talked for weeks about the annual show up the valley. A few hundred or so lucky folk from the big town would pile aboard the specially commissioned train that carried them on the tram lines all the way up the valley. The Showgrounds nestled in a sweep of the blue river near its headwaters: and protected by the foothills of the majestic mountain range. She still felt goose bumps each time she recalled the joy she had felt on the train, chugging along through the cane fields with her parents and brothers. As kids they would hang from the windows and wave to the people in cars stopped at the level crossings. Sitting back on her wooden seat again, she would try to decide over and over, which show bag full of unknown delights she would spend her pocket money on.

That feelings of childlike wonder and joy was what she had lost. It was missing in the lonely, small hours of the night, when she and the baby were the only people awake in the world. She needed to recapture those feelings to make her more able to cope, and to how to smile.

They packed up their little family and pointed their car towards the little town. May as well have left the car at home as they had to park so far from the showgrounds. There were thousands of cars lining both side of the highway and parked in the grounds of the sugar mill. What a kerfuffle, as families piled from the cars and formed a human stream which moved as one towards the entrance gates. Baby in his pram bumped across the railway line and the road but stayed mercifully asleep. She raced ahead with him, drawn by the attraction of the

sights and sounds of the agricultural show and the sideshow alley. Her husband caught up with her, the toddler already in his arms. Even before they were through the gates, the shouts and squeals of people enjoying the rides streamed out to greet them and tempt them inside.

The cacophony of sound was matched by the aromas wafting into the brilliant blue sky. The earthy smells from animals mixed with the cooking smells of show foods. There were whiffs of dagwood dogs and hot chips and hamburgers and fairy floss. The animals in their pens were adding the ‘agricultural’ to the show. Of course, they veered towards the petting zoo and their daughter, with huge smiles, was soon patting and hugging and stroking the chickens and goats and guinea pigs, and even a rabbit. They had to tempt her with promises of sugarspun fairy floss to get her to leave or they would have spent the whole day with the baby animals. Soon she was seated in front of her father on the biggest horse on the glittering carousel. Round and round and up and down. Wave. With baby still asleep in his pram, the day was living up to all its promise for the mother released from the binds of drudgery.

‘Are the cousins coming?’

Of course, they are. The townies had just arrived on the train. Two sets of cousins and one of her brothers and all their families were making their way through the crowd towards her. Swooping on the pram, their coos of iration and compliments about how much he had grown since they last saw him even threatened to drown out the carousel music. Catch-ups finished, their daughter was placed on her father’s shoulders while he inspected the line-up of all the new farm machinery for sale. Baby and mother retired to the morning tea tent for scones and tea and a good sit down. Nods and smiles and greetings to all the familiar faces soon had her heart lifting with happiness.

The exhibition halls were next. They decided to check out the art and photography and school exhibits before they went to the shed full of caged birds.

Maybe after that they would track down some burgers and hot chips as a lunch treat. They could find a shady spot and watch the show-jumping horses in the main ring while they ate. Maybe they could catch the wood chopping as well. The toddler daughter was starting to get restless again so they walked her to the pavilion with the children’s arts and crafts hoping they might bump into friends to distract her.

Lean forward. ‘Look at this, darling.’ Lean back. She was gone. ‘Oh no!’ ‘Oh no!’ ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!’ ‘Look!’ ‘Look look look!’ ‘Call her name.’ ‘Call her name. Call her name!’ ‘Help help help!’ This can’t be happening. She was right here. We barely looked away. But it was happening and she wasn’t right there anymore. The child’s mother stood statue still. Icicles of fear clogged her veins and froze her brain.

Time had stopped, but her heart raced ahead. Faces of concern rushed toward her as she cried out. They convinced her to stay right there in case her daughter came back. Pats of consolation and understanding thudded on her shoulders. Her husband raced off to locate the policeman on duty. He found him in the morning tea tent. Who could blame him? Nothing bad ever happened here. It was the valley show after all and everyone was here for a good day out.

Helpful onlookers rushed off and scanned the crowd for a little girl.

Just on three years old.

Blue spotted dress, straw hat.

Hair in pigtails. Have you seen her?

Have you seen her?

Spread out. She can’t have gone far. Should we look down by the river? No way. She couldn’t have walked that far. It was only a moment. Her parents just looked away for a moment. Everyone does that. Lying unspoken in many minds was a dreaded question. But what if someone had picked her up? Then she could be far away.

In the shock and panic, the mother’s mind grew fears that spread and multiplied. Her body trembled as shock set in. The crowd around her parted suddenly and took a sharp collective intake of breath. In the doorway of the pavilion was the

most welcome sight she had ever experienced. Cradled sideways in her husband’s arms, like a baby, was their daughter. There were no words for the sense of relief that washed over her in that first moment. She couldn’t help but notice the tears in her husband’s eyes as he told her what had happened.

One of the cousin’s sons had spotted the child in sideshow alley. She was staring at the rows of kewpie dolls displayed as prizes at the knock-’em-down stall. As they had walked past on their way to the pavilion, she must have noticed the dolls with the brightly coloured skirts and glittery hair, impaled on long bamboo sticks. The little girl had slipped back to get one for herself. Luckily for everyone, she was spotted and returned quickly to her parents. The cousin’s son had saved the day with his sharp eyes.

Although the terrifying incident had turned out well, the show had lost its shine for the family. Murmuring thanks to the crowd and the searchers, they both wiped tears from their eyes, she steered the pram and dad carried the daughter back through the throng. It was a very different journey out to the gate. Their entry had felt almost triumphant. The day had shone in all its glory. She had basked in the iration of their young son and welcomed joy and fun back into their lives.

Leaving the showgrounds, their feet were dogged by a sense of failure in their duty as parents. Both of them considered they had failed their daughter that day. Even though it was an impossible expectation for any parent to do twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, they had simply not kept all eyes on their daughter. She was probably a bit young to have been standing between them on her own. She probably should have been on her father’s back or shoulders. Imagine what could have happened to her.

Stop!!!!

Anyone would agree this was an absolutely ridiculous burden of self-blame they lay on themselves. They were fine and capable parents. This could have happened to any family. Surely, they were being a bit self-indulgent now. After all, she was missing less than ten minutes. They had taken her to a relatively safe environment where they knew many of the people. No-one could have imagined the kewpie dolls would lure her away.

But that is what fear does to people. Having felt the claws of fear settle into their hearts that day, they tried to work their way through by accepting blame. After the tears and the blame, the rest of the trip home was silent. The baby son slept wearily and the focus of all the angst, their daughter, nursed a Bertie Beetle show bag under one arm and clutched a puff of sticky pink fairy floss in the other. Wide eyed in her attempt to stay awake, she wondered why her parents sounded upset. After all, going to the Show had been such fun, especially the kewpie dolls.

Back at the farm, the young mother regained some composure. This terrible thing had shaken her resolve but she was still going to follow her mother’s advice and make sure she got through each day with the promise of something to look forward to.

And right there began the family tradition of the Friday trip to town. She was no longer content with shopping at the grocery store in the nearest little town. Oh no, her dreams were big. She wanted to be big and brave and leave the valley behind for the familiar streets and shops of the big town. Yes, it would be timeconsuming, and the kids might find it a little tiring. Nevertheless, she insisted her husband leave his farm work on hold for that day of the week.

Surely, he would always find each week he needed some thing-a-me-bob for the tractor or a what-cha-ma-call-it for the pump that could only be bought in the big town. So, with a boot already half full with spare clothes and nappies, and drinks and snacks for all loaded in the cabin, they would sail along the valley highway.

Sometimes the whole trip was accompanied by tired cries and whingy whimpers. Often, it was a little ocean of peace in a dreary week.

She loved these excursions and often told her husband she felt like a new woman as they drove homeward. The boot would be full of groceries, there would be tins of delicious home baking inside from whichever grandparent they had visited that day. New clothes for the kids were a very occasional treat as she sewed most of the things her daughter and son needed at that stage. The most usual treat was that three of them in the car, and later four of them, would be clutching dripping ice-creams in cones that threatened to coat the upholstery of each seat. It was a silly little something to do but it seemed to mark the enjoyment the trips to town brought to all in the little family.

