A Distant Journey Page 14

  I can’t spend the rest of my life cooking like this, she thought desperately. I certainly hope the effort is worth it.

  It was not. The roast was virtually raw and the potatoes as hard as rocks. It was inedible. Murray quietly buttered chunks of bread and said little.

  Cindy was distraught. ‘Murray, I am so sorry, but I couldn’t get the oven to stay alight no matter how many twigs I put into that firebox. It was impossible.’

  Murray stood up. ‘Cindy, follow me.’

  He picked up a torch and led her outside. He pointed the torch towards a large pile of wood, stacked neatly under the house. ‘Darling, this wood has all been neatly cut and split for you to use in the oven. You only use twigs to start the fire. They don’t give enough heat to cook anything.’

  Cindy burst into tears. She felt a complete failure.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetheart. You’ll get the hang of it,’ said Murray, putting his arm around her. ‘Come on. Let’s crack open that tin of peaches. And I have to say that I have never seen gumleaves used as a table centrepiece before. This has certainly been a very memorable meal. Wait till I tell the chaps at footy.’ And he threw his head back and roared with laughter.

  Trying not to cry or throw something, Cindy served the peaches and said nothing as Murray ate and chuckled to himself.

  *

  Despite the dinner disaster, the next morning Cindy felt more positive. Murray had already left, but she managed to relight the oven using the wood from under the house and make herself a cup of tea, wondering if she could ask Babs to send her over a large tin of her favourite coffee.

  She guessed Murray wouldn’t be back for a while, so she decided to explore past the fence that surrounded their house. It was still early and the morning mist hovered over the foggy paddocks. She put on her new boots, took down one of the stiff oilskin coats that was hanging on the coat rack by the kitchen door, and struggled into it. It was chilly outside, but she was determined to start to learn about Kingsley Downs and a morning walk seemed a good idea.

  Cindy followed the track that ran alongside the paddock fence until it took a ninety-degree turn in the direction of the shed. She wished there was a rise somewhere that she could climb to get her bearings; it was all so flat. The grass in one paddock had been cut, but in the adjoining one it was knee-high. There were no sheep in either of these paddocks, so Cindy decided to head towards the line of trees at Boomerang Creek to see what was there.

  The rays of blurred sun were struggling through the mist, which clung like sticky candy floss to the paddocks, treetops and fences, and occasionally swirled around Cindy’s feet, deadening all sound. She could just make out the smudged dark silhouettes of the river gums, so she kept heading towards them, carefully watching where she stepped. The uneven ground and low clumps of matted grass made a brisk pace all but impossible.

  At first the thick air muffled sound, but then she heard the unmistakable sighing of weeping willows, as their naked branches knocked against each other in the light breeze. As she approached the creek, she could see the cluster of skeletal, bowing canes. Standing guard above the willows was a line of river gums. She picked her way closer to the bank and saw puddles of muddy water pooled along the creek. She imagined this could be a joyous swimming hole when there was more water in it. Certainly the rope hanging from a branch of one of the gum trees suggested this was a favoured spot for a dip.

  It was eerie, here on the bank, with wisps of shadowy mist still wreathing through the trees. Suddenly a shriek made her jump. She froze and looked up, realising that the sound came from a type of parrot with emerald-green feathers splashed with red and yellow. It flew into a tree and was swallowed up by the mist. Cindy kept her eyes on the treetops, hoping the stunning parrot would reappear. There was an exchange of screeches with other birds and rustling leaves, but she couldn’t see anything, so she gave up and continued to pick her way along the bank.

  There was something a bit creepy about the place, and Cindy shivered, not from the cool of the morning but from the sudden sensation that she was not alone. She stopped and listened, but there was no sound now, not even from the willows. She took a few more steps, head cocked, listening, wondering if the feeling was just her imagination playing tricks on her. Yet she couldn’t shake the sensation that this was like the calm before a storm.

