9

Holly woke the next morning in her camping bunk. The sun was pouring through the window and already her pyjamas were glued to her body with sweat. She could hear the synchronised snoring of Jake and Brandon on the foldout sofa.

She tugged at a small sash window and jerked it half open, whereupon it jammed. No breeze came. Inside was as hot as outside, and to make it worse, sixty billion cicadas screamed through the windows in a symphony so loud she could barely hear herself think. Even if they had a fan, there was no power to run it anyway. They would all spend the day sitting in pools of their own sweat, fanning themselves with old magazines.

She forced the front door open and took a seat on the front steps of the hut, where a faint breeze cooled her cheeks. She ran a hand around Marley’s ears while she gazed around bleary-eyed, trying to comprehend her new life.

Suddenly, Marley shot off down the driveway, barking loudly. A large white four-wheel-drive rumbled up the driveway with a long horse trailer on the back. It stopped by the shed and a man in jeans and a green work shirt got out. Two younger men got out the other side and pulled hats onto their heads.

There was an unmistakable similarity between the three men that went beyond the similar hats and faded jeans, although two were young and the older man had a pot belly.

The smallest of the three was familiar. She could tell without seeing his face, it was that Kaydon guy again. He looked freshly showered and neat as a pin in jeans, boots and a shirt that was tucked in. And he was staring at her.

Holly called Marley back.

‘Your father awake yet?’ asked the older man, ignoring the old dog.

‘Um.’ Holly had no idea. She hadn’t got that far yet.

‘Gidday, Pat.’ Her dad appeared from the shed. ‘Did you bring the plans out?’

So that was Pat Armstrong, Dad’s new boss.

Kaydon stood alongside him with his hands in his pockets, looking the spitting image of him, only younger. He shot her a smug grin.

A penny dropped in Holly’s head with a loud clunk. Oh heck. He’s the boss’s son?

‘Can you wake your brothers up please, Holly?’ asked her dad.

She leapt off the step and scurried back into the hut. Suddenly she was awake and her head was spinning. Agh! She had been so rude to him yesterday. But he deserved it. How sly of him not to tell her who he was! He’d really made a fool of her. Why would anyone be so mean?

Jake and Brandon still snored on the sofabed.

‘Time to wake up, guys,’ she said, as she squeezed past them and peeked out through the small square window between a slit in the curtains.

The other young man, who looked like a thicker-set version of Kaydon, dropped the tailgate of the horse float and led three horses out. They already wore saddles. She watched Kaydon take the grey horse and mount. He organised his reins over the front of the saddle and then looked about him while he waited for his dad.

She ducked back behind the curtains when his eyes flickered over towards the shack.

The putter of the generator engine rattled suddenly through the tiny hut window. Dad had it started. In the lounge room, the snoring halted abruptly. ‘Whassat?’ mumbled Jake.

‘Sounds like a generator,’ said Brandon. ‘Hallelujah, hot breakfast!’

With a bit of luck she might get a shower too. Holly peeked out the window again. Pat Armstrong walked away from the generator and took his horse by the reins. ‘I’ll have someone bring the caravan over this morning and help get the tank set up,’ she heard him say. ‘Let me know if you need anything else.’ He swung a leg over the horse. ‘We’re going to ride over the property and check the water situation.’

Jake pulled himself up into a sitting position and stretched. His dreadlocked hair had escaped its hair band and he looked like some sort of sea monster. He shouldered his way into the window and peered out next to Holly. ‘Wow, real cowboys,’ he said with mocking awe.

‘You sound so gay,’ said Brandon from the sofabed.

‘And you stink,’ said Holly.

‘I want one of those hats,’ Jake said, ignoring them both and gazing out the window at the stockmen.

An obnoxious rumbling sound erupted from under Brandon’s blanket.

‘That is disgusting!’ Holly complained. ‘Could you not go outside and do that?’ Living with boys, ugh. When was that caravan coming?

