Outback Sunset (13 page)

‘It’s so beautiful,’ she exclaimed.

‘My grandfather was the first white man to see the place. He named it Exeter Gorge — because that’s where he came from in England. See there,’ Bren pointed to a horizontal mark that was a different colour to the upper wall of the gorge, ‘that’s how high the water can get during and after the wet.’

‘Remarkable.’ Vanessa gauged the mark to be about one and a half metres up from the gorge’s floor.

‘Wait till you see the waterfall. It won’t be running at full pelt — we’d have to come in after the wet to see that — but it’s still quite a sight, ’cause the fall is so high.’

She looked around for a sign of a creek. There wasn’t any. The ground was bone dry. ‘Where’s the water now?’

‘Evaporated or gone underground. Geologists aren’t sure. It does that in the dry.’

She shook her head in wonderment and Bren gave her a quizzical look, ‘What?’

‘I was thinking of England, trying to compare. I can’t. This place is just so … special.’

His grin was a wide one. ‘You’re beginning to sound like a native.’

‘That’s one of the nicest things you’ve said to me.’

‘Come on. Race you to the waterfall,’ Bren challenged. He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and raced off.

She spurred her horse forward and followed but not at the breakneck speed at which her husband rode.

Bren was off his horse and releasing the saddle’s girth before removing it by the time she rode up and dismounted. She loosely tethered the reins then stood, staring at the splendour before her.

Water cascaded over and down sheer walls that must have been approximately fifty metres high. Spray from the falling water was, in the sun’s light, creating a rainbow halfway down as it fell into a naturally formed, almost circular pool. A variety of flora abounded because of the constant water supply. Vanessa watched the water hit the pool, bounce up in a small wave then in ever-widening ripples, move towards shore. ‘This is magnificent.’

Bren came up behind her and put his arms around her waist.
‘You
are magnificent. Every day I say a prayer of thanks — not an easy thing for me ’cause I’m not a godly man — that you fell in love with me.’

She leant back onto his chest, smiling as he nibbled her neck. ‘Thank you. That’s my second compliment for the day and as they say, straight
back at you, my darling.’ She turned in his arms to face him and offered her lips for his kiss.

After a delightful interlude Bren broke away and fanned his face with his disreputable looking Akubra — he refused to buy a new one because this was his lucky hat. Over time he had pushed and pulled the brim into a unique shape and she’d noticed that most of the station hands had done the same, seeming not to appreciate the work the manufacturer had gone to, to give the hat its individual style.

‘I thought I was hot before; I’m steaming now.’ His eyes moved away from her to the cascading water and the pool it emptied into. ‘Let’s cool off.’

‘I didn’t pack bathers.’ She gave him a prim look but, contradictorily, her smile was one of anticipation.

He gave her a wicked smile. ‘All the better, we’ll skinny-dip.’

‘What about crocodiles?’ She’d heard and read enough stories about crocodile attacks to be nervous about the idea of swimming in pools where the merciless reptiles might lurk.

‘It’s safe because the river stops at the top of the falls. Crocs aren’t going to bother coming down into the gorge — there’s no food here for them.’

She gave him a tentative smile. ‘There’s us.’

‘Believe me, hon, if I thought there was a skerrick of a risk I wouldn’t get my big toe wet. I’ve seen what crocs do to animals and humans.’ He began to unbutton his shirt and his belt. ‘Besides, the chopper regularly flies over this area. One of us would have spotted croc slides if they were around.’

‘Fran’s packed us a wonderful lunch, with wine. Let’s put the bottle in a cool spot first,’ Vanessa suggested.

They stayed in the water, which was refreshingly cool, for an hour before hunger of a different kind pulled them back to the shore and they made love. After that they lay naked on the large towel Bren had packed, letting the sun dry them.

‘Now that’s what I call an appetiser,’ Bren whispered in her ear as he lazily stroked her body. ‘Could we put it on the daily menu?’

