Ric lay in the airless bedroom, gazing out the window, as night slipped away from morning, taking the stars with it. An orange band already outlined the trees along the river, warning of the scorcher to come. He’d barely slept. When he had finally nodded off at piccaninny dawn, the big red cock had crowed, again and again, waking him and throwing his mind back into wonder and turmoil. It didn’t matter how many times he went over things in his head, he always came to the same conclusion. There’d be no leaving at the end of the month when Sophie went home. He wanted Nina, and Nina was here. For the time being, at least, that meant staying on at Donnalee and working for his father, something that he’d vowed all his life never to do.
It wouldn’t be for long. He’d find work on another station soon enough, get some money together. It would be a big adjustment, though, staying in one place. Ric had never felt at home back in Italy, but since returning to Australia he hadn’t seemed to fit in either. So he’d drifted, always restless, always searching for a place to belong. He had an itinerant work history; fly-in fly-out jobs at mines and oil rigs, never sticking at anything for long. If he was to have a chance with Nina, that had to change. Maybe he’d rent a little place in town, put down some roots? But that was getting ahead of himself. Nobody would be hiring in this drought. Until then, he’d have to make the best of things here.
On one level it made perfect sense, it added up to a reasonable plan, a practical one. But on another level, the decision to stay disturbed Ric more than he cared to admit. Was this how it began? Wanting something so much that a man sacrificed that first little bit of his soul to get it? Not even noticing at first, maybe, because it was such a small piece. Or maybe because doing it got him closer to what he wanted, he reckoned it was worth it.
Years ago Dad had called him wild. Ric asked him, ‘How am I wild, Dad? Because I don’t want to be like you? Don’t want to stay at Donnalee and grow cotton?’ His father had muttered something about how one day he’d understand. Had that day come? Ric hoped sincerely that it hadn’t.
The sun flared above the trees. Ric got up, pulled on shorts and a singlet and went outside. The heat was building and the whole world was thirsting for rain. He pulled on his boots and headed down to the river, like he’d done so many times before. Like he’d done when he was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old and had hungered for Nina the way he did now. Like in the days when he’d strung hats in trees to summon her.
Some silly part of him believed she might be waiting, but there was nobody there. He was all alone with the muddy ditch of a river. Any kingfishers had fled this ruined place long ago. Ric slipped down the washaway to the water’s edge and stuck a stick into the sludge as a marker. With no vegetation as a buffer, the Donnalee side of the bank was collapsing into the water, clogging it with silt. Was this really the same place where he and Nina had dived and swum as children? He closed his eyes, fighting off an overwhelming sense of loneliness and loss. The contrast between the past and present was heartbreakingly clear.
He walked back to the house, unable to shake the sadness that was settling on him like a thick layer of dust, wanting suddenly to see Sophie. She wasn’t in her room. She wasn’t in the kitchen having breakfast. She wasn’t on the faded couch watching television. He went out the back and looked around. Where was she? Ric stooped low and ventured beneath the verandah. He paused while his eyes adjusted to the dim light and soon objects emerged from the gloom. Nothing much had changed since he was a boy. It was like a time capsule. There was the old rigid inflatable boat that he’d bought for a song when he was sixteen. Nothing wrong with it, apart from a cracked hull that Dad had been going to help him mend. Maybe he’d fix it up for Sophie. Festoons of cobwebs brushed his face. Logic told him that she wouldn’t be here, that she’d never brave the dark and the spiders, but curiosity made him forge ahead. He picked his way around an assortment of bricks and planks and pipes until he reached the rusted steel doors, right at the back.
The coolroom was nothing more than an old refrigerated truck body that his father had converted. Pretty clever, really. Ric slid back the bolt, relishing the rush of cold air on his face as the double doors swung open and automatically turned on the light. He stepped inside, into the coolness that was tainted with something else. The faint, sweet tang of death. A chest freezer stood in the corner. A row of eskies and wooden boxes were stacked along the wall, together with an assortment of homemade fishing rods. A butchered sheep carcass and a side of bacon dangled from hooks in the roof. But then, knowing Dad, it was more likely to be a goat and a side of feral pig, both of which could be found running wild in the neglected paddocks of Billabong Bend.