As the car bumped up the farm track late in the day, the children were inevitably both asleep. They were dreaming and missed the change their parents felt in the very air. It may have come from the sight of the mountains behind or the majestic palms or the paddocks of silently growing cane, but wherever it came from, a wave of peace came out to meet and welcome them to their safe place.

Home.

After the fright the daughter gave them at the show, they needed to regain a sense of security within their family. Although home was simply the safest and warmest, most enveloping place for them, both parents felt they needed to grow outwards as well. It would be too easy to bunker down on the farm and retreat into themselves. No. They decided to push outside what they felt comfortable with. The husband resumed his week-end visits to the pub in town. Socialising with mates was just what he needed. It was amazing what a cold and frothy beverage can do for one’s own confidence and sense of the world. Besides, it gave him a chance to learn more about farming techniques, and the latest varieties of sugar cane, and about pest and weed control. His friends at the pub loudly and frequently acknowledged themselves as experts on just about every

subject and were more than willing to share what they knew with him.

But when he came home, it wasn’t the farming knowledge he wanted to share with his wife. It was the jokes and the stories. His world was opening up again after the ive time following the birth of their son and he just loved it. Life was good with his mates at the pub and his little family was growing more confident in the world.

With a little help from friends

In her turn, she moved back outside her own little mother world and its focus on child-rearing by welcoming in other mothers. She hosted morning teas for her friends and then encouraged them to bring their own friends. She would be the first to it the morning tea delicacies she served were often out of packets or easily assembled. No-one seemed to notice or, if they did, they didn’t mind.

The warmth on her verandah those mornings was not just from the sun. It came from women growing friendships and sharing part of their lives. The conversations usually started with talk of the children but inevitably veered towards a bit of neighbourhood gossip, some tales about Hollywood or royalty or what was happening at the local schools.

They opened their hearts to each other. This seemed to lessen any burdens they were holding. These friendships forged in the early days of parenthood mostly lasted until the children were grown and gone. One day, a friend asked why she never saw her at the local playgroup. Good question. She wasn’t really sure why she and the children had never spent a morning a week in the local hall with other mothers, children, toddlers and babies, playdough and finger paint.

Deep down she knew the reason but was unwilling to it it even to these close friends. After the frightening incident at the show, she had developed a bit of a problem with taking the kids out on her own. The trips to town or to see relatives were just fine. Her husband was with her. Two sets of eyes were there to do the job parents are supposed to do. She knew she was being a bit silly and was acting against her own decision to spread their little circle wider.

That’s why she presided over these morning teas in her own home. She had all the benefits of company but she was safely in familiar surroundings. In fact, the burden of supervision was lessened at these times as mothers are so good at looking after all children, not just their own. These were the times she was able to really relax as a parent.

Her friends surely had sensed this self-doubt. They all knew about how frightened she had been when her daughter disappeared. Several of them had been scared out of their wits by their own children at different times. They totally understood. They chided her gently, and promised their , and eventually she agreed to be at the local playgroup the next week.

Why, oh why, had she hesitated and hung back from this outing. It was simply the best time she had had for ages. Not only did she meet new friends, she also re-connected with an old schoolfriend from the high school in town. Her children seemed to love the company of others the same age. When the woman in charge took out her keys and opened the big wooden cupboard and produced all the toys for the children, she actually laughed out loud.

The time went so quickly she was almost disappointed when the goodbyes rang out. She had helped put away the little tables and chairs and the playdough and paints. Wiping down the morning-tea table, she was very hard on herself at being too afraid for too long to be part of such enjoyment. On the drive home, she realised she had opened a door and the sun was shining in. She was happy and secure and in a very comfortable place. The big house loomed up with its high

stilts and lattice enclosed verandahs. She was home again. The safest place in the world. Her growing confidence that she could handle motherhood did much to chase away the demons. She was in a happy place and was determined to stay there.

Of course, there were the usual upsets. Children always etch their childhood on their parent’s hearts through broken limbs and deep scratches and falls from great heights. But, for now, she was coping well. Friends and family, family and friends: people to talk to and share everyday life with. Life floated her along on calm seas.

When the fear returned, it was totally unexpected.

There had been some talk around that some undesirable people had moved into the foothills around and about. Some of the farmers were happy to turn a blind eye to the presence of people who just couldn’t live in cities or towns or with any neighbours at all. A few farmers had been known to come home from the pub and leave a gate open on the farm. Late at night, a car with no headlights would through the gate. Usually, the car would be pulling an old caravan that would be towed in behind a clump of trees, invisible unless you looked very hard for it.

Heaven knows who lived in these caravans in the foothills. Local gossip said these strangers were far enough from town they didn’t have to report to the unemployment office to collect their fortnightly benefits. Instead, a cheque would be posted out to them care of one of the little valley post offices. That may or may not have been true but locals had noticed an increasing number of people they didn’t recognise slipping in and out of the post offices and shops.

People who lived some distance away from the farms where the hidden caravans

had been parked would report cars slipping silently along headlands at nighttime as well as screams and shouts from the foothills at odd times. It was like a rural myth but, even though strangers were seen in the little towns, the children with them never turned up at any of the local schools.

The valley policeman felt it was his duty to check on the welfare of these free campers. He knocked on many doors and met only women on their own. He saw children’s clothes flapping on makeshift clotheslines and toys scattered inside some vans but never saw a single child or even heard one. Strange indeed.

The valley folk were very tolerant and could put up with these odd presences as long as they shut the gate and kept an eye on any campfires. Skinny dipping in the waterholes for a bath would only be condoned if no-one else was around. Farmers were relatively well-off in of assets and cashflow each year. With the country in a recession, they understood many people would be feeling economic pain. Times were tight and family break-ups were commonplace. Perhaps that is why these people were seeking out their peaceful spots in the valley.

Tolerance ran out abruptly when a cow or two disappeared here and there from home paddocks. Suspicion fell on the shadowy campers. With times being tight, they were probably stealing a beast to supplement their food. Roasting the beef over a campfire would be great for them. Not so for the farmers who lost their prospective Christmas dinners. When a fire roared through the gorge late one afternoon, the farmer who had paddocks ready for harvesting in the path of the flames rang around the locals. Pleading for help to save his crop, he vowed he would find the culprit. Several caravans had their doors rattled that night. The lone women within all denied fault and pointed to clean green spaces around their vans.

Not satisfied, farmers started padlocking gates and stopping access to swimming holes. Locals muttered and complained in the street and ittedly then, all

became settled for several months. Still and all, at the valley rodeo, anyone not known to the locals was eyed suspiciously and not made particularly welcome at the Service Club bar. Out-of-towners and unknowns alike had to shoulder their way through the wall of farmers’ backs to slake their thirst with a cold beer or rum and coke. The women were treated the same way. Farmer’s wives manning the Tea and Scones stall grew suddenly deaf if they didn’t recognise the woman making an order. Such is the power of a small community.

Apparently, this cold shoulder treatment did not go down well at the base of the foothills. Despite the padlocked gates, some pieces of farm machinery went missing; a water pump from the creek, an old tin box of valued tools. It seemed the people in the shadows did not like being ignored. Farm folk started locking their doors when they went to town for a shopping trip. Heck, they locked both front and back doors when they went to bed. They even took the keys to the tilly upstairs instead of leaving them dangling in the ignition as they had been doing since day one.

Everyone became a little more vigilant, more aware of movement on their farm. They ed on stories, ringing neighbours if they saw a suspicious car. Thank heavens for her state of mind, her husband was as laid back as they came. He didn’t get too worked up about anything, unless it concerned her or the children, of course. But even he had taken to locking the big shed-door when they made their Friday trip to town. He insisted that if she and the baby were having a nap in the cool of the day when he was off in one of the far paddocks, then she should close and lock the doors. Not to be frightened, just to be safe.

