Alice stood for a moment regarding the dilapidated wooden house set high off the ground on rough timber posts. It had welcoming wide verandas all round, rimmed with straggly little flowering bushes, frangipani and hibiscus. From behind these, a number of small children were peering shyly, their skins a variety of shades. A motley collection of dogs came running around the side of the house, barking to announce the arrival of a stranger.
It hadn’t taken Alice long to find the solicitor’s office in Cairns. The tidy young secretary had given her directions to Benji’s former home, a small acreage not far out of town. Now that the taxi had driven away, leaving Alice standing at a short distance from the house, her swag hanging from one arm and her backpack on the other, the nerves that had plagued her for the entire length of the bus trip from Emerald had turned to nausea. She gritted her teeth and walked towards the house.
The dogs stood their ground, still barking, but the children melted into the darkness under the house. As she approached the front steps, she could hear muffled giggling coming from the safety of their secret domain. A woman came out of the front door and stood at the top of the steps beaming at Alice. She was small, thin and very black. Her head was covered with a mop of soft black hair with a slightly reddish-brown tinge at the ends of her curls, and she was wearing a baggy, light cotton dress in a large scarlet flower print. Alice guessed this was Leilani.
The older woman held her arms out wide as Alice started up the steps, greeting her with a hug once she’d reached the veranda.
‘Alice, sweetheart. We’ve been expecting you any day now.’ Leilani held Alice at arm’s length and looked her up and down. ‘Benji didn’t lie about how pretty you were.’
Alice laughed in embarrassment, but she felt her anxiety fast subsiding at the genuine welcome she could see in Leilani’s deep-set brown eyes. ‘Hello, Leilani. I’m so glad to be here.’
‘Not as glad as we are to have you, my love.’ Leilani grabbed Alice’s heavy swag with her skinny arms and heaved it inside. ‘Come and have a cuppa.’
Sitting at a little wooden table, on mismatched chairs, the two women regarded each other with mutual pleasure as they sipped their tea.
‘Benji was so proud of you,’ said Leilani. ‘He used to think about you all the time. Every day, I reckon.’
Alice longed to believe this was true, but couldn’t help expressing her doubts. ‘Why did he never contact me or tell me where you lived?’
‘Oh, my love, when he saw you with your people he knew that you had been raised the white way. You were doing really fine without him coming to stir up trouble.’ Leilani patted her hand. ‘He didn’t want to mix you up and make you unhappy. He knew Sammy Day was a good man. Sammy told him that one day you would be running Redstone. Benji thought he should keep himself out of it and not go interfering.’
‘It wouldn’t have been interfering. I just wanted to talk to him and get to know him. I could have learned so much from him, Leilani.’
‘I know, baby. I thought so too. But Benji, he made up his mind. He didn’t forget you. He used to ring old Stretch every year in April – your birthday month. Benji wasn’t happy you had to go away to townie school. He said you needed to be in your own country, not in some noisy city. Stretch told him all about what you been doing. Deadly with horses. Deadly with dogs. Alice, love, he was so proud.’
Alice’s eyes were full of tears; normally she would have attempted to hide them, but for some reason she didn’t mind Leilani seeing.
‘That’s right, my love,’ Leilani said. ‘You go on and cry now. I always cry, every day. For a man like our man, who wouldn’t?’
Alice wiped her eyes and smiled at Leilani. She took a calming sip of tea and then asked, ‘Do I have any brothers and sisters? Were those kids I saw all yours?’
Leilani laughed. ‘No, none of them really mine, sweetheart. Not from my own body. I got something not right downstairs. Never had a baby. Raised plenty but.’ She laughed to herself again.
‘Did Benji – my father have any . . .’ Alice wasn’t sure how to finish the question.
Leilani came to the rescue. ‘Kids with other women? No, honey. He was a good man, my Benji. My good man.’ Suddenly she began to wail loudly and covered her face. Alice jumped up and went to her. She bent down and put her arms tightly around the shuddering little body until Leilani’s sobs eased.
Glancing up, Alice saw four little faces peeping around the door frame. She smiled and they disappeared again amid peals of laughter. Leilani chuckled through her tears.
Alice went back to her chair and sat down again. ‘I’m not going to take the truck, Leilani. You can sell it, and the horses. I can see that you have a lot of people to look after here.’
‘No chance, sweet. Benji left me pretty well set up. He wanted you to have those things more than anything. Would be rotten of you not to take ’em. Would be wrong to Benji too.’
The sound of a clapped-out car pulling in to the yard interrupted their conversation. An old red Ford station wagon stopped at the bottom of the steps, and a woman and some more chattering kids climbed out. The kids shot off around the back but the woman came quickly up the stairs. She stopped abruptly in the doorway, eyeing Alice narrowly. She looked worn and tired and, Alice suspected, older than she really was. Her face must once have been pretty but her sullen expression, drooping posture and straggly hair gave the impression of jaded exhaustion.
‘Alice, this is Mary, Benji’s sister,’ said Leilani. ‘She’s your family too.’
Alice stood up and held out her hand, but Mary pushed past her and plopped down into another of the miscellaneous chairs. She continued to regard Alice with an unfriendly stare as Leilani went on.
‘Benji has another sister, Ruby, but she gone north with her man to Lockhart. His brother Reuben died already too.’