She watched Kaydon, his dad and the other guy ride away from the shed and across a gently sloping hill. The sun had fully lit the day and dew glistened off the gum leaves like tiny glass beads. Golden grassy seedheads bowed with the weight of water drops. It had rained. Damn, that Kaydon guy had to be right.

She looked at the yard and across to the sheds. It could only have been a light sprinkle. The ground was nearly dry again already.

Jake flopped back onto the sofabed. ‘Anyone wanna go fishing? There’s supposed to be a river near here.’

Her dad appeared in the doorway. ‘I want Holly to do the washing first. Pat said we could use the machine over at the stables, just until we get one set up here. Brandon, can you drive her? Jake, you can help me sort this place out.’

‘When do we start building?’ asked Brandon.

Ken looked annoyed. ‘There’ve been a few delays with the contracts. It’s going to take at least a week before they officially own the place and we can get started.’

Brandon let out a frustrated groan. ‘Great. What are we supposed to do while we wait? Is he going to pay us?’

‘Yeah, we’ll get paid,’ said Dad. ‘He wants us to fix this place up while we wait.’ He cast his eyes around the room. ‘God knows it needs it.’

‘It needs a bulldozer,’ said Brandon.

Holly looked around at the cramped hut. She was already fed up with the place. An extra week, on top of the original twelve, would be unbearable. ‘When will we get internet connection?’ she asked.

‘It’s a low priority at the moment,’ answered her father.

Holly travelled with Brandon back to Rockleigh to do the washing. As he reached out for the first washing basket, she noticed something new on his arm. ‘Did you get a tattoo?’

Brandon dropped the basket and pulled his sleeve up. ‘Waddya reckon?’ The tatt showed a curling wave with the sun shining through it. The surrounding area was still red and puffy as if it had been done quite recently.

‘I like it.’

‘You can’t hear the ocean out here. There are no waves. Everything’s so still and creepy.’

All Holly could hear was cicadas. They were deafening. ‘We’ll be home soon,’ she said.

‘I miss my surfing mates,’ he said. ‘I’ll help Dad with this job, then I’m out of here.’

She waved him goodbye, then stood in the doorway of the tackroom, staring at all the horse gear. There must have been at least thirty saddles in there, all shining clean and neatly hung on racks. She wondered if she would ever be lucky enough to own a horse again.

Among all the tack was a washing machine, a short bench and a double concrete sink.

She made herself busy, sorting the dirty jeans from the light-coloured T-shirts, emptying the pockets as she went. She pulled out old rubber bands, dirty tissues, lolly wrappers and shopping receipts. From her father’s shirt pocket she pulled out two soggy golden pieces of paper – tickets.

Saturday 25^th March Rockleigh Station Gunnedah
Annual Easter Ball
On the polocrosse field at 7.30 pm
Dress: Black Tie
All proceeds to the Pay for Hay drought relief fund

Holly wondered how these tickets came to be in her father’s pocket. Had he bought them to surprise Mum?

She tried to imagine her father all dressed up in black tie. The image didn’t come easily. The picture of her mother in a cocktail dress did, however. Her mother was beautiful, tall and long-legged with blonde hair roped into a plait down her back. When she let it out at night and brushed it, it was thick and lustrous with hues of gold and soft brown.

Holly carefully set the tickets on the sunny window ledge of the tackroom, knowing how special they would be for her mother.

While the first load of washing tumbled and sloshed in the machine, she walked out of the building and looked at the field where she had argued with Kaydon. Three men were manicuring the lawn, and a truckload of potted rosebushes had arrived, in preparation for the big dance, she guessed.

‘Will you be going to the ball, Cinderella? The boss usually gives all the staff a free ticket.’

Holly spun around and saw a small man with a whiskery chin and wrinkly eyes. He carried two buckets in each hand. His voice was husky, like a smoker’s, and she could smell stale tobacco on him.

‘We are not staff. My father is a contractor.’ Somehow that word staff kept coming up. It annoyed her that the Armstrongs put everyone beneath them like that. ‘And I’m no Cinderella either.’