Fear comes creeping

Safe she was and safe she felt. Until on a late autumn afternoon with both children napping in their beds and the air as crisp as a starched tablecloth, she sat in her favourite chair on the verandah surveying the farm. Her husband was down the bottom paddock checking out the cane that was almost ready to send to

the mill started crushing in two weeks’ time. The chill in the air reminded her that the cardigan she wore for only a few days each year was still in the bottom of her bedroom chest of drawers. Too comfortable to get up and fetch it, she drew her chair back to the end of the verandah where the criss-cross lattice kept out the worst of the breeze. The spot was not intentionally chosen for the purpose, but it did make her totally invisible to anyone on the farm unless they walked up the high stairs to the front door and happened to glance sideways into the shadows.

She liked that. Her eyelids drooped and she drifted into sleep for a few minutes. Something startled her. Her eyes flickered open and scanned the house yard down the steps in front of her. Barely turning her head, she scanned the side yard and the gate leading to the big open shed. Surely her husband had not left the gate open. He was very particular about keeping their daughter out of the shed and safely away from all its potential accidents, risks, hazards and dangers to small fingers and arms and legs and heads. But there it was swinging idly. She startled again.

Out of the corner of her eye, she was almost sure, in fact nearly positive, she had seen a shadowy figure disappeared around the far end of the shed. It wasn’t her husband; too short. It wasn’t a neighbour; she would have seen or heard their car. They would have tooted the car horn in greeting. If it was a person, it definitely was not a welcome person.

Her heart clenched and fear made her breath come quickly. What to do? She had no hope of getting her husband to investigate. He wasn’t due home for ages. She couldn’t leave the children alone even if she was brave enough to investigate by herself. She simply watched and waited. From the back of the shed came the telltale clang of the big door swinging back on its hinges to rest against the corrugated iron wall. Whoever it was came into her line of sight through a window left open for ventilation. The person paused to run a hand down the side of a small oil drum before hefting it onto a bony shoulder, and simply disappeared.

When she told her tale, her husband was aghast. He felt helpless his wife and children had been potentially exposed to the unknown person creeping onto their farm. He reassured her that was the last she would hear of it. As he tossed and turned that night, he blamed himself but rational thought soon convinced him it is pretty difficult to be a farmer if you stay at home to protect your wife and children.

The only option was to help his wife protect herself. There were guns on the farm, of course. They were safely locked away and only taken out if an animal needed dispatching. In this case, she needed to learn to handle a shotgun so she would be in charge of future situations like the one today. There was just one problem. She loathed guns and refused to handle one.

When he came back from the pub two days later and told her two neighbours also had fuel stolen late at night from their drums, she suddenly conquered her dislike and insisted he teach her to handle a shotgun. For several days, he made a point of coming home early and lining up old tin cans on the boundary fence near the foothills. She grew to dislike guns less when she found just how capable she was at handling one.

It turned out she had steady hands and terrific eyesight, and a great need to keep bettering her own tin can records. Some days, she even practised on her own with two wide-eyed children peering from behind the safety gates at the top of the stairs. Who knew she would become an excellent shot?

Certainly not the stranger who silently stole from shadow to shadow up the palm lined driveway in the rapidly falling dusk one summer evening.

He waved his mate forward towards the apparently empty shed. She let them get very close to the shed. She could just make out there was an empty fuel drum in the back of an unfamiliar tilly. The house lights weren’t on. The children were playing on the floor of the lounge. Her husband was due home any minute.

Her resolve stiffened as she watched these two men. They seemed intent on stealing fuel from the farm for their own purposes. She was not about to let that happen.

Not on your nelly!

There was just enough light from the setting sun for her to be confident with the shot she was about to take. Make that two shots.

Softly calling to the children that she was just practising her tin can shooting, she moved to the top of the steps. The first shot puffed up dust just in front of the first intruder. The second left a recognisable hole in the side of the tilly. Shouldn’t be too hard for the valley policeman to track that particular tilly down. She felt so exulted with banishing her fear she wished she could twirl the long shotgun around her finger and slide it into a holster like the white-hat-wearing good cowboys on the western movies her husband loved to watch on television.

That day on the steps as the intruders beat a very hasty and absolutely shocked retreat, she not only felt like one of the good guys, she was bursting with pride. Who knew she could do such a thing? Certainly not her husband who apparently thought just having the shotgun would take away her fear, and who had not ever expected her to put her skills to use.

Certainly not her townie parents and certainly not the valley policeman who called her ‘girlie’ and said she had done something quite dangerous.

It would take more than that to wipe the smile off her face. She had shown the world, or at least the valley, she was a force of nature. Nobody should ever think about messing with her.

Confidence is a wonderful thing.

When confidence keeps the heart rate steady and the breathing slow and even, it sets you up to deal with dreaded situations and the unexpected. Her confidence did just that and she sailed along like a sturdy vessel on a calm sea. If there were choppy waters, she didn’t notice them or simply didn’t care.

For a year or so, life was so calm, so settled, she managed to convince herself she had mastered living, she was in control. We all know fate should not be tempted by mere mortals, especially mere mortals who succumbed so quickly, so thoroughly, when fate previously triggered their emotions. Fate was never going to be put in its place by this woman.

Certainly, she had bounced back as a parent. She had become a mother lion. She had proven that, when her family or her peaceful life were threatened, she managed to pull herself together. But, if she was too complacent about life, then fate was certainly going to test her strength again. Let’s see if she can manage fear, that unpleasant emotion, yet again.

She would tell you readily that in her younger life, she had been frightened many times. The midnight dash to the outside toilet watched by the possum: that

frightened her. The big Catholic School boys: they really frightened her. Big crowds in the local swimming pool: she was afraid she would slip silently under the water. But the biggest fear in her young life was heralded by a siren broadcast on the radio. As the very tops of the backyard mango trees throughout the suburb started to rustle.

Fear blows in

Her most terrifying childhood fear was when a cyclone threatened the coast. The radio announcer warned of its position in over-excited tones. Follow-up announcements talked of completing cyclone preparations and taking shelter. With the winds continuing to build in strength and gusts of torrential rain thundering across the corrugated iron of the roof, the family checked there were enough tinned goods in the pantry. Her father found the small gas stove and put fresh batteries in the torches.

When the uncles arrived, the men threw long ropes from side to side across the iron roof and secured them under the stump caps of the house-posts. Her mother made masking tape X shapes on each casement to stop the glass being cracked and blown inwards. The announcer on the radio reeled off co-ordinates and predicted the future direction that the tropical low-pressure system could head.

The family finished all the preparations having dragged everything, including the dog’s kennel, to safety underneath the house. Crowding into the kitchen, they heard the announcer state a cyclone had been declared and given a girl’s name. She saw the glances exchanged by her parents and sensed their fear. Her mother sighed there was nothing to do now but wait.

Wait they did. They waited as the wind, wild and wet, stormed in from the sea. It howled and pulled at the house. It tugged at the roof iron held down by ropes. It

rattled the windows fiercely. When they did not give under the onslaught, it picked up sticks and stones and pebbled them against the panes like an annoyed schoolboy.

The wind pushed in underneath the house and made the wooden floorboards drum in an oddly fascinating rhythm. Through the windows, the trees and bushes whipped back and forth trying to escape the fury. Sheets of roofing iron from houses across the street flapped and tried to release themselves from the roof trusses. One sheet flapped in a fury then flipped freely across the road and into their front garden.

Just as her father started to usher them all into the comparative safety of the bathroom, the fury stopped, the wind dropped. The eye of the cyclone ed in eerie silence over the town. With the day at its height, the light should have been bright. Instead, there was a gloom and weird colour to the sky. Within minutes, the wind came rushing back from the other direction. The sound was like a train thundering through a town at midnight. It could have been a plane attempting to land in their back yard. The cyclone brought with it louder sounds than any of them had ever heard.

