Kate’s leather Blunnies had dried saltwater stiff, leaving tiny tide marks around their edges. She grimaced as she heaved them off her wrinkled feet and drew off her sodden sandy socks. Then Kate stepped into the Bronty homestead for the first time in over three years. As she did, she was assailed by a décor that reeked of excessive femininity. Laces and frills, peaches and pinks. Gilded frames and porcelain.
‘Oh. My. God,’ Kate said as she lifted up a china figurine of a girl mournfully selling violets. Grains of sand fell from Kate’s damp trousers onto the plush cream carpet. She walked past prints of rose bouquets hung on freshly painted peach-coloured walls and fine, shiny furniture with wood-turned legs as delicate as fawns. Where was the giant old hallstand that tumbled with beanies, umbrellas and caps? Where was the big old clock with the yellowing face, as faithful as a bloodhound? Where had the old Stubbs prints of dozing chestnut mares and foals gone? She hoped Annabelle’s home renovations hadn’t made it to the attic yet. She was certain Will would have steered her well clear of the precious seeds that were stored there, pressed together in their browning envelopes.
The old hall-runner, the colour of summer elms, no longer led Kate along the polished wooden floor to the kitchen. Instead, her feet now sank into carpet like she was walking on white marshmallows. Everywhere she looked, she searched for traces of Will and their old life. But she could find none. Panic made her giddy, so she had to stop for a time and breathe deeply, pressing her fingertips to the walls.
She heard noise coming from the kitchen at the end of the hall. The clatter of cups and cutlery. Voices rising above the constant hum of Nell’s truck noises.
‘Brrrrr, brrrrr, brrrrum.’
Kate stood in the doorway observing the seeming normality of the scene despite the extraordinary circumstances. Annabelle was at the sink, rinsing a glass platter. Janie was stooped at the dishwasher, carefully cataloguing spoons and knives together and china cups in a row, at Annabelle’s instruction, Kate guessed. Nell lay under the kitchen table amongst a forest of chair legs, tiredly pushing her toy livestock truck back and forth, her plastic baby loaded in the back as if it were making its final journey to some kind of weird abattoir.
Dave was nestled down in a beanbag in the TV room beyond the kitchen, one twin asleep under each arm, as if sheltering a clutch of baby birds in a giant nest. A quiz show babbled on in the background.
‘She’s a sweet little thing. Quite polite,’ Annabelle said, nodding at Nell, unaware Kate was behind her. ‘Surprising under the circumstances.’
‘Yes,’ said Janie noncommittally.
‘Did Kate say when she’d be back? Surely she’d be worrying about Nell by now.’
‘No. She didn’t,’ Janie said as she pushed the dishwasher rack into place.
‘Any idea where she intends to stay tonight? I’m about to get dinner under way. And I’ll have to re-think the bed situation.’
‘Um, I’ve no idea. But I expect she’ll be back soon. Certainly once it’s dark.’ Janie held up a rose-print teapot. ‘Where does this live?’
‘Sideboard in the TV room, thanks, Jane.’ Kate watched as Janie carried the pot carefully into the TV room. She stooped before the sideboard where two photos, foggy at the edges, showed Amy in braces and Aden with longer, slicked-down wavy hair, like an American teenager on his way to a prom.
‘And thanks for staying on to help, Jane,’ Annabelle called from the kitchen.
‘No trouble,’ Janie said. As she turned, she saw Kate in the doorway of the kitchen. Meekly she waved. Annabelle followed Janie’s gaze and pulled off her washing-up gloves.
‘Ah, Kate, there you are! We were worried about you. Nellie darling, your mummy’s home at last. Welcome, Kate. Welcome. Come in, darling.’ Nell’s truck noises stopped momentarily as she quietly said hello and then continued revving.
‘She’s very tired,’ Janie said. ‘One too many Wiggle Safari dances with Dave, I think.’
Kate, not sure what to do, got down on her hands and knees and crawled under the table to kiss Nell on the forehead and press her cheek to her soft warm head.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said, a fresh wave of emotion surging inside her.
Kate’s mind flashed back to when Nell was just a few weeks old. It was the first time Kate had felt a love so powerful – joy and fear all rolled into one for the baby she held in her arms. It was three in the morning and Nell was making little snuffling noises as she drank from Kate’s breast. Kate had looked down at Nell’s perfect little face. Her doll-like hands, curling and uncurling blissfully like a kitten kneading its paws. Kate wondered at the feeling of that all-powerful love. A mother’s love.
Now all she wanted to do was hold Nell like that again. She smiled at her daughter, gathering all her internal strength so the smile didn’t turn to tears.
‘You okay, little Nellsie?’ she whispered.