  Suddenly there was a blur, a shape that she sensed was out of place. She glanced across the creek and there, amongst the tall, dry grass, she saw movement. Then it was gone. She peered hard into the scrub, then took a few steps and stopped as she saw two large black pigs digging and snuffling under the roots of the trees on the opposite bank. Cindy didn’t like the look of them and instinctively she began to back away. Then she heard a sound to one side of her and stopped abruptly. She spun around and gasped at what she saw. On her side of the creek, a hundred or so yards away, partly hidden by the bushes and disguised in the shifting mist, was another pig. It was far bigger than the other two. It lifted its snout and sniffed, but did not look in her direction. Cindy was stunned at the sight of its enormous, dangerous-looking curved tusks. What if it charged her? She doubted her ability to outrun it.

  Shaking, she started to move back along the creek in the direction of the house. But suddenly the big boar swung its head around and Cindy could see its glinting, mean eyes fix on her. As it lowered its head, Cindy exploded into a run. She reached the gum tree with the rope that she’d noticed earlier and, grabbing it, she pushed off the bank and swung over the creek in a wide arc. The rope took her back to the tree, and she managed to hook her leg over a low fork in one of its branches. With an enormous effort, she hauled herself into it, holding on tight. She could hear the pounding of the pig getting closer, the ground tremors seeming to shake the tree. There was an angry grunt and a thud and, looking down, she saw that the boar was butting the trunk of the tree.

  Cindy panicked. ‘Go away!’ she screamed. ‘Murray, anyone, help!’

  She was not very far above the enraged wild pig, and a quick glance upward told her she could climb no higher. With sweat pouring down her face, she shut her eyes and prayed. Oh my God, where is Murray? Where is anyone? She was going to die out here, gored and eaten by wild pigs. What hellish place was this? She was unable to stop the feeling of despair that coursed through her. She screamed again, but she knew her voice would be muffled by the fog that still clung to the land.

  ‘Murray, Murray,’ she sobbed. ‘Please, you have to help me.’ She stared hopelessly through the leaves at the solid black shape at the base of the tree. It was there. Waiting. ‘MURRAY … ’ she screamed once more, tears streaming down her face.

  Then she heard a dull crack, and a second one, much closer. All at once the boar took off, loping along the creek bed.

  Her voice breaking, she screamed again, ‘Murray, is that you?’

  ‘Cindy, where are you?’

  Relief flooded through her at the sound of Murray’s voice. ‘Over here. In the tree with the rope.’ Now she heard Murray coming nearer, and finally she could see him, running along the creek bank, carrying a rifle.

  He let out an expletive.

  ‘Shit, he’s enormous – my shots are bouncing off his backside. Stay there, Cindy. You’re all right now.’

  Cindy had absolutely no intention of moving. She stayed rigid in the tree. She heard several more gunshots and finally Murray walked back towards her.

  ‘It’s over. They’re gone, the bastards.’ He stood under the tree as she peered anxiously through the leaves. ‘I’ll help you down.’ He reached for her as she clambered down. She fell into his arms and clung to him.

  ‘Thank God you came,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought it was going to kill me.’ She couldn’t seem to stop trembling.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s all right now.’ He rubbed her back as he held her.

  ‘They were hideous, horrible-looking animals. There were some others fu
rther down.’

  ‘Yeah. I hate pigs, razorbacks especially. They’re dangerous, all right. They take out the lambs. Have feral pigs on your place and you have real problems with stock losses. The ewes don’t know they’re a threat. They must’ve smashed through a fence somewhere. We’ll have to try and find where they’re getting in. What were you doing out here anyway?’

  Cindy couldn’t speak. She suddenly felt that she had been very foolish. Eventually she said, ‘I just thought I’d take a walk. That’s the second time you’ve saved me, Murray. I’m so sorry I came down here. How did you find me?’

  ‘I came back for breakfast. When you weren’t at the house, I thought I’d best see where you’d got to. I grabbed the rifle just in case. And that’s all there is to it. Sorry you got such a fright. Don’t get a lot of pigs on Kingsley Downs, certainly not this close to the house, so I really didn’t expect it.’

