Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 2 May 1974
Country Party Candidate to Stand Again for Gibber’s Creek
Former local member Kevin Briggs will be standing again for the seat of Gibber’s Creek, presently held by the Labor Party member Nicholas Brewster with a margin of 8.6%. Speaking today at the launch of his campaign at the Gibber’s Creek Town Hall, Mr Briggs stated, ‘The people of Gibber’s Creek have had two years to see the mess Labor is making of the country. It’s time to go back to the traditional values that have made Australia great.’
JED
It was strangely familiar, knocking door to door, dressed in neat blue linen and sensible flat shoes from Lee’s Emporium rather than her usual vintage outfits or jeans. ‘Hi, my name’s Jed Kelly. I’m campaigning for Nicholas Brewster of the Labor Party, if you have a moment?’
Everyone was so nice, even the Misses Hilbert who told her they’d voted Country Party for sixty years but insisted she stayed for sponge cake and two cups of tea, and Mrs Weaver who still wanted to know the Labor Party’s policy on aliens and gave her the latest joey to feed while she put the kettle on for what was possibly Jed’s three hundredth cuppa that day.
Jed almost told Mrs Weaver to ask Ra Zacharia for advice about alien relations. But a con man like Ra Zacharia was the last person Mrs Weaver should meet. Darling old Mrs Weaver was too likely to make everything she owned over to someone who assured her he believed in aliens too.
To Jed’s disappointment her offer of more articles for the Gibberer had been refused. Cheryl was staunch in her editorial independence. Nor were her articles needed. Cheryl almost obsessively gave all parties equal space to state their policies, but also wrote blistering editorials endorsing Labor’s right to enact the policies they’d been elected on into law. That ‘impossible to break’ twenty-three-year record of unbroken Coalition rule had been destroyed. Labor could stand on its record of achievement.
As could Nicholas. Jed watched him in action at the campaign launch, confidently shaking hands as he moved through the crowded hall, Felicity once more shy, in bright red lipstick and clumsy Cuban heels with her hair in a French roll as though she were forty years old, drawn like a small rowing boat behind him.
Felicity stood at the stage steps as Nicholas spoke with confidence and passion. The ghost young man Jed had first met had vanished, as well as the uncertainty of two years before. ‘Men and women of Gibber’s Creek, tonight I ask you to give the Whitlam government the chance you decided they should have had less than two years ago . . .’
And over in an armchair Matilda watched, bright eyed and . . .
Old, admitted Jed as Matilda’s eyes closed for a ten-second doze. She made her way through the crowd and sat next to her.
‘What . . . ?’ Matilda blinked and peered at her. ‘Just resting my eyes.’
‘No speech from you this time?’ Jed whispered. She regretted the words as soon as she said them.
But Matilda smiled. ‘You think I’m too frail to make a speech? I can summon up the sinews if necessary, my girl. But my neighbours have all heard what I have to say. No need to repeat myself tonight.’ She looked around. ‘Is Sam here?’
‘Over by the door,’ said Jed, deeply conscious of Sam’s every move.
‘You’re still seeing each other?’ No one, from Scarlett to Matilda, had commented on the lack of engagement ring on her finger. Every single person, from Miss Lee at Lee’s Emporium to the smallest kid at River View and every single person as she doorknocked, glanced at her left hand, as if waiting for the ring to inevitably appear.
‘Yes,’ said Jed shortly. Sam hadn’t spoken of marriage again. They had driven back from Rock Farm early the next morning, not even staying to see Rock Farm’s horses, both carefully talking about anything other than the ring Jed assumed was still in his pocket.
To her relief Sam still turned up for dinner most evenings, still took it for granted he’d maintain her garden, watering system, fences and the other jobs she had never realised came with a house that collected its own water, dealt with its own sewage and wastewater, and needed fences to keep stock in and out and drains to stop the driveway eroding away.
The pain was in what wasn’t said: the ‘Hey, why don’t we . . . ?’ No plans to go to Europe together so he could finally meet Julieanne, no ‘Next Christmas let’s . . .’
She hadn’t realised she’d just assumed Sam would stay part of her life, nor that she’d been stupid not to see he would want marriage as part of that.
If even Scarlett said, ‘You’re an idiot not to marry him,’ it would be easier. She could explain why she loved Sam, but why marriage wasn’t necessary. And maybe convince herself once again . . .
Matilda looked up at her from her armchair. ‘You’re an idiot not to marry him,’ she said, under the noise of the crowd’s clapping at the end of Nicholas’s speech.
‘I can’t,’ said Jed, too startled to evade the question. Up on stage Nicholas held his hand out for Felicity to join him.
Matilda raised her eyebrow. ‘Why not?’
Matilda of all people might just understand. ‘You remember when I told you I see people from other times, like seeing you as a girl down at the billabong, with your father and the sheep?’
‘The day my father died,’ said Matilda quietly. ‘In some ways the day my life began.’
‘I . . . I’ve glimpsed Nicholas in the future. Just for a second. He has a beard flecked with grey and . . . and I felt the love between us. That’s why I trusted him so easily. Back then I didn’t trust people much, and men hardly at all. But I knew I would love Nicholas sometime in our future. And so I did.’
Matilda was so silent that Jed wondered if she was dozing again. At last the old voice said, low and distinct under the clapping of the crowd as Nicholas and Felicity left the stage, ‘So you’re giving up love with Sam now for a second’s love in the future?’
Jed stared at her. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘What if you have twenty or thirty extraordinary years and three children with Sam and he dies, and you and Nicholas fall in love again after all that? Would you give up those thirty years with Sam just because it won’t go on forever? Nothing lasts forever, girl.’
