Good Money (20 page)

They arrived simultaneously, Kylie and Ted, and they walked through the house with barely a nod to me. I watched through the window now as Kylie, Mum, and the twins sat in solemn silence around the plastic table. Something prevented me from joining them, a self-preservation thing.

Light rain started to fall from dark clouds. I went back inside. Ted was doing the breakfast dishes, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow.

‘Your mother's had a shock but she's okay.' He said this with a soupçon of emotional grievance, as though I needed reminding of Delia's trauma. Ted, I realised, didn't like me much.

‘Thanks for taking care of her,' I said pointedly.

He stopped scouring the tines of a fork and eyeballed me. ‘You seem to find this hard to understand, but I love your mother.'

Were we naked, this conversation could not have been more awkward. ‘I guess.' I deadpanned like a stroppy adolescent.

‘She is my wife. I've been taking care of her for the past twenty years.'

Twenty years. That was longer than Delia's marriage to Russell. And my longest relationship was a couple of anxious years, more like wolves circling each other than human commitment. Did it damage my feminist credentials to admit I wanted someone, just once, to take care of me?

‘Ted, I need to get back to Melbourne.'

He shrugged. ‘So go.'

‘I can't. No transport.'

‘There's a bus.'

My nods were more a repeated lowering of the head.

‘You should get yourself a car, Stella.'

I almost told him: one evening five years ago, I blew one long continuous breath into the plastic tube and they disqualified me from driving for twelve months. My licence was cancelled and I never bothered to get it back again. In the city, a licence wasn't necessary.

‘Would you mind taking me to the bus stop?'

‘Not now. Maybe in a couple of hours — I'm taking your mother to Ouyen.' He put the last plate in the rack and went out of the room.

I looked at the clock: 11.30am. Time in this place was nasty. I gathered some provisions — an apple, a bottle of water, two butter-and-Vegemite Saladas placed butter-side together and cling-wrapped — into a bag, and put on my coat. On my way out, I grabbed a handful of dog biscuits to bribe the dogs into joining me, and marched.

In my nothing-to-do youth, dragging your feet along the unsealed road was what you did when ‘going for a walk' was the only privacy on offer. This road was the site of my initiation into teenage society: first cigarette, first kiss, first drink and spew. Rites of passage. After a long while, I recognised a track that veered off into the bush. The dogs watched me for a while before trotting away home.

Some of the landscape was familiar. Some not. Since Ted had started selling off bits of the farm, there were new subdivisions. Where I had once ridden the motorcycle in search of flyblown sheep, there were now houses, on one-acre blocks encased in wire fences. They were squat, thin-clad dwellings with flat-ceilings, surrounded by scrub, yards strewn with semi-functional swing-sets, and the occasional above-ground pool or trampoline — a weird transplanted suburbia.

Distant thunder made me stop. It grew louder. It was low, on the ground, a rolling rumble, not mechanical but heavy and persistent, coming closer towards me. Dust rose in the air, then they came into view: kangaroos. Thirty-five, maybe forty substantial eastern greys moving in a loose mob across my path. They scaled the fences, leaping straight through the backyards, and carried on, with smaller roos bringing up the rear.

The last joey couldn't clear a fence. He tried and fell short. By now, the mob had moved on. Again and again he jumped, but fell back each time. I wondered if I should intervene. Then the tough little bugger tried again. This time he cleared the height and jumped away.

When the dust settled, silence returned. I lingered, revelling in that brief psychological respite, when ecstatic wonder displaces monotonous self-concern.

If I were fifteen, I'd have rushed home to tell my father. He'd act amazed or surprised, or disbelieving. In my father's company, I would stretch out in laughter, or perhaps lean into an embrace of rock-hard arms and shoulders, and inhale his signature scent, a blend of diesel, Solvol, sporting club. That rich aroma that had soaked into every flannelette shirt that had hung in his wardrobe. So old and soft, the cloth had felt weightless in my hands as I took them from their hangers. The folding and packing had taken an entire day. And, at the end of the process, we gave those treasures to a charity shop.