The man looked at her bare feet and raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m Jerry, resident strapper. I am staff.’ He smiled a toothless smile.

Ah yes. The strapper. Now he shows up.

‘The missus can put on a top-class event. You don’t want to miss it.’

Would it be like the debauched B and S balls she had heard about? Holly couldn’t imagine her parents going to something like that. They didn’t even drink alcohol. Her imagination filled with images of beautifully dressed women and smartly attired men sipping from champagne glasses and nibbling at canapés while the sun set over the western ranges. She couldn’t imagine her parents going to something like that either.

‘My dad has two tickets. But I won’t be going,’ she said, thawing a little. Jerry seemed okay.

‘You’re the new family, over at the other place?’

‘My name’s Holly. My father’s building the house. We’ll be here for twelve weeks.’

‘Well, I hope you enjoy yourself while you’re here. Where are you going to school?’

‘We won’t be staying in the area, so I’ll do home-schooling, just while we’re here.’ Holly heard the washing machine beep. ‘I’d better get back to my washing.’

‘They’re good people, the Armstrongs,’ said Jerry. ‘They’ve worked hard for what they’ve got.’

Holly sighed. ‘Yeah, my family worked hard too. Fat lot of good it did us.’

It took the whole morning for all of the washing to go through. Every towel was filthy. All six members of her family had been through several sets of clothes yesterday.

While she waited for the last load to go through the wash cycle, she watched Jerry lead the horses out into paddocks, and then she watched him make up the evening feeds. The smell of fresh lucerne made her desperately homesick for her own little feed shed out the back of the horse paddock and the way Rocket and Gidget always whinnied to her while she made up their feed.

‘Reckon they’d mind if I went for a walk around the place?’ she asked Jerry.

‘There’s a track going up over that hill over there,’ he answered, pointing out the window. ‘You might see some koalas.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah. There’re a couple of young bucks up there making a hell of a racket at the moment. Hear them fighting every night.’ He gestured to her to come over to the window.

‘See the smooth white gum trees?’ he said. ‘They planted them up there for salinity control years ago and the koalas loved them. Have a look around the base for the scats and for claw marks on the trunk. You might spot one.’

‘Cool,’ Holly muttered. There were no koalas near Blue Gum Flats. She’d never seen one in the wild, only in zoos and theme parks.

‘Put some boots on first, ay?’ Jerry looked towards the tackroom.

Holly rummaged through several pairs of boots in the tackroom, all of which looked too big for her. In the end she chose a fairly smart pair of riding boots, which would be lighter going than the steel-capped workboots and gumboots. Moments later she clomped across the polocrosse field, hoping that the Kaydon boy was still over at the other property so she wouldn’t run into him. She slipped between the fence wires and made her way through the long, silvery grass.

A four-wheel-drive track took her up a steep hill and past some tall eucalypts with smooth white trunks. She saw no fluffy grey critters up in the branches but on the ground were some bullet-shaped scats. There really were koalas here. That was cool.

She licked her dry lips and wished she had brought a bottle of water with her. She could see beyond the dam some sort of rusty pipe poking out of the ground with all sorts of bolts and chunky bits hanging off it. She cut through the paddock to where it lay hidden in the long grass but was disappointed. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to produce any water to drink.

She set off back to the homestead at a march. Back at the stables, she drank from the tap in the tack shed, taking long slow gulps until she felt hydrated again. She hadn’t thought to bring any lunch. Jerry tried giving her one of his pies but she politely refused. They were full of meat and gristle that made her want to gag.

By early afternoon she had hauled the last load of washing out of the machine, and Brandon had reappeared to drive her back to Glenvale.

‘Don’t forget these,’ said Jerry, smiling toothlessly in the doorway to the stables. He passed two golden tickets through the truck window.

She smiled. ‘Thanks, Jerry. And thanks for telling me about the koalas.’

If she was going to be stuck here for a while, maybe sighting a koala would make life more bearable.