  He held her hand as they trudged back to the house in the pale sunlight. ‘I see you’ve got the stove going. Make a pot of tea. That’ll fix you up. I can’t stay. I’ll grab Tom Flowers and see if we can spot any more of those mongrels before they get into the sheep, and I’ll have to get the fences fixed.’

  Inside, Cindy pushed the black iron kettle onto the stove hob, longing for a cup of coffee. When she heard the ute drive away, leaving her alone once more, she slumped onto a chair and buried her head in her arms on the kitchen table and sobbed.

  What on earth had she come to? This was not at all what she’d expected. It was some kind of nightmare.

  Her shoulders shook as tears rolled down her face. All she wanted to do was to go back home.

  5

  Cindy leaned against the fence, studying her paint job on the verandah posts. Painting the decorative wooden fretwork trim around the posts in the few weeks since her arrival at Kingsley Downs had been a lot more work than she had anticipated. However, it had kept her mind occupied and given her something to do. She thought the ‘old house’, as everyone called it, an apt name for their home, and she found it rather a depressing place, but the steady rhythm of the slapping paintbrush had distracted her from the emotions that swept over if she allowed herself to stop and think about where she was and what she was doing here.

  She certainly knew what she was not doing. She was not breathing the clear crisp desert air. She was not chatting with friends or sitting in Babs’s kitchen sharing a pot of coffee, nor was she in the shop with Alice, admiring her aunt’s latest buys. And she definitely was not strolling down a busy street, past bubbling fountains or elegant stores. When she lifted her eyes, she could not see the picture-perfect Santa Rosa Mountains towering in the distance. Instead, she was breathing the dry dustiness of the flat brown paddocks where dun-coloured sheep blended into the landscape, looking faintly ridiculous in their woollen overcoats, their only shade coming from a few scattered trees, survivors of the clear-felling axes of Murray’s ancestors. When she looked out on all this desolation, sometimes Cindy felt she couldn’t breathe for the weight of her homesickness.

  As she watched the sun glint off the freshly washed windows – which, Murray had told her, would only become grimy again in the first dust storm – she felt a wave of sadness. In an effort to distract herself from the tears that threatened to come, she picked up her paintbrush and stood back to admire the main entrance of the house. She’d transplanted some roses that she’d found struggling beside a shed, and put them along the front verandah, hoping they would eventually climb their way up the verandah posts.

  Once she’d washed her brush and jammed the lid back on the paint can, she went indoors. In the dimness of the house it was cooler, but her spirits sagged further, for while she had been able to make improvements to the garden, there seemed to be less she could do with the house. ‘Money is better spent on stock improvements and fencing than tarting up that old place,’ Lawrence had said pointedly during yet another awkward dinner at the big house, where Lawrence’s word ruled. Cindy had waited for Murray to say that he would like to renovate and refurnish their home, since they had to live in it, but he’d said nothing.

  Though she was disappointed not to have the chance to make great changes to the place, Cindy was determined to brighten up the house as best she could. She had asked Tom if there was any other paint and had pounced on a gallon of white gloss and repainted the old wicker chairs that sat in the enclosed verandah. The first time Murray had driven her into Deniliquin, she’d bought material and made bright cushions for them. The leather chairs in the lounge room were worn but comfortable and she made colourful cushions for those, too. She’d pulled up decades of dusty, peeling linoleum and layers of old newspapers, intending to set about restoring the floorboards, but Murray shook his head, muttering that his father wouldn’t like it. When she’d mentioned to Mrs Flowers how disappointed she was, the housekeeper had told Cindy that there were some old rugs stored in a back room of the big house. Tom brought them over to the old house and Cindy had flung them over a fence and whacked years of dust from them before dragging them indoors.

  When Murray had got back that evening, Cindy asked him what he thought of her efforts.

  ‘Those rugs were in the big house when I was a child – I’d forgotten all about them. I think they look great there,’ he said, smiling at her. So they stayed in place and Cindy continued to mop and polish around them each week, trying to bring some life into the old floorboards.