I walked to the end of the track. Soon, I was in an open field, where granite rocks rose up out of the flatness, grey-white against the ochre-brown. Large as houses, they were rounded by years of wind and rain. I sat down and ate my Saladas. Only the far-off buzzing drone of a line-trimmer cut the inertia of the countryside.

Delia's car was gone when I got home; she and Ted had gone to Ouyen. I headed to Kylie's room, for another look at the report. There had to be something I was missing, some vital clue in the text that could explain everything. I opened the satchel and found it empty. The laptop was gone.

Now it became clear. The fire had been a distraction. Ben knew it would take all day before I realised he'd stolen it. He probably intended to offer the DVD to Cesarelli; problem was, Cesarelli was dead. I wondered if Ben had heard that news yet. What would he do if there were no one alive to sell the DVD to?

I grabbed my bag and started shoving my stuff in it. I wrote a quick note to Mum and ran out onto the road. It was four kilometres to the highway. It would take me over an hour, with the damn empty laptop satchel bouncing on my hip. After a gruelling twenty minutes schlepping over the pitted road, a car heading in the opposite direction slowed. A black V8 Commodore with fat tyres. It stopped and I hurried over. A tinted window lowered.

‘Get in, Stella.' Shane Farquar.

I backed up. ‘Fuck off.'

‘Come on. Where you headed?'

‘Bus stop. Melbourne bus.'

He grinned. ‘No worries. Get in.'

I was desperate. I opened a door and threw my bags onto the backseat, beside a child's car seat. Dear God, he'd procreated. I pitied the poor woman who'd joined her DNA with this specimen. He accelerated to an alarming speed and skidded to a halt at the highway. He turned left and drove like a lunatic towards Woolburn.

‘So, going back to Melbourne, hang out with your arty mates.'

I ignored him.

‘Bloke in town tells me your mum's been checking out units in Ouyen. To live in.'

Delia would never leave the farm, let alone live in a unit. ‘I think you've been sniffing the sheep-dip fumes again.'

Shane rolled his eyes. ‘Grow up, Hardy. I'm trying to discuss business. He reckons she's been talking about putting the farm on the market, what's left of it.'

Could Delia really leave the farm? Ted had a lot of influence over her, and he was the kind of man who called a shed a studio, or a unit a townhouse. He sold lifestyles; perhaps he'd sold one to my mother. There was Delia's odd humming at breakfast, like she was up to something. It was a horrible idea but I began to think Shane Farquar was right.

Mortified, I turned away to hide the angry tears filling my eyes. I was not ashamed of my justifiable sorrow at the property changing hands; the real betrayal was the secrecy.

Was it too much to ask? A little honest, open communication in the family? But no, I had to hear the news from a Farquar.

‘Well, even if she is, what do you care?'

‘I'm interested.'

Oh, boy! My nemesis, my tormentor, swanning about in my childhood home, touching the door knobs with his meaty hands, walking on the floors with his cloven feet. The moment called for fury, revenge, cursing his family unto eternity. Instead, another part of me, stubborn and disgustingly
reasonable
, refused to cooperate with this descent into hate. The farm was a mausoleum, a monument to catastrophe. Let the Farquar have it. ‘So ask her.'

‘Every time I try to, she says she's busy.'

I chortled. The woman did lead an active life.

He grabbed my arm. ‘You've been telling her not to sell to me,' he said, with a flush rising from his neck. ‘Haven't you?'

‘What? That's silly.'

‘Bit of harmless teasing in school. You're all uptight about it still, arn'cha? On your high-fucking-horse.'

‘Don't know what you're on about.'

He stopped near a row of abandoned shops on the main street, where a thin pole had been erected with a V/Line sign stuck to it. I was surprised to be still alive.

‘You take the bus to Ballarat,' he said. ‘Then the train to Melbourne.'

‘Thanks,' I said stiffly. I unclicked my belt, but didn't get out. ‘Shane, if you're so keen to buy why don't you talk to Delia? Make a time — let's call it an appointment — and go see her. Make an offer.'

