Beautiful Lies (37 page)

“Is she
from
the Territory, boy?”

Matthew felt like a trout being reeled slowly toward shore, then an idea occurred to him. “I know, let's ask her.” He grinned. He had just slipped the hook.

“Is she from Humpty Doo?”

“We could ask her that, too.”

“The pair of you belong together.” Roman started toward his desk. “I have work to do.”

“Granddad?”

Roman flinched. “What is it?”

“I'd like to see Jimiramira. Is there someone who could show me around? I might not…you know, be back. At least, not soon.”

“You want me to take you on a tour, do you?”

“It doesn't have to be you, although that would be great.”

Roman sighed, a deep rasping sound that seemed to come from the center of his being. “I suppose since you won't be dropping by often I can take some time with you now.”

“Really?”

“You look like your father when you do that, you know. Like my father, too, for that matter. I have some photos. Would you like to see them tonight?”

Matthew was stunned. “Of my dad? Or yours?”

“Both.”

“Awesome.”

“That's American for yes, I take it?”

“Can Tricia come with us while you show me around?”

“By all means. Maybe the girl won't be as slippery about answering questions as you are.”

“I wouldn't count on it.”

Roman reached for his hat, a sweat-stained Akubra that reminded Matthew of the one his father wore. “We'll see, boy.”

 

Jimiramira was more than Matthew had hoped. He had known he didn't have a prayer of seeing all of it in the short
time he had here, but the first thing Roman had done was take him and Tricia out to a stableyard fenced in coolibah rails to choose horses.

“You can ride?” he asked, as if the possibility that a grandson of his could not was unimaginable.

“Sure. My dad always takes me riding in the summer. And I had lessons when I was little.”

Roman harrumphed to show what he thought of lessons. “How about you?” he asked Tricia.

“Like a ringer at a race meeting.”

“You sound like a Territory girl.”

“Oh, I've been around.”

Matthew hoped she wouldn't explain how much.

Roman lectured a little about Australian stockhorses. “We breed our own horses. A stockhorse ought to be sweet-natured and trustworthy. Smart, too, with a good eye. He has to outthink a cow or a mob of them. You can choose most any horse here and he'll give a good ride.”

Matthew chose a chestnut with a white blaze streaking from nostrils to forelock. Roman gave him an approving look. Tricia's choice, a gray mare, was met with less enthusiasm. “You're certain you can handle her? She wasn't bred here. She needs some proper training.”

“She'll be right, thanks.”

They mounted, and it took Matthew some time to accustom himself to the saddle, which had a Johnny strap for mounting, instead of a horn. Tricia's horse performed a series of stiff-legged leaps as soon as Tricia lowered herself into the saddle, but the girl had the mare under control in a matter of seconds.

“A Territ'ry girl,” Roman muttered.

They rode out of the yard and up toward the house. “You know about the fire?” Roman asked Matthew. “Well,
my father was hardly more than a boy, but afterwards he had the station hands build another house. It wasn't much, but I was raised in it. He always promised my mother he'd build something better, but she was content with a roof and four walls. When I brought your grandmother here, I wanted something that would make her proud.”

“Was she?”

He cleared his throat. “She loved this house. Yes.”

“Is she buried over there?” Matthew pointed toward a graveyard on a slope not more than fifty yards away. The fence surrounding it was painted iron, like the one ringing the house. The site was shaded by giant gums, too.

“She is.”

“I'd like to visit later.”

Roman turned his horse away from the house in answer.

Matthew would always remember the remainder of the afternoon. They rode past the other buildings in the homestead complex, and his grandfather explained what each was used for. “That's the store.” He pointed to a squat stone building the size of a suburban convenience store. “We can't run off for something when we need it here. If we don't have it, we do without.”

Next he pointed out the cool house, packed with spini-fex between the walls and regularly hosed down to lower the temperature inside. They rode past the men's quarters and dining room, an office building with a narrow front porch and small, high windows, even a swimming pool, which for the moment was empty.