The pressure in the house popped at their ears. She’d read of houses simply blowing apart from the pressure generated by a cyclone. With all the windows and doors closed, the walls simply were not strong enough. If that happened to this house? It was simply too horrible to contemplate. Her young heart beat so loudly her family could surely hear it above the raging wind. In fear, she crawled between her parents and waited for their arms to hold her tight.

They stayed bunkered down in the bathroom for several hours more. When at last the wind had died away, they could hear voices outside and ventured to leave the safety of the bathroom. From the front verandah, they could see two neighbouring houses had sustained minor damage to roofs. A carport was curled around one verandah and several cars had shattered windscreens. The street was

a green carpet of shredded leaves. One poinciana tree had fallen, trapping a fence beneath it.

People called across the street to check on each other. A man warned everyone not to venture outside their gates as the power lines were down draping low to touch the fences and bushes. Dad called from the backyard and everyone trooped through the house to laugh at the spectacle of the old, unused thunder box sitting sadly without its walls.

The rotary clothesline lay spreadeagled with one side resting on the leafy grass. After all the times her mother had yelled at her for swinging round on the line, in the end it had been the wind that had knocked it down. Crazy. The chook yard had suffered too. Luckily for the hens, they had been put in a cage in the safety of the laundry, but their yard would not keep anything in or out with its chicken wire twisted around the lemon tree.

She could almost hear the collective sigh of relief from the adults round about. The cyclone had been ferocious, but they had survived. The houses would see a few more years, after they had a bit of repair work. Sure, the power was off and probably would be for some days until a crew could string the lines between the high poles. They could manage okay.

The next day, the cyclone’s sad legacy was revealed. On the corner, lived a widow. She had been alone for ten or so years since her husband had managed to drink himself to his final reward. She had called out to her neighbours when they all appeared bobbing up like meerkats after the storm ed. Then, it seemed, she went inside to her favourite chair and sat down. The stress and shock and fear were all too much for her and she died right there in the chair. No-one could have saved her even if they had been right beside her. As the cyclone blew back to sea then followed the coast south, it took one soul with it.

Now, that fear had returned to clench her heart. A cyclone that threatened the region more than twenty years later, was to be named after a boy, according to those on the television. She’d been working on her tapestry seated on her new cane suite. For company, the television murmured in the background as it progressed through the afternoon’s programs. She’d glanced at the wedding-gift clock and calculated the peace left, before the children were dropped at the end of the drive by the school bus, could only be measured in minutes, not hours. Oh well, she’d done quite a bit of the cushion cover lately. Two tapestry cushions would look just dandy in winter on her cane suite. Warm and cosy. The ‘woop woop’ of a cyclone warning pulled her mind off the cushions.

By the time she adjusted the volume, she had missed most of the warning. But she heard just enough not to worry. Not that she would worry much anyway. This far up the valley, they could possibly get a bit of wind; not too much. It might lodge the cane, flatten it and lay it every which way, so it was difficult for the mechanical harvester. That would annoy the contractors who didn’t want the harvest to be slow and tedious.

But, more importantly at this time of year, with only weeks to go before the mills finished crushing, the farmers did not need any huge falls of rain. A rain system could find its way up the valley and be forced to drop its rain on the ranges bordering the valley. She had seen the torrents of rain many times. After the rain waterfalled off the mountains, turning rivulets into creeks, and streams into a roaring, tumbling river.

Whole tree trunks and huge boulders were carried down as the water fought its way to the ocean. The usually calm blue river took out its fury on the land around it, carving out corners and collapsing riverbanks. Cyclones that turn into rain systems were welcome in the valley but not at this time of year. She wasn’t terribly worried as their farm was relatively protected from heavy rain except for the swimming hole creek that could grow too big for its banks and spread and spread across paddocks, and the road to town. But that never lasted for very long. The house was safe too. It was built well and didn’t leak. Not one drop fell

inside its roof. She was not worried in the least. So, she drove the tilly down to pick up the kids. Back at the house, she filled them up with afternoon tea and listened to their tales from school. She supervised their homework. Yawn. Then she prepared tea; she was getting a lot more confident there. It wasn’t until her husband was sprawled out in front of the television that fear came knocking. She heard it in her husband’s voice when he called her into the lounge room.

She heard it in the announcer’s voice when he read the updated warning. The cyclone with the boy’s name had changed course. Instead of sliding down the coast towards the south, it had been pulled in towards land and was heading towards the coast to the north of the big town. The prediction was it would cross the coast just far enough north of the big town to lash it with its tail and cause minor damage. Some very heavy rain, flooded creeks, damage to buildings and vegetation from gale force winds. Take cover. Be prepared.

The big town could manage that easily. They were well prepared with emergency services; ropes and tarpaulins for damaged roofs, flood boats to rescue people foolish enough to drive into flooded creeks, shelters for people who needed to leave their homes. They practised constantly to deal with situations just like this. The big town would weather this storm. It was an old man and a little beach shack that caused their worry. If the cyclone continued on its predicted course, it would very close to the beach settlement where the husband’s uncle still lived. He had no telephone connection and police had already closed roads warning everyone to seek shelter in the safety of their own homes.

As they talked, you could hear some panic in both of their voices. The uncle was loved dearly by both of them. They were terrified he would not be aware of what was coming. She ed clearly how dreadful she felt when she learned about the widow on the corner who had died after the cyclone which hit during her childhood. He ed how deaf and obstinate the uncle could be. Surely some neighbours would let him know what was happening even if he hadn’t been watching the television. Surely, he would accept help if kind

neighbours offered shelter.

There was simply nothing they could do for him. They waited through the long hours of that night as the cyclone pushed its edges up against the mountain range. The rain poured as though the sky was trying to empty an ocean. At first light, they piled into the car to go and rescue uncle, hopefully. The police barrier stopped them near the first river crossing. They could hear its roar as the water rushed seaward. The bridge was many metres beneath the torrent.

They were turned back at the next two river crossings and ended up making their way eastwards into the big town before they could turn north. There was damage to see at the side of the roads all along the way. Every time something like this happened, the police begged everyone not to clog the roads, not to go out idly sightseeing. That certainly did not apply to them as they were on a rescue mission. As they drove northwards from the big town, they ed a small caravan of cars all heading the same way. There were several stops as road crews cleared debris and a fallen tree from the highway before waving them through.

At the second stop, the officer in charge asked where they were going. He shook his head and told them there was significant damage to vegetation on the beach road and there might be some trouble getting through. The fear she had been pushing down by concentrating on the drive, returned in a rush. The poor old man must have been terrified. Hopefully, the noise and destruction had not brought terrible memories back to him from the war he had fought in. The kids were sitting on the back seat with eyes like saucers as they came down towards the sea from the low range of hills. As they approached the settlement, most trees were totally stripped of their leaves. They pointed their bare branches in accusation at the sky that was now rapidly clearing to a hot, bright blue summer’s day.

All talk in the car stopped as they drove past the first houses. Many of the homes were better described as shacks. Many had been built dozens of years ago simply

as fishing huts or week-enders for cane farming families in the valley and to the north. Sub-standard was probably the best description of these well-loved dwellings. No-one would expect them to survive a severe cyclone totally unscathed. But their eyes were telling them maybe the damage was not as bad as they dreaded. There were roofs missing and windows shattered. But there were people out and about moving the fallen branches. Everyone waved at the car and showed great relief on their faces.

What they saw as they rounded the corner was totally unexpected. The esplanade was piled high with sand. The beach had been blown inland and was heaped up where the road once was. Wet sand covered the yards and gardens and was clumped around the bottom of the destroyed hibiscus bushes. The low-set houses had sand piled against their doors and windows. It covered the dirt and concrete underneath the high set houses. The sight was so stunning the whole family just stood beside their car and stared, before they started to clamber over the wet, newly formed sand dunes towards the end of the road where the uncle’s house stood. Maybe.

It was many minutes before the shack came in sight. What a relief to see it still standing and looking as though it was in one piece. Calling his name and shouting hello, they tumbled through the sand towards his door. A window creaked open and the grizzled grey head appeared. In somewhat salty language, the beloved uncle informed them it was about time someone came to open his door. The sand had been keeping him captive and he really wanted to check on his tinny and the tractor he used to pull it into the water.