He faced me, suspicion and hope in his eyes.

‘And just so we're clear, I have never said a word to Mum about not selling to you. I had no idea you were even interested. You're feeling guilty about the crap you did in your past. Stuff that I've completely forgotten about, and I don't give a shit about now.' I pointed at my chest, feeling teary again. ‘I've left that all behind. Right? I don't hold on to shit that happened twenty years ago.'

He held my gaze and didn't reply, but the menace in his eyes was gone. I stepped out, and he did a burn-out and roared away.

I waited beside my satchel and bag. Time. Moved. Slowly. A quiet town, Woolburn. Dead almost. There was the odd ute. Distant trucks on the highway. An epoch passed. I aged, and yet I was no wiser, nor more mature. God help you if you lived around here and didn't drive. It was late afternoon when a woman pulled up and yelled across the road to me. ‘If you're waiting for the bus, you've missed it.'

‘When's the next one?'

‘Tomorrow morning. Seven-thirty.'

‘No. Seriously. When's the next one.'

‘There's only one a day. Leaves at seven-thirty in the morning.' The woman laughed. Then she got out of her car and came over. ‘Are you okay?'

I kicked a veranda post. ‘Utter, utter, utter bastard.'

Both her hands went up, palms out, ‘Calm down.'

‘Gah!'

‘Just take it easy.'

‘
Grrrrraaaagh
!'

She backed away slowly, got in her car, and sped off.

As her car receded into the distance, the place returned to its torpor. I stood in the middle of the road, my hands balled into fists, desperately conjuring an alternative getaway plan. There was one possibility, but it called for a last desperate effort. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and trudged towards the pub.

21

HALF THE
town was in Woolburn's Victoria Hotel, playing pool, reading the paper, sitting at the bar making jokes. It was a small, single-storey pub that had remained unchanged for years. The place had never been lovely, but now it was exhausted; the walls had yellowed, and the furnishings and fittings were elderly. Framed photos of footy teams covered the wall. I went looking and found the team portrait from the famous 1968 grand final. Woolburn lost the game but it had been a noble failure, with tales of blokes spitting out teeth, of a punctured lung, broken ribs, of blokes manfully staying on the field and playing on but missing set shots — and in the end, they lost by two points. In the back row, second from the left was Russell Hardy. His arms were folded and he had the sneer that he used for a smile. I had to get out of here.

I stood in the middle of the public bar and, in a loud voice, said, ‘Who do you have to sleep with around here to get a lift to Melbourne?'

All activity stopped, the farmers hushed, the boys rested their cue sticks. The barmaid leaned both elbows on the soggy mats. ‘You're Delia Hardy's eldest, aren't you? That poor woman. How is she?'

‘Mum? She's good, thanks. Considering.'

‘Terrible shock for her though, your dad's plane and all.'

‘It was only the sheds.'

‘Made of titanium that one,' the barmaid said. Everyone present agreed my mother was tough.

‘I hear she and Ted are selling up, moving to Ouyen.'

‘Yep. Apparently. That's what they're doing.'

An old bloke folded his paper. Hair shot out in wiry clumps from above his eyes, and from his ears and even from the top of his whiskey nose but there was none on his head. He nodded and said to me. ‘A Hardy, eh? Well, I'm about to head off to Melbourne. Got me truck outside. And no funny business,' he added with a wink.

I suppressed a squeal and gave him a short nod instead. ‘Thanks, mate.'

He put on his hat — not an old cockie's felt hat, but a truckie's cap advertising a brand of tractor — and went out.

I followed him outside to a vehicle for which ‘truck' was too strong a word. It could transport five sheep at the most. But it would do, and soon we were on the highway. In fact the doughty little engine seemed capable of driving all day, carrying on to Queensland if required — a thought that crossed my mind. But for now, the brown smudge on the horizon, a city of four million people, beckoned — and, at last, I was headed there. At last I was, as an old state slogan had it,
on the move
.