Playfully, she slapped his hand away. ‘I concede it might be nice but also hard to achieve, what with people wandering in and out of the homestead.’ Everyone, she had noticed, seemed to have carte blanche and came in and out of the place as they pleased. The station hands didn’t, but Reg, Nova and Fran, as well as Curtis could often be seen walking through various rooms — the kitchen, the office to send messages, the living areas too. Privacy wasn’t something anyone worried about and over the months she’d finally got used to that.

‘Just a thought,’ he said, his tone still husky in the afterglow of their lovemaking.

‘I’m starving, let’s have lunch.’ Vanessa threw her singlet top over her nakedness and reached for the lunch box. Bren liberated the bottle of wine from its watery resting place and they drank it in plastic cups.

‘Fancy some exploring afterwards?’ Bren queried while munching on a corned beef fritter.

‘Depends …’ She quirked an eyebrow at him.

‘There are Aboriginal cave paintings up one side of the gorge. It’s a bit of a climb to get there.’

Vanessa’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. ‘I’d love to see them, once lunch has settled.’

‘Okay, you rest while I clean up.’

Bren tidied the remains of their lunch and put what was left in his saddlebag while Vanessa spread the towel under a patch of shade and lay down, protecting her face from the sun’s glare with her hat. As she relaxed she listened to the faint and occasional hum of bush insects, but apart from that there was silence — not the stirring of a breeze to rustle the scrub or overhanging tall palms. There wasn’t even the sound of a bird to disturb the absolute quiet.

Too hot, she decided. The animals and insects who called this part of the land home were smart enough to be taking it easy in some shady spot, she thought as she drifted into a pleasant, fatigued sleep.

Bren, grabbing Vanessa’s toe and pulling it, roused her from the dream she’d been having. She and Bren had been the only inhabitants on a tropical island, a paradise with plenty to eat and drink, but dark clouds were forming and a wind was stirring the vegetation — a storm was about to hit paradise and … She opened her eyes, blinked at the semi-darkness of the hat which had half fallen off her face. Her gaze on Bren, she sat up with a jerk and was about to stand when Bren’s eyes suddenly focussed on a spot behind her. His ‘wake up now’ smile froze on his face.

‘Don’t move,’ he hissed at her, a sense of urgency in his tone.
‘Don’t move a muscle.’

Still watching something to the right of her shoulder, he got up, very slowly, and edged
backwards to the saddles. He removed his Winchester 30/30 rifle with great care from the leather holster attachment strapped to his saddle.

Vanessa was perplexed and, because his behaviour was strange, she was becoming more anxious by the second. She saw beads of sweat — he was close enough for her to see them — form on his upper lip as he brought the rifle up to his shoulder and aimed it. But … her eyes widened, her heart began a rapid acceleration, he seemed to be aiming at her!

Almost frozen with fright, her throat muscles in spasm, she dredged up the courage to whisper, ‘Wh-at … are … you doing?’

H
is answer came in a heartbeat when he pulled the rifle’s trigger. The noise echoed down the gorge, around the waterfall and pool then faded away to nothingness.

Bren dropped the rifle and raced to Vanessa. He pulled her up and into his arms. ‘Sorry, hon, there wasn’t time to explain.’ He pointed to something partly hidden in the grass behind her. ‘Look.’

Trembling, she swivelled sideways in his arms to stare down at a two-metre long, dark brown smooth,
something
. God, it was a snake! His shot had blown its head off yet its body still wriggled in a final death throe.

‘That’s a King Brown, otherwise known as a Mulga snake. Their venom sacs hold more venom in them than any other snake in the country. They can kill a person but not quickly, takes half a day or longer, so I’ve heard.’ She shuddered and he tightened his arms around her. ‘They’re cold-blooded and like the heat, but they’re not usually aggressive. Guess he felt threatened ’cause we were a little too close to him.’

‘I … I …’ Her mouth was dry and she almost choked on the lump of fear lodged in her throat, a
bubble of nausea threatening to make her throw up. ‘I, oooh, Bren.’ Her arms clung to him as if she never intended to let him go. She couldn’t tell him that for one or two crazy seconds she had thought he was going to shoot her. That had been her first immediate and, she realised, foolish reaction.