‘Can we go home now, Mummy?’
Kate ran her hands over Nell’s hair. Home? Kate no longer knew where that was. She wondered if Bronty could ever feel like home again.
‘Sure we can. Just as soon as Mummy works out where that is.’ She kissed Nell again on her crown and emerged from beneath the table.
‘Thanks for looking after her,’ Kate said to Janie, giving her a squeeze on her arm.
‘It’s fine. She’s easy. Such a sweetie.’
Kate turned to look at Annabelle.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘In the office, I suspect. He’s still got to organise shearing in the middle of all this, poor man. But that’s farming for you, as I’ve come to learn.’ Annabelle flashed a tight smile.
Kate felt anger rise again as she took her in. Annabelle stood in the exact spot where her mother used to. Her slim figure was framed by lace curtains that hung behind her. She wore a candy-striped apron and Martha Stewart-style house slippers.
Kate tried to picture her mum standing on the worn floorboards beside the sink. Her mum, who used to muddle about the house in cut-off jeans and Henry’s workshirts, knotted at her navel, with the sleeves rolled up, her dark hair tumbling every which way. Will dancing about her, flicking her with rolled tea-towels, laughing.
Annabelle raised a tea-towel up, scrunched her face and sneezed loudly into it.
‘Oh! Horse hair.’ She covered her mouth delicately with her hand. ‘Would you mind, Kate? I’m terribly allergic.’ Annabelle waved in the direction of the outside shower. ‘If you’re staying for any length, you can have a shower and leave your clothes in the outer laundry to do yourself later.’
Kate’s eyes narrowed. It was as if nothing had happened. It was as if Will wasn’t even dead. She felt like hurling insults at the insensitive woman who stood before her. Instead, Kate shut her eyes for a moment and calmed herself. For Nell’s sake, she needed to be civil.
‘Thanks. I will,’ she said. ‘But I’m just going to speak to Dad first. I won’t be long.’
Janie stepped forward and cleared her throat. ‘Kate, if you don’t mind, it’s really getting on. I’d better get the kids home. I’ll see you later, yes? You’re welcome to stay on at our place if you like. If not, Dave can drop the rest of your things out in the morning. Okay?’
Kate looked at the half-moon marks of tiredness below Janie’s eyes. Gratitude and guilt again stirred in her.
‘Oh, God, Janie. I’m sorry. Thanks, you know, thanks. I’m not thinking straight.’
Janie stepped forward and as she hugged Kate, whispered in her ear.
‘I’m so sorry for you. Again. I’m so sorry. You know I love you very much.’ Kate hugged her friend back. ‘Give it a go here, Kate,’ Janie whispered. ‘For Nell. And for Will. Please.’
Kate didn’t find her father in the office, as she had expected. The scratched leather chair faced away from the old roll-top desk. The room was empty. Kate pulled the office door shut and turned to look down another hallway of the rambling old house. Then she saw that the ladder-stairs to the attic were down and light was spilling from the oblong hole in the ceiling. Kate blinked, swallowed, then walked towards the light. Slowly she climbed the stairs to the attic.
Henry was sitting at the big old desk, still in his funeral shirt and suit-trousers, his tie slack about his neck. His sleeves were rolled up exposing strong, tanned farmer’s arms. He clutched a glass of whisky in his work-worn hand.
The creak of the ladder and the wheeze of the attic floorboards announced Kate’s arrival. Henry looked up, his face expressionless. Kate stood beneath the low, slanting roof, taking in the room. Breathing the musty smell of memories. Her mother’s hug. Will’s laughter.
The attic looked almost the same, Kate thought with enormous relief. She could feel the room filled with the energies of the past … that gentle tenacious strength of the Webster women who had been there before them. In here, at last, Kate felt at home.
Even though the attic was full of old furniture, Laney had been clever at making clutter look good. And the attic was just that: organised, artful clutter. The only thing that had changed was the position of the desk, where Henry was sitting. It was clear of boxes and no longer covered in dust drapes and it now faced the window to the sea. Beside it was a wooden filing cabinet. On the desk sat a framed recent photograph of Matilda, with Will’s dogs lying across her wide back, their tongues out and ears pricked. Next to that, a selection of new pens were arranged neatly in an old cigar box.
‘Hi,’ Kate said quietly.
Henry ran his fingertips across the edge of the desk. ‘He set this up for you,’ he said.
Kate took in what her father meant. This desk, the small touches, had been Will. For her. To make her feel welcome. To give her back a space in this house. Kate’s face crumpled. She drifted towards the desk, laid her hand on its polished wooden surface. At the sight of the misery on her face, Henry stood and pulled her to him.