‘What if I wreck our marriage and Nicholas’s as well?’
‘You are not a marriage wrecker, and never could be. My dear child, do you really think we are only destined to love one person in our lives?’
‘You’ve loved two men . . .’
‘I could have married at least a dozen,’ said Matilda tartly. ‘And been happy with them. Not as I am with Tommy.’ Matilda didn’t seem to notice she spoke in the present tense. ‘Tommy and I . . . fitted. One flesh, as the marriage service says. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t attracted to other men, or even felt the beginnings of love for them. Every time I met a man I knew I could fall in love with, I kept my distance, mentally and physically. Why do you think the marriage service has a vow of fidelity in it if people don’t need to make a conscious decision to promise it?’
‘You think what I saw between myself and Nicholas might be all there is to see? Just a brief moment, a long way off?’
‘I think you love Sam McAlpine, who also deeply and honestly loves you, and you are a fool if you don’t marry him. I was a fool once and wasted over ten years. Don’t you do the same.’
‘But I still don’t know if I even want to be married,’ said Jed helplessly. ‘What Sam and I do is no one’s business except ours. We shouldn’t have to make a legal contract about it.’
Matilda snorted. ‘Of course it’s our business, the family’s and the community’s. We live alongside you. We love you both. I might even get a great-great-grandchild to boast about if you’d hurry up.’
‘You have enough to boast about.’
‘I never boast,’ said Matilda. ‘Though I might about a great-great-grandchild. Marry him.’
‘No,’ said Jed. Then, ‘Maybe. Not yet.’
The three of them had come in the ute. While the wheelchair fitted in the back of Boadicea, it was easier to carry it in Sam’s roomy tray. The silence sat heavy till halfway back to Dribble.
She’d talk to him tonight, Jed decided. Try to explain she’d panicked at the mention of marriage, but that maybe, just perhaps, it was a good idea. Not mention loving Nicholas in the future, of course — Sam definitely didn’t need to know that. But she would tell him how much she loved him, how much being with him meant to her. How she wanted to feel the years unwinding in front of them again, a nation of two, not one.
‘Good speech,’ said Sam at last.
‘Yes,’ said Jed absently. ‘He’s learning how to speak in public. And how to carry a crowd.’ And to enjoy it too, she thought. ‘I’ll put us down to hand out how-to-vote cards at the school again.’
Sam shook his head. ‘Sorry. I won’t be here.’ He kept looking at the road ahead as Scarlett and Jed turned to him.
‘Where will you be?’ demanded Scarlett.
‘I’m going up to Nimbin for a while. There’s a mob there working on alternative technology. Designing inverters, small hydro systems, all sorts of things. A bloke I met gave me a call yesterday, asked if I’d like to work on a project with him.’
‘You’re getting bored with installing solar hot-water panels,’ said Scarlett.
He smiled at her. ‘Got it in one.’
‘But you’ll be coming back?’ Scarlett again. Jed couldn’t seem to find her voice.
‘Of course. I’ll hitch a ride with Santa Claus. Can’t miss New Year’s at the river either.’
Was he talking about a Christmas visit, Jed wondered, or coming back for good? ‘When were you going to tell me?’ She tried not to sound wounded.
‘Tonight. I know it’s sudden. But I don’t have anything on that I can’t cancel.’
Including me, thought Jed.
He turned into the Dribble driveway. ‘I won’t come in, if that’s okay. I need to pack.’
And there’s nothing here he needs to take, thought Jed. Except, perhaps, me.
Scarlett leaned over Jed and kissed Sam’s cheek above his beard. ‘Good luck. And send us an address to write to. And don’t stay away too long.’
Sam hugged her back. ‘I’ll write,’ he promised. Jed noticed he didn’t also promise not to stay too long.
Jed stayed in the front seat as Scarlett lowered herself into her chair and wheeled inside. She waited till the front door shut behind her, then turned to Sam, shadowed in the moonlight. ‘I wish you weren’t going.’
‘I thought you’d be glad I had the chance to do something interesting.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘Just like that?’ Indignation sent the words tumbling. ‘I can’t! What about Scarlett? I’m responsible for her now. She can’t change schools now, not if she wants the marks to get into medicine. She still needs therapy three times a week too.’
And what about Matilda? she thought. Matilda was physically independent. But now that the farm management was in the hands of Michael and Nancy, her hours with Jed, talking about the past, teaching her the lore Auntie Love had once shown her, were obviously more and more important to her.
‘Your choice,’ said Sam lightly.
It wasn’t fair, Jed thought. Sam was making it seem as if she didn’t love him just because she couldn’t say yes to everything he wanted. And what if she had agreed to marry him? Would he expect her to uproot herself and traipse up to Nimbin, leaving all her responsibilities here?
He hadn’t even said whether this was just a visit, or if he might stay there permanently. Perhaps he didn’t know.
‘I’ll miss you,’ she managed. That at least was true. Desperately, deeply true.
‘Really?’
‘Of course. I do love you. More than I can say.’ She tried to find the courage or words for more. But her mind seemed blank.
‘I love you too.’
But the kiss that followed was a farewell embrace. She watched his ute as it vanished into the tree shadows, then turned. The river gleamed back moonlight.
How did that poem go?
So, we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night
Though the heart be still as loving
And the moon be still as bright.
No more platypus hunts. No more Sam’s face at the back door, grimy from the day’s work, to haul her down to the river for a swim.
Was this what would always have happened, no matter what answer she had given him up in the mountains? Would Sam still have left for Nimbin, while she was bound to this land? Or had she created this future when she said no, the future where one day she would love Nicholas again?
Whichever, she thought drearily, trudging inside. For the future was the future, and all were bound by it.