The squeals of relief and nervous laughter at finding him safe soon stopped as everyone turned their hands to digging away the sand. Of course, no-one had thought to bring a shovel, so hands had to do for this gravely important job. As soon as the door was freed, uncle popped out of it like a cork from a bottle. Hobbling in haste, he got himself around to the back of the shack in record time, before announcing to the world in general, the tractor and tinny were just fine and would be right for fishing the next day.

His elation turned to despair when he discovered the tank was on its side. It had been toppled off its stand in the back yard. The sandy ground had swallowed his precious rainwater. The sight of him beating the tank with his fists in frustration and abusing it soundly was a sight that would stay with her for a long time. She sent the kids back to the car to collect the picnic lunch and supplies she had thought to pack. They brought back bottles of water too. That would have to see him through until a new tank could be organised. The relief hit her like a train, and she slumped into the old canvas chair. She told him how frightened she had been and how worried they had all been. He patted her knee and told her he would be around for many years yet.

She was afraid he wouldn’t be.

Sadness

You certainly are a dauntless reader.

To still be here, sticking with her through thick and thin, through ups and downs. You deserve a reward. Sadly, this may escape you. If you look for reward in lightness and frivolity, you may not yet find your prize. If you are experienced and understand life’s rewards may offer some solace in dark corners and other people’s sadness, then read on.

This is not going to be a happy ending. There, I’ve gone and spoiled it for you.

Surely you knew that? Surely you know not all lives progress through time without the slightest setback? Her life certainly has not. You have stuck with her through almost the whole gamut of emotions and now we will visit her in sadness.

Seems like sadness gathers where there is age, it accumulates in us as we count the years. Maybe it is regret for lives not fully lived. Maybe it is the knowledge that, each day, we are closer to our departure from life. Without wishing to be morbid, old people don’t have a lot to look forward to, so that compromises the depth of happiness they can achieve each day.

Sure, there are the strong souls who paste on a happy smile as they creak out of bed and sally forth to shine and spread joy through their doting families and friends. But for every one of those, there is one for whom the days of life recede,

taking with them all positivity and hopes for the future.

How simply and devastatingly sad.

Maybe she has vaccinated herself against the impending sadness through happy memories and joyful recall of experiences.

Let’s hope she is wealthy enough in both money and a store of happiness to keep the sadness at bay.

Sadness

An emotion of unhappiness, feeling sorrow or regret

Sadness is also known as low spirits, joyless, melancholy, despondent, despair, pessimism.

Sadness is the emotion that wraps you around like a cold, wet day and seeps deep into your soul when your old dog dies.

It was the month of May, both inside the house, and outside. In her kitchen, May was marked by the large calendar page hanging crookedly from a sticky hook above the bread bin. Numerals marched in order from the top of the page underneath the photo of a southern city beach, before trailing down to the bottom of the page amid scrawls of appointments and reminders. The detritus of a busy

life showed both on the calendar and the face of the woman sitting at the table gazing unseeingly through the louvres.

Outside the house, May showed in the puffs of dust floating from under the billet planter’s wheels as it moved with precision from one side of the cane paddock before turning and retracing its direction in the next set of furrows. She watched unseeingly as the setts of cane stalk slipped beneath the tilled earth taking with them the promise of a good harvest to come next year.

This years’ harvest stood waving proudly from the tassels topping the giant stalks. Next month, the harvest would start and the cycle of production would continue but, for now, her world began and ended in this kitchen crowded with souvenirs of holidays long past and reminders of days when she baked for a hungry family. A twinge of pain brought her thoughts flying back to the present as she hefted her leg onto the cane chair closest to the louvres. Her eyes regained their usual focus and she turned with a sigh from the sight of the machinery outside that appeared as small as her son’s long discarded toys.

Pushing back into her chair, she twisted sharply as the waves of pain started to recede. The mobile phone was just within reach but she dropped her hand with a sigh of despair and crossed her arms across her ample chest. She couldn’t expect her friends to listen to her woes. She really needed to snap out of this, and fast. After all, it was only a badly twisted ankle tying her to the cane chair. The injury was a result of an unwisely decided-upon exercise class. An impulse, a splitsecond agreement to meet with friends. The only thing she had got out of it was a very strong reminder she was getting too old and too large for such things. Even as she drove to the class in the old wooden church hall in the little town nearby two days ago, she had acknowledged to herself she was simply buying distraction.

It was impossible to stay home on the farm. Yet here she was. But not through any choice of her own. She would do anything to escape the four walls and get

off the farm. It was just so claustrophobic to be here right now. Yet, this sunroom where she was resting was exactly where she had loved to while away time and be alone for much of her time in the big house. For years and years, the beloved cane suite had been her place of refuge, the place to find solitude in a busy family day. The cushions had been changed many times over the years but her love of this furniture had never abated.

She ed how thrilled she had been all those years ago when her neighbour had delivered it to her from the furniture shop in the big town. Her husband had certainly surprised her then. The suite had been the scene of so many moments in their family history. She had cried buckets of tears on this chair and laughed until she cried in the other. Her favourite magazines had been piled high on the little table, week after week. The cousins had sat here, for good and bad visits. She recalled with pride nursing her children on these chairs for hours. The children were now gone, and had taken with them her joy in life. They had emptied the house of their clothes, their music, their posters, their shouts, their arguments. It was their laughter she missed the most. The laughter that rang out when they all watched television, when her son teased his big sister, when her husband tickled them as children and played with them until they rolled into balls, helpless with giggles.

Her daughter and her son had made her heart bigger each year of their lives. She loved them beyond belief. Now, they had both stolen parts of her heart away. The holes were filled with seeping sadness. Oh dear, just listen to yourself. Children cannot stay at home forever. Eventually they fly the nest and build their own lives. Hopefully, they will bring part of that life back home when they visit you. Hopefully…

Leaving home

Her daughter’s departure had been only a small shock. Both kids had done very well in their years at the valley high school. Her daughter had often spoken

about becoming an ant. She was great with numbers and had been helping her father with the farm books since her early teens. The local tennis club had elected her as the treasurer when she was just fifteen. She had aced mathematics competitions that were held between schools.

ancy sounded like a good, steady profession. She would have to go to University, of course, and study for several years. If she studied locally and continued to live at home on the farm, then expenses wouldn’t be too great. They could even buy her a little car so she didn’t have to rely on other people or sporadic bus services for a lift. That would help her if tutorials were at nighttime or varied from week to week. Of course, they hoped she would sail through all the subjects and not have to return to university to repeat anything. Then, she just needed to find a good job with one of the solid, respectable ancy firms in the big town. By that time, they could buy a little investment unit for her to live in. Maybe she could share with a friend. She could have all the independence she wanted. They would visit her each Friday when they made the trip into big town. What grand plans. What a proud mother and father. What a shock when the daughter arrived home one afternoon in her final year of school to announce she, and some friends, were all applying for a university in the big city.

Her excitement filled the room when she explained the four of them were all applying for different courses. They were sure to be itted with the good results they had gotten at school. The grand plan was to rent a unit together close to the university campus. With four of them sharing, the expenses would be quite low. Maybe the parents could all chip in to fit out the unit with spare furniture. It was going to be such an amazing adventure. Don’t forget, parents, there’s safety in numbers. We can all look out for each other.

Her argument was flawless. Her parents were devastated. The tidy little plans they had made between themselves lay in tatters. That was when she felt the first wash of sadness that was to dog her through the coming years. Of course, the daughter ed her final examinations. Her results were so good she was even

offered a scholarship elsewhere that she had to turn down in order to stay with her friends at the same university. One friend was not so lucky with her results and had to pretend she had set her mind on going to the local university so she could save for a future overseas trip. No-one believed her and they all missed her.