At the stockyards—vast, interlocking paddocks fenced in tubular steel—Roman gave them a quick lecture on cattle and the introduction of the Brahman and Santa Gertrudis breeds to increase body weight in the herd.

Matthew watched men on horseback riding among the
cattle “yarded” here, turning them, gentling them. Dust flew, and the noise of the assembled herd—or “mob” as his grandfather called it—was raucous.

“We have two other camps on the property,” Roman said. “We have the odd hut or two along the boundaries, too, for our riders. Each man has to keep the fences repaired along seven, eight hundred kilometers. We grade the road after the Wet, but it's never easy to make a go of it, even then. And it's a lonely job. It takes a hardy sort of bloke to sign on.”

Matthew had watched his grandfather drop his guard as the afternoon progressed. Roman liked to talk about Jimiramira. Matthew supposed that if this was all they needed to discuss, things would be fine between them. But he was surprised when Roman led them through a gate below the house to a sheltered sanctuary, a watering hole fed by a murky creek and shaded by bloodwood and stringybark trees. As they rode in, a flock of birds rose screeching into the bright afternoon sky.

“Galahs,” Roman said. “And cockatoos. A ruddy nuisance.”

Matthew thought he had never seen anything as beautiful as the birds, which were a rainbow oasis against the austere landscape.

Roman swung himself to the ground; then he held Tricia's horse so she could dismount, too. “Does this remind you of the billabong over at Coolibah Downs? Smaller, I know, but I'm always struck by the similarity when I'm visiting there.”

“It's smaller, all right.” The girl clamped her lips shut, and her posture stiffened, as if the cells in her body had frozen in alarm. “How did you know?”

“Winnie recognized you. She saw your photograph when she was in Darwin. Your father's well remembered here.”

Matthew recalled that Tricia had talked about Coolibah Downs yesterday.

“I'm not going back to Humpty Doo,” Tricia said. “So don't get your knickers in a knot. I just needed a holiday from me job in Sydney.”

“What sort of job, girl?”

“The sort that would curl an old man's hair,” Tricia said defiantly.

To Matthew's surprise, Roman simply nodded. “You wouldn't be looking for something better, would you?”

“Why? Do you want me to move my business north?”

“Speak to me the way your father taught you, girl! I remember your mother, too. Good people, both of them. And they would be ashamed of you.”

“Don't you think I know that?”

“And I suppose that's why you're not going home?”

She thrust her chin out, but Matthew thought her eyes sparkled with unshed tears.

“We could use you here.” Roman dropped his reins and started toward the water's edge, as if Tricia's answer meant little to him. “At the moment Winnie and my bookkeeper's wife share responsibility for the store, but neither of them has the time. You'd be in charge. Are you good with figures?”

“Good enough.”

“It's a proper job, no bludging tolerated. You'd work hard. And at the first sign of trouble or old habits, you'll have your notice.”

“You'll be watching me, waiting for me to do something I shouldn't.”

“No more than I watch anyone. And no one here need know where you've been and what you've done.”

“Why should you give me a job?”

“Because I know when I mate a prize bull with a prize heifer, the calf is worth looking after, even if it strays a time or two. In the end, it always comes ‘round. You think about it.” He squatted at the water's edge and scooped some up in his hands to wash his face.

Matthew looked at Tricia, who was staring into space, and he was surprised at how much he envied her.

 

“So what do you think of the place? Did you see enough of the outback to suit you?” Tricia motioned for Matthew to join her on a bench in a shady spot next to the house. Winnie had told them to get some fresh air and that she would call them when dinner—or “tea,” as she called it—was on the table.

Matthew didn't think he could ever see enough of Jimiramira. He knew better than to wish that the past had been different, but since returning from their ride, he had found himself thinking about the way his life might have been if Roman and Cullen had never had their falling out, or if his mother and Cullen…

Tricia didn't wait for his answer. “Your grandfather's a right enough bloke. What do you think about his offer? Do you think I should stay?”