  Now, walking into the kitchen, Cindy could not avoid the pots and pans she’d put off washing after last night’s dinner, since they were still piled up in the old-fashioned sink. Life, she reflected as she put on the kettle to heat the water so she could wash them, was much different from what she’d expected when she’d initially visualised her home in Australia.

  Another wave of homesickness and self-pity swept over her. She struggled again not to cry. As she filled the sink with the hot water, she gazed at the view from the kitchen window. It was like a still life painting. Nothing moved, not even the leaves of the gum trees that hung limply in the breathless landscape. The quietness unnerved her. She’d always had people around her: her father and Lisa and her friends at high school, her sorority sisters at college, as well as Babs, Joey and Alice. Here at Kingsley Downs there was just endless emptiness. Sometimes she would go a whole day without speaking to anyone except Murray. Mrs Flowers was always busy and rarely came to the old house. Tom appeared on occasion, but was not one to chat. Cindy missed being able to talk to people whenever she wanted. There wasn’t even a phone in their house. She could hardly believe it when she found out and had suggested that it would be nice to be connected, but Murray had explained that the cost of running a line miles from the big house to theirs was prohibitively expensive. Cindy could see his point, and it was not as if she had anyone to phone anyway, for she had not yet made any real friends. She felt disconnected in every sense.

  Cindy plunged a frying pan into the soapy water and began to scrub. The water was already cooling, and without boiling the kettle again there was no way to top it up with hot. Washing up was just one of the many household chores that was made much harder and more time-consuming without proper electricity or modern appliances. Cindy felt the tears coming in earnest this time and paused to take a deep breath. She felt overwhelmed by the new life she had so blithely – so unthinkingly – said she wanted. How naïve she’d been, she thought. Each day she made the bed, did the dishes, mopped the floors and dusted, stoked the stove and struggled to get a fire burning steadily for the oven. In the evenings, when the generator was running, she would do the ironing. Then it was time for bed, and in the morning she would start the routine all over again, except for the days when she did the washing. Then she would do battle with the wood-fired copper in the laundry at the back of the house, putting the washing through the mangle to squeeze out the excess water before she hung it all out on the line. Cindy managed to find some time to wash her hair, but trying to factor in any ot
her beauty ritual that she’d once enjoyed now seemed an impossible dream.

  As she scrubbed at a persistent stain on the frying pan, she took off the rings Murray had given her. She smiled as they twinkled in the light. In spite of her bouts of homesickness and her dismay about the reality of her new homelife, she certainly didn’t regret marrying Murray. He was kinder and more thoughtful than she had realised. Most days he left at first light and often didn’t return till evening, but sometimes if he was passing the house he’d walk in and surprise her.

  ‘Just wanted to see you smile,’ he’d say, kissing her, before heading back out.

  At first Murray had been slow to appreciate the magnitude of the adjustment Cindy had to make to life at Kingsley Downs, but as soon as he did, he tried to offer practical solutions where possible. He was patient and kind as he explained the ins and outs of her new life. He was a good listener and when, late at night, Cindy’s doubts plagued her most, he took her in his arms and kissed her until all her fears had gone.

  He never mentioned the disaster of Cindy’s first roast to anyone, although he would playfully threaten to do so. Instead he had taken her over to see Mrs Flowers, who’d given Cindy lessons in cooking in a wood-fired oven, as well as lending her a couple of cookbooks. Cindy quickly caught on to the basics and, although she could hardly claim that her meals were gourmet, they pleased Murray and she told herself that her efforts were a lot better than Alice could manage. When she finally successfully cooked a big Sunday night roast lamb dinner, she was so proud she considered taking a photograph to send to Babs, but then abandoned the idea as being rather silly.

  Cindy quite liked being in the kitchen, as it had big windows and was not as gloomy as the rest of the house. She’d occasionally sit at the kitchen table and treat herself to a coffee from the precious tin Babs had mailed to her. She’d then flip through the old cookbooks Mrs Flowers had lent her, wondering who had written the small annotations on some of the recipes or cut out a recipe from a magazine and left it between the pages.