The trio of girls who were successful in getting what they wanted, plotted and planned for two whole months before they needed to set off for the big city university. Each snippet of plans for the future, drove the wedge of sadness further into her mother’s heart. On the day the little convoy of two small cars and two parents’ cars, packed to the gunnels with everything three girls could possibly need and would maybe never use, set off for the south, she had to turn away from the cheering and waving young people. Her daughter blew kisses from the enger seat of her friend’s car and that was the last they saw of her for four months.

The daughter fell into a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant to save enough money for her own car when she discovered she hated big city buses and trains. This kept her so busy she occasionally forgot to ring her parents on Thursday nights from the shared telephone in the shared unit. They would never ring her in case she was just caught up in something important. They just waited. When the calls didn’t come, they made excuses for her. Sometimes she wrote a letter full of joy and wonder at what she was learning and what the city was like and about her cool new friends.

These letters seemed like currency to her parents who treasured them more than gold. When they had read and re-read them and shared the stories with neighbours and friends, they proudly put them in an old biscuit tin kept on top of the refrigerator. The postcards she sent were attached with magnets to the fridge door. They helped keep the sadness at bay for a while.

The mother with only one chick at home turned her attention on her son. He

lapped it up for many months. She cooked his favourite food and made living at home just a little too cushy. When she insisted that he take off his favourite jeans as he was heading out the door just so she could iron a crease down the front of the leg, he suddenly felt smothered. As kindly as he could, he pointed out he was not there to take his sister’s place and shared several other little home truths that showed he was growing up fast.

After he had suffered through the incident with the wayward physical education teacher, he loathed school. He refused to go for weeks. His parents didn’t mind too much. They were all scared and scarred by what might have happened, so they let him take it easy. Both parents dared to hope this would end up with him staying on the farm to help his father in the future.

When he did eventually go back to school, a certain girl welcomed him back so warmly he fell into the throes of his very first crush. The crush deepened and they saw each other after school, on week-ends and holidays. They went to dances and once, to the cinema in the next small town. She even sat in the back seat of the family car with him on a trip up to the late uncle’s beach shack his mother now proudly owned. Life was full of teenage bliss.

Their son never mentioned any thoughts about studying at University so they started to relax a bit with their own thoughts he may stay at home, purely because of his girlfriend. She was a local girl and had no great aspirations to study. Maybe the two would eventually marry and settle down in the old house on the farm. They fell into the trap of planning their son’s future, just as they had with their daughter, without including him. Of course, the shock with their son’s news was not as great as their daughter’s when she had declared intentions of going all the way to the big city. His was a slightly smaller dream. Along with many other local lads, his head had started to fill with the stories of good money that could be earned at the mines just two hours or so drive from the family farm.

He was smart enough to know he would have to start on the bottom rung if he went out there straight from school. Even pushing a broom around the mine workshops was a good way to earn a good pay but his dreams were wellplanned. If he earned himself a trade, he was likely to earn better money. He wasn’t looking for one of the difficult jobs, actually carving out the coal underground, and wasn’t keen on driving an oversized truck up and down an open cut mine. He really fancied learning the skills to be an electrician.

Over the years, he had helped his father with lots of jobs on the farm but when a job called for a qualified electrician he had watched with renewed interest as the local sparky did the job. A trade or technical school would be the ideal way for him to gain the skills and certification. Of course, the local sugar mills dotted through the valley offered apprenticeships that were based on practical ‘on the job’ experience as well as training. Right now, he felt he needed to expand his horizons just a little bit more. Like his sister had.

In his plan, he would apply to the technical college in the big town and do the four-year traineeship there. His parents were mildly surprised. their plan? They thought he would stay on the farm to help his father. But this wasn’t too bad. He would still stay at home and drive in and out to lectures at the technical college. The year he started his training was hard for everyone. There was a huge flood in the big town that affected many homes and cut roads for days. Classes were disrupted. He couldn’t drive to the big town for some time.

The rain event that caused the flood also dropped a huge amount of water in the headwaters of the river that cut the valley. The family farm lost valuable top-soil. Young cane plants sat rotting in water for weeks. The year’s crop was a writeoff. There was little anyone could do except ride through the hard times. With little to occupy his mind on the long drive when he could once again travel to town each day, he started to mull over ways to make his life a little easier and to give him back some of the time he was wasting in his tilly. His parents were a little suspicious when he came to them, hand in hand with his girlfriend. She had similar difficulties travelling to town to complete her hairdressing course, also at

the technical college.

With the shiny eyed optimism of youth, they had come up with a plan to rent a tiny unit in the big town and move in together. They would get part-time jobs that fitted in around their courses. Life would be grand. What could the parents say? Their son and his girlfriend were both now eighteen years old. Her parents had surprisingly already agreed to the move. There was nothing left to do except wave farewell to the second little chick to leave the nest and to add visiting them to the list of things to do each Friday in the big town.

Although her son’s leaving was not the start of her sadness, it certainly added depth to it. The day seemed just a little longer and the night became a time to lie and stare at the ceiling. She wasn’t at all used to this. Granted, her life had been peppered with low points and highs, but she had got through them all eventually. She always bounced back with a strength of character, a resilience that helped her face the next day, and the next.

Until now. Now she could feel the sadness in every pore, slowing her steps and making it ever so hard to smile. The trips to the big town, the beach shack, the little bonsai trees, her children, the garden, her husband and her home: the list of things that coloured her life with joy and happiness, was so long. They didn’t have the same effect on her now. The days dragged by on leaden feet. If she had her own way, she would stay in bed and not get up to face the world.

Both children leaving had felt like a final straw but it was more than that. The emotional drain of a few years ago when she had put her quiet self on the line to defend the waterhole had sapped her resolve to face life with a smile. She had been humiliated and embarrassed by the whole event. Even though she had recovered on the outside, she was knocked down again a year or so afterwards.

Sadness creeps closer

To help the woman next door, she had offered to sit with her husband as he slowly faded from life after the fall at the swimming hole. To give her friend a few hours respite from the daily grind of care, she would walk across the farms and up the stairs and into the lounge of her neighbours’ home. Once she arrived, the woman next door would hurry to the shops and to do her jobs in town. The woman next door was grateful but also felt she was relying too much on help with her husband.

After his wife left in a puff of relief and annoyance, the oddly matched couple would settle into the quiet of another long afternoon. At first, she would read to him from the local newspaper. She wasn’t sure if he was comprehending, or even listening, but the reading helped her calm her soul. She told him the local gossip and was sure a grin sometimes played across his lips. One day, she told him of her sadness when the daughter spread her wings and left for the big city. She definitely felt him squeeze her hand that day.

When idly telling him some gossip once, she regaled him with the tale of a young mother who had popped into the nearest little town to fill a prescription at the chemist.\

She had chatted to neighbours she met as she left the shop and was luckily still in earshot when the chemist’s assistant ran out the door pushing the left-behind pram, with baby still fast asleep. She was stunned to see the tears that ran down both his cheeks unchecked.

How was she to know about his loss so many years ago? The neighbours’ tiny baby had not grown up in their loving care and no-one ever knew the happiness they had given away that night so many years ago. She hated upsetting him and

took great care in the future to check she didn’t tell him any stories that could possibly offend him or draw out old memories. Sometimes she sang or told jokes. There was a deep comion in the room as they sat companionably in the afternoon sun, and she felt uplifted by her time with him until the day he died.

At first, she hadn’t sensed any change. They sat hand in hand as the shadows drew in, as they often did, knowing the wife’s car was sure to appear soon. At the high point of her story, she squeezed his hand but received no response. Thinking he was asleep; she remarked her story could not be that boring. Realisation dawned, and she drew in a deep breath of anguish.

When she arrived home, minutes later, the woman next door found them sitting still and quiet. There were no words. Raw grief filled the room. It wailed and cried to the top of the gum trees. It opened every window to let the sadness pour in to the two women left bereft. That event really rocked her to the core. Granted, it was the death of her neighbour, not a family member. But they had been close friends. To have been holding his hand at the moment he died filled her with a sense of gratitude and stripped her of her courage. She was afraid now for her own husband, her own family. She felt powerless to protect them against the world.