He settled himself beside her, all too aware of the way her hip pressed snugly against his. “Sure I do. It's a good place to start over.”

“I went to the store, just to have a look. It could do with a good tidying, but I've seen worse.”

“Could you be happy back in the Territory? You said you hated it here.”

“Maybe I hated it because I didn't know what else was out there.”

“And now?”

The bench was so narrow and they were so close that the side of her breast brushed his arm. “Now I do.”

“And this is better?”

“Safer.” She sighed, her breath warm against his cheek. “In the Big Smoke, I saw heaps of things I wish I hadn't. If I ever want to be a city girl again, I guess I'll wait until I can get the right kind of job. Maybe I'll see about getting more education.”

“When we came to Jimiramira, I didn't think I'd be leaving you here.”

“Are you leaving?”

“I have to. My grandfather's going to call my mother. He may be calling right now. I have to get out of here before she sends somebody to bring me home.”

She didn't ask for details, as if she understood that he didn't want to tell her. She had never pried. She had never argued or lectured. She had, in fact, been the best company he could imagine.

“I'll miss you,” he said. And he meant it. Not just because he had found being with her exciting, but because he liked her. She was courageous and straightforward. She had an odd sort of confidence that brought her through the worst, and an odd sort of faith that made her hope for the best.

“Well, I suppose I'll miss you, too, Yank. But maybe we'll meet again.”

They stared at each other. They were so close, mere inches apart. He had been proud of himself for not taking her up on her offer to make love. Now he faced the truth. He hadn't done it for many reasons, but one of them was because he was afraid.

Tricia leaned closer. “Are you going to kiss me goodbye?”

He had kissed girls before, but never one he had wanted the way he'd wanted Tricia. He wondered how a man kept
his head and his self-respect when other parts of his anatomy were screaming for mercy.

It was up to him. She didn't move closer, as if she knew the next move had to be his. He leaned toward her and cupped the back of her head with his hand. Her hair was sleek and soft against his fingers. He didn't close his eyes, because if he was going to do this, he didn't want to miss a thing. He touched her lips with his, then pressed them harder, until she was kissing him back. She slid her arms around his back and snuggled her chest against his. And in the sunlit outback afternoon, Matthew saw stars.

 

Tricia's parents arrived about an hour before sundown. The pilot of the single-engine plane that touched down at the Jimiramira airstrip was a friend of Robby's from Coolibah Downs, and he had been easily persuaded to pick up the Simmonses in Darwin and fly them in. Tricia's father was a tall, wiry man without an ounce of flesh to spare. Her mother had a sweet face with green eyes like her daughter's, and square, sturdy hands that twisted against her own vain attempts to keep them still.

Tricia, who hadn't been told her parents were coming—but who surely had guessed—hesitated in the sitting-room doorway until her mother opened her arms.

Matthew, who had come in with Tricia, beat a hasty retreat. He found his grandfather on the porch, talking to the pilot. “Jim here tells me he'll take us up for a few minutes if you're game, boy. I thought you might want to see the run from the air.”

Matthew barely smothered a whoop.

Ten minutes later they were in the sky over Jimiramira. Matthew's heart felt as if it had begun to float at take-off and was now pressing against his lungs. The world was too
bright, the air too thin, so that he was forced to gulp it in frantic bursts. He wasn't afraid. He just wished that he could hold on to each glittering moment.

“That's one of the camps I told you about,” Roman shouted over the engine. He pointed below them to what looked like the village of a toy train set. “Mirror Hill. Just a house, stockyards, an outbuilding or two. The road's good enough. We ship to market from there when we can get the road trains in.” He pointed out each landmark below them. A range of hills that defined Jimiramira's northern border; the feathery tracings of a dry riverbed; the second camp, which was even more primitive than Mirror Hill.

By the time they landed back at the homestead, the sky was galah pink, a limitless expanse that seemed to be the only barrier between Jimiramira and forever.