That wasn’t all. Two ducks hung from the roof by their necks, and two other birds that he didn’t recognise – big black and white ones, with domed heads like Chinese geese. Ric frowned, remembering the shots fired, the ones that had scared away Nina’s rare snipe. He touched the unplucked birds. Fresh. He might have guessed it. His father was almost certainly the mystery hunter in the wetlands yesterday. Ric rubbed his temple. The hard kernel of a headache was taking root deep in his skull. Damn Max.
Ric backed out of the coolroom and found his way, blinking, into the light. Sophie was running towards him, wearing a radiant smile. ‘Dad, come and see.’ She pulled him into the outside laundry. Max was standing beside the old incubator. It was a homemade contraption consisting of a cupboard with air holes top and bottom, a wire rack for eggs, a metal dish for water, a thermometer and two light bulbs for heat. He remembered when Max made it for Mum. She’d always hated how the cock birds harassed her hens for sex. ‘My poor girls,’ she’d say. ‘Never a moment’s peace.’ In the end she refused to have a rooster on the place, so Max had made her the incubator. Whenever they needed more chickens, friends gave them fertile eggs and Mum could hatch them out herself.
‘What’s going on here?’ asked Ric.
‘Poppi’s hatching me some baby swans. He found an abandoned nest and rescued the eggs.’
Ric shot his father a sharp look and then peered into the cupboard. Nine or ten large pale eggs nestled together in the rack. Large, yes, but he’d seen plenty of swan eggs as a boy and these ones weren’t large enough. And they were off-white instead of speckled greenish-grey. He thought of the beautiful black and white birds hanging by their neck in the coolroom.
‘When will they hatch, Poppi?’
‘Any day now,’ said Max. ‘I’ve candled those eggs and they’ve all got fine big chicks in them, lively as you could want.’ He selected an egg and held it to the girl’s ear.
An astonished smile split her face. ‘I can hear it, I can hear it chirping.’ Sophie put her lips to the alabaster shell. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, ‘Mummy’s here.’ Sophie held the egg out to Ric, who took it gently and listened. He could hear it too, the softest peeping.
‘In a few days I’ll have my own baby swans,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it!’ She threw her arms around her grandfather.
Ric returned the egg to the rack with the others. Max misted them all with a spray bottle before closing the door. Sophie dragged an old chair over in front of the incubator. ‘I’m going to stay here until they hatch.’
Ric smiled. ‘What, no telly?’
Sophie frowned at him, crinkling her brow and looking as stern as she could. ‘I’ve got more important things to do than watch television. I’m going to be a mother. Poppi, could you build the swans a house outside my window?’
‘Course I could,’ said Max. ‘And a little pond too. Do you think they’d like a pond?’
‘That would be perfect,’ she said, after a moment’s thought. ‘My swans would love a little pond.’
‘Coming in for some breakfast?’ Ric asked her. ‘I’ll make you whatever you like.’
‘I said, I’m staying here.’
‘Fine, suit yourself.’ Ric turned and headed for the house, slowly, to ensure that Max caught up with him. ‘I looked in the coolroom,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Those aren’t swan eggs, are they? What the hell are those birds?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Max. ‘Never seen anything like them.’
When they reached the porch, Ric turned to his father. ‘What did you have to go and shoot them for? Who shoots nesting birds?’
‘I didn’t realise. I only found the eggs afterwards.’ A sheen of sweat showed on his forehead. ‘At least some good’s come of it. Look how happy Sophia is.’
‘It’s Sophie,’ said Ric. ‘And she wouldn’t be happy if she knew the eggs were orphaned, not abandoned. If she knew you’d shot the parents.’
‘Now don’t you go telling her about that. Sophia’s got a sweet streak, the sort of kindness your mother had.’ Max frowned and examined his boots. ‘I was mean sometimes, back when you were a kid. I made mistakes. Don’t want to make them again.’
‘Then why in hell’s name did you go and shoot those birds in the first place?’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Max looked genuinely puzzled. ‘Sophia won’t let me eat the chickens. She’s gone and named them all.’
‘There’s a goddamn butcher in Drover’s Flat,’ said Ric. ‘Go and buy chickens there, like a normal person.’
‘It sticks in my craw to pay out good money for meat some other fella killed, when I can get it for free.’
‘Well then, go shoot the shit out of the wetlands,’ said Ric. ‘But don’t expect me to hide it from Sophie.’