What had been a secure and strong life was now being buffeted continually. There had been two failed crops in half a dozen years. The rain clouds which massed and boiled up the valley from the ocean couldn’t make the climb to the top of the range with their massive loads of rain. Like petulant children, they dropped the water where they struggled, then flipped over the range and outwards towards the west.

The rain would have been appreciated on the western side of the range but it didn’t work out that way. The one small benefit for the west was the mountain creeks and river filled to the brim with cascades of water and broken branches,

loads of soil and rocks of all sizes. Some of these water carriers turned their backs on the ocean to the east and carried their burdens down the range and headed westward.

But their cousins to the east were bigger and mightier. They tumbled down the range creating cascading waterfalls of great beauty. They spilled out onto the fertile floodplains and cut corners in the desperate rush to the ocean. From the bends in the blue river, they ate out mounds of sand and soil until the overhanging land fell into the river and was swept away. Farms lost tonnes of fertile topsoil to the roaring torrents. As the rain eased, small causeways continued to be covered by metres of rushing water and gullies still roared with the downward flow.

As the river and creeks struggled to carry the massive volume of water to the ocean, puddles were left behind. The young cane on some farms and in some gullies and near some creeks struggled to survive in the water and was lost. It was a difficult time for farmers. Usually, they welcomed the rain. It watered and refreshed the crop more thoroughly than any amount of irrigation water flowing through long pipes or sprinkled from above could do. But the rain sometimes just didn’t know when to stop. Too much rain is sometimes as bad as not enough for crops.

Fools and their money

That was when farmers retreated to their sheds in disgust and dismay. Turning the air blue with comments about what the rain could do with itself, they contemplated not only the loss of the crop but the wasted hours they had put into cultivating it, the fertiliser being washed seaward and the income that would not be earned that season.

When her husband had experienced this the first time, she had been unable to console him. He retreated to his shed. She heard banging and clattering at all hours but knew there was no need to be fixing any of the farm machinery. The second time the farm’s crop failed, she felt even more hopeless and helpless.

The only small distraction came from one of her male cousins who had moved to the valley from the big town. He was working out at one of the mines and wanted to have a shorter drive to work for each ‘four days on and four days off’ shift. At that time, small acreage lots were becoming quite popular with young families. He and his wife had purchased an acreage in the valley so their kids would have room to grow. They bought ponies for them to ride and ran a couple of head of cattle. There was a cool little creek creeping along quietly behind the beautiful modern low house they had built. Now he lived at least one hour’s drive closer to the coal mines that provided so much work to the people of the area. Living so near to each other now, it was natural the families would establish a bit of a connection.

There were the odd barbeques and sometimes, they just sat on one of the verandahs to shoot the breeze with their stories. It was an easy relationship and no-one placed too many expectations on it. Neither family expected to be part of every birthday celebration and a Christmas gathering was probably just a drink shared the week before, not the meal on the special day.

The families did not live in each other’s pockets even though they were related and friendly enough. Given that slight distance, it came as a surprise when the male cousin rang one night and invited them both over to his house. He said he had something to share, something to tell them about. On the drive over, they speculated what on earth the cousin wanted to talk to them about. He had never appeared this nervous before. He settled them in the most comfortable chairs and placed bowls of nibbles on the table before pouring them each a cold drink. By the time he finally sat down, they were bursting with curiosity. He didn’t start to talk then as the motor of a car could clearly be heard, then another.

The cousins were coming.

In all, the families of his brother and sister and one of the girl cousins all turned up on his verandah that late September evening. By now, they were agog with surprise at each of the new arrivals and bursting with speculation about what was to happen.

It was a pitch; pure and simple.

The male cousin cleared his throat nervously and launched into a spiel that knocked them back in their chairs and left their mouths hanging open. He spoke for at least thirty long minutes before he drew breath and ground to halt. He had obviously learned the entire pitch off by heart and was determined to deliver it exactly as he had learned.

Turns out the male cousin had been approached by a person out at the mines. Everyone and his dog knew most miners had a very healthy disposable income that they were keen to use to wring every last drop of enjoyment out of life. As a result, the builders in the big town and throughout the valley were flat out building beautiful new homes. The shop that sold impressive motor bikes was doing a roaring trade. Jet-skis and motorboats sold themselves to eager buyers who were keen to make the most of their time when they were not working.

There were also plenty of people around who wanted to help the miners invest some of their earnings for the future. Canefarmers through the ages had been good at this sort of future planning. Many of them had invested in holiday homes, blocks of flats in the larger cities, units for children at university and even the occasional mango tree plantation. Now, there were advisers looking for miners to invest in schemes that would set them up in retirement or help them to live very prosperously even before they retired from work.

The cousin had been impressed by the adviser who approached him and had followed it through with many hours of research of his own. He was still incredibly impressed and thought to share his fortunate news with some of his relatives in order to make this particular scheme successful and profitable. He was willing to spread the good news around so more people invested in the venture, making it even more likely to succeed due to a bigger base of . Frankly, it was nuts. But not nuts in a bad way. The scheme was based on starting a plantation of trees growing the nuts the state was known for. Delicious creamy, buttery white nuts that can grow in rich, volcanic soil in many parts of the world but should do best in this state, this place. His small acreage would provide the perfect spot for a small family plantation. But his dreams had grown beyond the growing and the harvest of the delicious nuts.

He was proposing a ‘farm gate’ approach be developed. After the harvest, a range of products using the nuts would be offered for sale at his acreage farm. There would be delicious ice-cream and smoothies and packets of nuts. There would be sweets and muffins all using the nuts grown right here, he suggested, as he swept his arm across the empty paddocks abutting the verandah.

He didn’t, or couldn’t, stop there in his wave of enthusiasm. They could build a little train to take visitors on tours of the nut plantation. The shop building that would be built near the entrance could be large enough for a little theatrette showing a film of the history of the plantation. Glancing around, she noticed that all of the people there that evening were staring at him rapt in the excitement and the promise of a small fortune coming their way. And on he went. He had thought it all through. He would need their help with the planting. Could he borrow some farming machinery? It would also be necessary to control the weeds as the little trees grew. There would be a growing time of six to seven years (he glossed over that detail) then the work would start in earnest. There would be the harvesting, and the manning of the farm gate shop and driving the little train around the property, and on and on.

Maybe it was nuts after all. He was incredibly generous. For a considerable startup investment, and an agreement to contribute work hours, everyone could get an equal share. Equal share in, meant equal profit out.

The dollar signs shone in all the eyes as he shared his bank details and talked about timelines. The drive home was filled with excitement as they considered how this investment would prop up the family finances after the loss of several years’ income from sugar. The daughter in the big city was an ongoing drain on their finances. They had put a little too much cash into fixing up the beach shack after a few storms.

All in all, this venture promised to turn their finances around and set them on the track to a comfortable retirement. Along with the crew from the big town, they spent several really enjoyable days planting the little nut trees in the freshly tilled paddocks. They all enjoyed picnic lunches on the banks of the creek bordering the property. It brought them together as an extended family and was a soothing interlude in troubled times. They went back many times to the acreage over the years and used their tractors to keep the weeds away from the trees that were growing vigorously.

Several trips to the big town included a detour so they could ire the lush growth of the trees from the roadway. They willingly chipped in several more thousand dollars, along with the cousins, to deck out the shop with huge plate glass doors which opened to a little deck overlooking the creek. They paid for chairs and tables for the little café and talked about the venture constantly as the trees grew to maturity.

Who can predict the weather? Certainly not the cousins waiting for the nuts to grow and counting the profits in their heads. Certainly not the farmer and his wife who had poured considerable money into the nut plantation and now needed a return for those years of investment. The frost came in unexpectedly. It was freezing cold and settled on the beautiful trees with unexpected savagery. As

the brilliant sun bathed the clear blue sky, the leaves and nuts that had frozen solid turned to mush. They rushed to salvage what they could from the mature crop, calling in favours to get the crop picked with most of the spoiled nuts now lying on the ground. It was too late to save all the crop; the frost had done its damage.