She felt his large palm on the back of her head holding her cheek hard against his chest. She scrunched her eyes shut, not wanting to hear the grief that caught in his chest. Tiny clutching sounds of air. His muscles taut. Shaking. He held her so tightly he began to hurt her neck. The button of his shirt bit into her cheek. He was thudding his hand against her back now. Rhythmic slaps of his flattened hand. Like you’d slap a steer on the haunches to get it up a race. Anger and love all at once in his touch. Pulling her in, aggressively, passionately, hurtfully, lovingly.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she managed to say. Sorry for being angry with him. Sorry for leaving him. Sorry for getting pregnant and sorry for Will. Sorry for always letting him down. Sorry that he couldn’t love her better. Because of her mother, he couldn’t love her better.
She clutched him angrily back. The white sliver of her fingernails pinched his skin. Then, at last, she heard him mutter he was sorry too.
But their closeness began to weigh on them too much. When they pulled apart neither father nor daughter could look the other in the eye. Henry pulled off his wire-framed glasses and swiped tears from his eyes.
‘He was going to get power points up here for you. So you could have your computer. And then a bed, maybe. If you’d wanted.’
Kate felt the words sting. She nodded. She couldn’t shape her voice into words. Her mouth felt slack. Her mind, her body, everything was in shock. Shut down with despair.
Henry sat again in the chair, gnawing his bottom lip. He looked suddenly like an old man. Snowy flecks in his hair beginning to outnumber the black. Eyes as grey as the sea, brimming with all the pain that life could bring. The pain of losing his wife. The pain of losing his only son. The memory of Will that would cause an ache in his chest for the rest of his life. Kate glanced at him.
‘Maybe I should go,’ she said at last. ‘Stay at Janie’s.’
He shook his head quickly, side to side.
‘No. Please. Stay.’
Kate nodded, tears sliding down her cheeks again. The pain was so great she thought she might collapse. The pain of knowing her father would have had her back under this roof if only she’d been humble enough to ask. Those wasted years away, Nell growing from a baby to a child without Will. And now it was too late. She looked down at the familiar pattern of the old Persian rug.
‘He’d insist that I stay, wouldn’t he?’ Kate said.
‘Yes,’ said her father. ‘He would.’
‘Okay then. We’ll stay.’
Her father nodded gently.
Kate smiled sadly at him before turning to climb back downstairs into Annabelle’s world.
Later that evening, after dinner in the Bronty kitchen, Henry shrugged on his thick woollen coat.
‘Just going out to shift the irrigator,’ he said. It was after ten and Annabelle was packing away the last of the dinner dishes. Amy had already retreated to the beanbag. The television screen flashed with golden flames and purple swirls as Amy’s computer-generated Princess Warrior slayed dragons and vaporised lumbering ogres. With her iPod on her ears, Amy grunted with effort as she pointed the controller at the black box. Somewhere else in the house, Kate could hear the pulse of Aden’s ‘doof-doof’ music muffled away behind a closed door.
Tonight during the meal, Kate had tried to revive the feeling of having Will and her mother at the table, angry at the intrusion of the television, which muttered in the background. She knew her father kept it on to distract himself from the awkward, painful silences between them. The oddness of having Nell sitting on a booster seat at the table, babbling away, shovelling mashed potato haphazardly into her mouth. Annabelle gently but meticulously correcting her manners and making small talk. Kate felt grief swirling in her, killing her appetite. She noticed Annabelle had put Nell in Will’s place. Kate watched her father’s eyes slide from Nell to the comfort of the television news, the sudden adjustment of circumstances – Will gone and a grandchild at his table – too great for him.
Kate recalled her own childhood at that very same table. Watching television during meals was not an option when Laney was alive. Kate’s mother and father had set the rules about mealtimes and television early.
‘People who say they’re bored are boring people to be around,’ her mother’s voice said in Kate’s head. Laney had always taught Will and Kate to entertain themselves. There was little time in their lives for TV anyway. They were always outside. Playtime in the creekbeds as they gushed and frothed with freshly fallen rain. Little leaf boats slipping over stones while Will and Kate followed them along the creek’s edge, leaping sags and tussocks, cheering, sliding and laughing.
And when it was dry, they spent hours with their dinted sun-faded Tonka trucks, digging up the creekbed’s silty soil and piling it into mini-dam walls, longing for rain. Rain to make their father happy and their mother whistle and warble like Fred Astaire.