Max gave him a searching look. ‘That Moore girl, Nina. Bet she’s behind this.’
‘Maybe she is,’ said Ric. ‘Or maybe it’s Sophie, or what Mum would say, or the plain fact that it’s illegal to go shooting at Billabong. Or maybe it’s that we’ve never seen birds like that before and they could be something rare, something special. Or that they had the right to go ahead and hatch those eggs themselves, after they went to all the trouble of mating up and laying them. Take your pick.’
His father looked stricken and took a step back.
‘Hiding the truth won’t work.’ Ric’s voice was raised and angry. ‘Not if you keep on making the same mistakes. You need to stop making them, Dad. Don’t pretend to stop it. Just flat-out stop it.’
Max seemed to shrink, and his broad square face caved in a little. He took off his hat, something he rarely did during the day, and twisted it in his hands. It was suddenly hard to recognise this wretched-looking man as his father. Ric was breathing fast, almost panting. He looked around to make sure Sophie wasn’t in earshot.
‘You know what I see when I look at Sophia?’ asked Max. ‘I see your mother all over again, her gentleness, her softness, the parts of her I went and hurt the most. If you tell that little girl what her Poppi did, if I see that disappointment on her face, same as I did on your mama’s? Well, I couldn’t bear it.’ He dragged his fingers through his hair with a jerky hand. ‘I was hard on your mother. Hard on all of you . . . too hard.’
It was an astonishing admission, one Ric had never imagined he’d hear. ‘Promise me,’ said Ric, his voice fierce. ‘Give me your oath that you won’t go to Billabong, not even for rabbits. Swear to me that you won’t even go fishing over there.’
For the briefest moment, Max’s face flared with anger. Then he lowered his eyes. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll stay away.’
Ric nodded. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’ And he would, for Sophie – for Nina. He’d sink Dad’s old punt if he had to, shotguns and all. But an unpleasant, nagging voice told him he was fooling himself. The promise he’d extracted from his father wasn’t just about Sophie, or Nina, or protecting Billabong Bend. Part of it was about him. A big part. He’d enjoyed calling the shots for once, with the unbending, all-powerful father of his youth.
Max looked so miserable that a wave of sympathy washed away any triumph Ric felt. ‘Have you had breakfast?’ he asked. ‘No? Come on. I’ll do us bacon and eggs.’
Max brightened. ‘You’re on. I put a fresh piece of bacon in the fridge just yesterday.’
‘I know,’ said Ric. ‘And I know where it came from too.’
Max laughed and clapped him on the back, leaving his hand there until they reached the house. It was the first time his father had done that since Ric was sixteen years old. It felt good.
Max sank into a kitchen chair and rubbed his palms together. ‘Have you considered my offer?’ he asked. ‘Will you stay, work with me here at Donnalee?’
Ric grabbed half a dozen eggs from the basket on the lime-washed kitchen dresser. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay, even if it’s just to keep an eye on you.’
‘Grazie a Dio!’ Max threw up his hands, voice cracking with emotion. ‘We’ll have a good life. You, me and Sophia, eh? A happy life.’
‘Yeah, yeah, don’t overdo it.’ He didn’t remind Max that Sophie would be gone in two weeks. Dad would miss her. Ric looked out the window to the laundry, to where his daughter sat hunched before the incubator. She was a strange one, all right. Stubborn too. More trouble than a cat at a dog show. But when he tried to imagine life at Donnalee without her, he failed. With a shock he realised just how much he’d miss her himself.
‘I’m getting old, Ricardo.’ Max had a faraway look in his eye. ‘Things happen to people and, well . . . you need some sort of a stake here at Donnalee. It’ll be all yours one day.’
‘Cut it out, Dad,’ said Ric. ‘You’ll probably outlast me.’
Max got up, disappeared down the hall, and returned a few minutes later with a form and a pen. ‘Power of attorney, to show I’m serious.’ He pushed the paper across the table. ‘Sign it. You can act for me in financial matters, learn the business side of things.’
‘What, so you can go fishing all day?’ said Ric, sliding bacon from the pan to his father’s plate. His flippant words could not disguise the unexpected pride he felt.
Max helped himself to toast. ‘That’s right.’ He nodded in satisfaction as Ric picked up the pen. ‘So I can go fishing.’