Seven years of hopes and dreams and longed-for expected profits disappeared that day. The machinery in the farm shed copped a lot of hammering and bashing as the farmer took out his frustration at their loss. She was inconsolable and retreated upstairs to sob, face down, on the bed for hours. Word about the plantation spread like a bushfire and the telephone rang constantly. Neighbours offered sympathy and pried for details. She rang both of their children and told them that times were going to be a little tighter in future, then took her broken dreams downstairs and walked for hours beneath the trees.

Decisions shape the future

In the following days, there were long conversations and brittle silences as they attempted to sort out their financial situation. The failure of the nut harvest had literally been the final straw. How could they save themselves from total financial ruin? Who could they ask for help? Their future was looking so bleak.

A farmer from further down the valley approached them with an idea. He had bought several cane harvesters on the cheap and was contracting out to help local farmers with their harvest. He was offering cheaper rates than the contractors who came in from other areas. He was on the spot so he could get in quickly and get the job done when needed. If the farmer came to work for him, there was a guarantee that this farm would be harvested at extra special rates and at the time the farmer needed it. It was a very attractive offer but he didn’t know if he could work for someone else.

What else could they do? The beach shack was looking pretty good right now after all the re-modelling. It had a prime beachfront position and they weren’t making any more absolute beachfront land! It hadn’t been used as often as they would like in the past few years as they spent time at the nut plantation and on other of life’s distractions. With both kids away from home, the family gatherings were more infrequent.

She really held out against the suggestion. The shack meant so much to her. Selling it to someone else would mean there would be less of a family inheritance to on to their children. It would sever the last remaining link with his uncle. It just seemed too big of a wrench even though it was an expensive to keep, rarely used indulgence. Eventually, the late night and whole of day conversations worked around to the unasked and unanswerable question.

What about the farm? Should they sell the farm? What an absolutely terrifying prospect for them both. When his parents had gifted him the farm all those years ago, they imagined it would stay in the family. They had pictured unborn grandchildren-to-be taking over the reins and keeping the family name on the deeds. His parents were both suffering from dementia and need never be told if the farm was sold.

They certainly wouldn’t understand how such a prosperous parcel of land could fail, not once but twice to produce an income for the year. They had been satisfied with the farm itself and would never understand why their son had felt the need to dabble in a venture growing nuts of all things. Wouldn’t the farm be enough to keep any man occupied?

Each time they stepped back into this discussion without end, their sadness and frustration deepened. Doors were slammed and rooms were left in silence. Neither partner in this loving couple wished to push for a final decision that would take them from this part of family history. They could not push the door closed on this place in a world they loved so much, that had given them so much

joy and happiness. How could they even consider stepping away from the high old house with its cool verandahs and the memories that furnished each of its rooms? How could they take the steps away from the creek, the wooded foothills, the palm-lined avenue that led grandly to the house?

In the end, neither of them had to make the decision. Neither of them had to push the other towards making it either. It was wrenched from their hands one morning after a spectacular storm swept through the valley leaving behind puddles and rivulets and soft, quenched soil.

He should have known better from all his years of farming experience. He should have anticipated the ground would have been softened by the rain. Perhaps he was distracted that day by the continuing arguments. Perhaps he was just driving the tractor instinctively like he did every day, without conscious thought and attention. Nobody knows. Everybody cared.

She went out to look for him when she heard the tractor revving loudly from a shallow gully just behind the house, only metres from the shed. She couldn’t go close to the site of the accident; she couldn’t see him like that. It may have taken her minutes to return to the house to ring for the ambulance but her legs ran kilometres. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo for a lifetime, and for a life lost. The police and ambulance, and friends and neighbours dealt with everything while she sank into an abyss of sorrow slumped on the cane suite with unseeing eyes not acknowledging the many comings and goings of those who tidy life up after death.

Their son, no, he was just her son now, came home that night. The daughter caught the first flight back from the big city. Their presence did not help. They could not fill the cracks in her heart with their hugs and soft words. Her soul gaped open and crumbled all around the edges.

The cousins came.

More soft words, hugs and pats. She hated the pats the most of all. Did anyone expect a pat to take away her sadness? Then, that part of her life was over, gone, buried in the rich, fertile ground of the local cemetery, next to his grandmother. The heads of the towering cane stalks bowed to her as she was driven slowly up the drive to the house, without him. It took months to be able to eat, to speak, to get through a day with any sense of normality. She started to sleep a few hours each night then fell into a pattern of deep, dreamless sleep. When she woke one morning almost refreshed but horribly alone, the decision that had been taken from both her and her late husband’s hands sat fully formed in her brain.

Of course, she must now sell the farm. Of course, she must now move to town. The farm should fetch a good price on the present market. She had to pay the bank back the money still owing on the two loans they had taken out to tide them through the hard times. But it was all possible. And, of course, there was still the beach shack. She could always retreat there just as Uncle had. In time, there could be grandchildren to idle away the holidays on the beach she loved.

Her life had been lived large. She had experienced so many grand times, so many low points but she was not going to just stop living before her time was up. Time to move on. Once again, a townie. It was like Saint Friday all over again on the day she moved back. It certainly felt absolutely perfect. A perfectly fine, beautiful day and perfectly right to be driving away from the sadness.

The months since her husband’s death had ed quickly. Climbing out of the deep abyss of sadness had been difficult, terribly difficult but she had done it, with help from her family and friends. They had convinced her she needed to start her life anew, seize the days and shake them until the delightful things fell out of them, like coconuts falling from a palm tree. She smiled at that. Shake the tree hard and turn every day into a saint. Not just Friday. Even Monday can be Saint Monday if it dawns clear and glorious.

Her new home was waiting for her. On a new housing estate in the big town, the developers had built the sort of village that people who were still working and those who had retired could live in. In the lap of luxury, of course. She’d visited several times before she had committed what little funds she had left after the sale of the cane farm and the repayments to the bank. It was enough to secure her a cute, little low-set one-bedroom house; easy to manage, no more steps. It was fancier than anything she had ever lived in before. In fact, her new home was so grand and up to date modern, that her beloved cane suite would look decidedly out of place there.

After all the years of adorning the big house’s shady verandahs, the cane suite had been loaded on to a tilly to make the short drive to the beach shack. It was terribly difficult to say farewell to that furniture. It had witnessed so many of her ups and downs over the decades. But it would fit in so well at the beach. Soon holidaymakers she had not even met would be enjoying its comfort. They would flop exhausted into its forgiving chairs at the end of long days fishing or walking or relaxing on the beach. They would enjoy their stay at the updated shack and their enjoyment would provide a small source of income for her in the next years. Eventually, her son and daughter would own the shack.

For now, she relished the thought other people would enjoy it as she and her family had, and she would reap some benefits from Uncle’s legacy.

Strangely, leaving the farm was not totally gut-wrenching to her. Her new home had much to offer. There was a swimming pool. She would give that a try. The centrepiece was a bowling green. She would have to learn how to play. Of course, there was a clubhouse for dining and drinking and card games, and a movie theatre, and a library, and a hairdresser and nail salon. If she thought about it, the only thing missing would be her husband. But he wouldn’t have enjoyed the move to the village at all! She blew a kiss to the house and all its memories and started down the drive.

If only she could have wound back time to when she had first arrived as a young bride. Just for a moment. Just to feel that joy once more. Here she was leaving as a widow, on her own, returning to the town of her childhood. Life really did turn in a big, daunting, amazing circle.

As she drove onto the highway that wound down the valley towards the big town, she turned to gaze at her farm and then the farm that had belonged to the woman and man next door. So much had happened in her life, in all their lives.

The tractor ploughing a far paddock on the farm looked so minute. She was too far away to hear the tractor and definitely too far away to hear as its slowly moving wheels crushed the tiny bones of a loved and lost baby beneath the fertile earth.