Alice looked from Leilani back at Mary and smiled tentatively, sitting down. At this Mary spoke. ‘Heard you showed up. Didn’t take ya too long. Never come when Benji was alive, did ya? Or when he was sick. Jus’ when he was dead.’
Alice drew in a sharp breath but Leilani was indignant. ‘You shut your angry mouth, Mary. This little girl never knew. You know like I do Benji wouldn’t let us tell.’
‘What she come here for anyway?’ Mary was still glaring at Alice. ‘Jus’ look at that coconut sitting there. Why don’ you just get your stuff and go?’
Alice remained silent. After Leilani’s warm welcome she’d let her guard down and now she felt shaken. But worst of all, she knew that there was an element of truth in what Mary said. She’d never made any effort to find her father. She’d waited until it was too late.
But Leilani spoke reassuringly. ‘Don’ you take no notice of Mary, honey. She’s real sour. Sour old fish. She don’ really mean it. She talks cranky to everybody like that. But specially you ’cause you’re so pretty an’ she’s so ugly and sour.’
‘You the ugly old sour one, Leilani. Don’ know what Benji wanted with you. Not right in the head, I reckon.’ Mary was scowling at Leilani now.
‘See, sweetheart?’ Leilani smiled calmly at Alice. ‘Talks like that to me too.’
Mary sat there sulking while Leilani told Alice all about Benji. He’d grown up further north on a large station where his father had worked. As a teenager and young man he’d been employed on several stations around Queensland. Not long after leaving Redstone, he’d met Leilani in Cairns and decided to go out on his own as a contract musterer and horse breaker. They had married and Benji had worked in the Cairns area ever since. He was highly respected in the community, despite his well-known occasional benders. When he became ill he’d sold all his working dogs but one, and all his horses except for two.
‘Reckon he loved those animals more than he loved me.’ Leilani laughed quietly and rocked back and forth in her seat. ‘Loved that truck too. Was like his baby.’
Later that afternoon, some of the kids condescended to let Alice play with them. Leilani brought out a cricket bat and some stumps obviously used only on special occasions. Mary seemed to have cheered up and the two older women sat on the veranda and cackled as they watched the game. The children were in ecstasy. After that, Alice had a permanent trail of kids behind her.
Three unspeaking men arrived just on dark and nodded to Alice before stretching out on the veranda. She rolled out her swag on the quieter side of the house and lay awake listening to the tropical hum. She thought first of her father, and found that the thought of him no longer made her angry; then for some unfathomable reason she thought of Jeremy and wondered what sort of a stir he’d have caused with these people had he come. Would they have liked him? To her surprise, she had a feeling that they would have. With the image of him uppermost in her mind, she drifted off to sleep at last.
The next morning, Alice found that she was first into the kitchen, so she made a pot of tea. Mary wandered in shortly afterwards, her wiry hair sticking out at all angles. She stood regarding Alice for a moment.
‘Want a cuppa?’ Alice asked, pouring her one. She’d noticed the day before that Mary had her tea black with two sugars. Alice handed it to her and Mary took it wordlessly and sat down, still examining Alice as she began to sip.
‘You a good girl,’ she said finally. ‘Benji would’ve liked his girl.’
‘Thanks, Mary.’ They sipped their tea. ‘Do you know any of the places where Benji worked? I would like to meet some of his friends.’
‘Take you after breakfast,’ answered Mary briefly.
So they spent all that day visiting in Mary’s car. Mary, solemn and withdrawn, with two little boys hiding behind her legs, waited patiently at each property while Alice chatted to a variety of people about Benji. She saw horses he had broken in and dogs that he had bred and trained. As the day wore on she became aware of a growing warmth inside her, a building pride in her father, who had been so highly regarded by so many.
That afternoon they returned to Leilani’s and ate sausages around the fire; this time the men spoke a little. Four more carloads of people arrived and another round of sausages and onions was put on to cook. The cricket set came out again and everyone from the very young to the very old joined in, playing until it was too dark to see. Alice was named ‘man of the match’. Things went downhill when another, rowdy carload of people arrived bringing grog.
Alice disappeared inside before midnight to roll out her swag in a back room. She was thinking of the long drive ahead. However, not long after going to sleep she was awoken again when a few of the children, dragging blankets, came and nestled in beside her, accompanied by an old dog.
After breakfast the next morning, she loaded the horses and the dog onto the truck, somewhat mechanically. She hadn’t really even looked at them properly yet. There would be plenty of time for that back at Redstone, and for the emotions it would no doubt arouse in her. Then she drove back over to the house to make her farewells.
By this time, the fire had been relit and the last of the sausages and onions were cooking. The mob gathered around and Alice was hugged, kissed and slapped on the back. The children hung on to her clothes while Leilani and Mary squeezed her and cried.
Leilani put the soft palms of her hands on Alice’s cheeks and looked deep into her eyes. ‘You let me know if you ever need anything, honey. I love you, sweetheart.’
And Alice knew she meant it, this tired little woman who already had too many people to care for. ‘Thank you, Leilani. I will. You too.’
Mary walked with Alice to the truck holding her hand. As Alice hoisted herself up into the driver’s seat, the children clung to her.
She drove down the dirt track honking the horn, a trail of squealing barefoot children pelting along behind her. The few men who were awake, standing by the fire, raised their hands in farewell salutes. Alice’s face was streaked with tears. For the first hour that she drove, they flowed like two little salty streams down her cheeks, splashing onto her jeans. But she was smiling.