Kate never remembered sitting inside much. There was always work to be done before playtime. The slice of her tomahawk through splintery kindling with a crack and thud, chooks diving for crusts that toppled from the kitchen scrap-bucket. Daily runs for the sheepdogs, let off the chain to gallivant around, while Will and Kate tossed hay to whickering horses. There was washing to get in, lawns to control before they turned into paddock, drench guns to rinse and Dad’s boots to clean. Mum’s vegetable garden to hoe, seeds to spread, rattled on drying racks and then funnelled into envelopes and recorded. Jobs to do, always together. Kate and Will.
When they were inside, the television lay dormant most nights. A sleeping black square in the corner of the room.
The life in the house came from music and meals. Food and music was to be shared. Fresh food from the garden, her mother delighting in the imperfections and personalities her homegrown vegetables and fruits revealed. The comedy of a carrot with a twisted old man’s nose, a lazy potato with a belly and a head, brown slugs in the broccoli and green grubs in apricots, spiders in stems. Life from the garden, making its way to the table and into their bellies. An experience Nell had never had, Kate realised. She’d grown up with supermarket produce; perfectly shaped and sized, yet tasteless and blasted with enough chemicals to kill the spiders, slugs and grubs. With a rush, Kate suddenly longed for those times again – a life with homegrown food, fun and music. To revive her mother’s Irish ancestry and pass it on to Nell.
At Bronty homestead, as a teenager, there had never been any reason to shut herself away in her room and blow her skull off with techno noise. Kate’s family had danced and sung and shouted to the backdrop of a mishmash of songs. Old LPs, dusty tapes and CDs. The Beatles, Elvis, Slim, Vivaldi, thrown in with Madonna, Rolf Harris, The Pogues and Johnny Cash. She wanted those songs now for Nell. That kind of life for Nell. Nell, who had already been babysat far too often by the TV. Now Kate felt she had a chance to make amends.
‘You’re watering the lucerne?’ Kate asked Henry as brightly as she could. ‘I’ll come. Help you shift a few pipes if you like.’
Annabelle turned to face her.
‘Don’t you think we should settle you in for the night? It’s very late. Perhaps you could do the morning shift for your father?’
Kate looked at Henry. He nodded.
‘A hand in the morning’d be good.’ He turned and walked out of the kitchen.
‘Come on,’ Annabelle said, ‘I’ll get you a towel.’
Kate followed her along the hall; Annabelle’s small designer-tracksuited-bottom wavered like a Siamese cat. From the linen cupboard, she pulled out a set of neatly matching towels, placing a face washer on top. Kate was shocked that the sheets and towels were catalogued in colours and flattened like stacks of cardboard.
Last time Kate had seen in the cupboard, it had been a rumble of sheets tumbled in with tattered, patched-up board games. Monopoly, Twister and Squatter, all mixed in with face washers, hand towels and mop-up towels for orphan lambs or puppy wee.
Annabelle smiled from over her shoulder as she made her way to the bedrooms.
‘Amy hasn’t had a moment to move her things out of your room. Exams. So you and Nell will just have to make do with the office for now, if you don’t mind.’
Just before she went, Annabelle paused gently and said, ‘Perhaps we could think about using the space in Will’s room?’ And then she was gone, pulling the door shut and leaving Kate clutching the towels.
Gingerly, Kate opened the door and stepped across the passage to Will’s room. Inside, it was as she remembered. He had a small desk, crammed with books on farming. His single bed and wardrobe meant there was not much room for anything else. She slumped on the bed and stared at the photo on the wall. A young Will in shorts, all smiles as he cuddled a pup and a lamb. Beside him, Kate, holding a bottle of milk with a black rubber teat. She was pulling a stupid face.
Kate stared at the photo, trying hard to conjure the smells, sounds and details of that day when their mother had taken the picture. She pulled Will’s pillow out from his roughly made bed and breathed in his smell, her tears pooling darkly on the fabric.
When she looked up she was startled by the sight of Aden standing above her. She turned her head away and swiped tears from her eyes. She felt the bed subside a little as Aden sat beside her. Then she felt an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in.
‘Shhh. Shhhh … it’s okay,’ he whispered. Kate let Aden cradle her body and she leaned her head onto his chest. As she cried into his shirt, she realised she had lost the faint earthy smell of Will that had lingered on the sheets. Instead, her senses were assaulted by Aden’s aerosol deodorant. She pulled away.
‘Katie, c’mon.’ He reached out and brushed the sheen of dark hair that had fallen over her face. He hooked the strands of her hair over her ear and Kate felt suddenly exposed. ‘We’ll get through this.’
She pushed him away from her.
‘Leave me alone!’ Then she stumbled from the room. In the darkness of the office, she climbed into the narrow trundle bed, fully clothed, shivering. She pulled Nellie’s warm, sleepy body to her and cried silently, listening to her little girl’s gentle breath.