‘It’s all right. You’re safe. Wait.’ He disentangled himself and went back to his saddle. From one of the bags he extracted a small flask with an outer, polystyrene skin. ‘Drink this.’

Vanessa took a swig. Warm, smooth brandy heated her mouth and slid down her throat into her stomach, the alcohol calming her. She took another mouthful, coughed and gave the flask back. ‘Do you always carry alcohol with you?’ The trembling was easing, and so was the nauseous feeling.

‘Sure do. Strictly for medicinal purposes though. You’ve got to carry it the right way, in a protective flask, or the stuff evaporates in the heat,’ he said with an unrepentant grin. He took a mouthful himself, then returned the flask to the saddlebag.

She shook her head at him, then the full import of what had happened struck her. ‘You saved my life.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said lightheartedly. ‘I was slack though. I should have checked the ground before you lay down, made sure there were no nasties in the grass.’ He touched her cheek, tracing his fingers down her jawline, down her throat in a sensitive caress. ‘You okay now?’ He waited till she’d given him an affirmative nod. ‘Still want to look at those cave paintings? We can do it another time if you’re too shaky.’

She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Are there likely to be snakes up there?’

‘No.’ He saw anxiety mirrored in her brown eyes, and responded to it. ‘But I’ll take the rifle just in case. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Vanessa smiled a relieved smile. She didn’t want Bren to think she was scared, but that had been a harrowing experience — another snippet for the diary she was keeping about acclimatising to the outback. She was trying so hard to get used to the ins and outs of outback life, to its attractions and the dangers but she knew that learning and knowing all she had to know was going to take time. She pointed to the rifle. ‘Perhaps, one day, you should teach me how to handle one of those things.’

‘A good idea,’ he smiled encouragingly at her. ‘I’ll put it on my list of “Essential things to teach Vanessa”.’ He held out his hand to her, giving her fingers a squeeze as they entwined with his. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

At first, the changes on Amaroo over the next month or two were so subtle it took a while for Vanessa to pick up on the fact that something was wrong.

Then, slowly, small occurrences began to gather weight at the back of her mind, things that didn’t make sense. Bren vetoing the proposed spa she had set her heart on till the next year was the first. Then, one day, Fran let it slip that she had been told to keep household and other expenditure very economical. Ten days later the two casual station hands were laid off. Vanessa now knew enough
about station life to know that with the land they had, plus herd numbers, two pairs of hands were going to be missed. And, she didn’t need a high IQ to know that week by week, Bren was quietly introducing other belt-tightening strategies.

But the most remarkable change was in Bren. His relaxed, easygoing nature gradually underwent a change, beginning with him becoming more of a workaholic, like his brother. Occasionally he lapsed into brooding moods as if his thoughts were a million miles away. He began to drink seriously after dinner — something he hadn’t done before, when they were first married — and would continue until he was tipsy or clearly inebriated. As well, he spent hours in the office, poring over the station’s accounts and when he emerged his mood was blacker than when he went in.

However, worst of all, after a month or so came the realisation that he was distancing himself from her. It was something quite odd considering they’d only been married a short while. Vanessa tried to initiate discussions about what was worrying him but to no avail. He refused to talk about the problem, to share it with her, which made her deduce that some peculiar Selby credo wouldn’t allow him to.

Whether he was doing it consciously or unconsciously, she considered that he was treating her like an outsider. It hurt that he didn’t have the confidence to confide in her. She had expected their marriage to be a partnership, in the truest sense of the word — a similar relationship to that which her parents had enjoyed — but Bren was shutting her out and she was at a loss to know how to break through
his reserve. Her concerns were compounded because, in less than a week, she was leaving for England to play Katharina, a role she had played several times, in
The Taming of the Shrew
at a Stratford on Avon Shakespeare Festival.

One day the station’s accountant, Fabian Costello, visited Amaroo and stayed closeted with Bren and Curtis for most of the day, which told Vanessa something. If she must, she had to force the issue and not allow Bren to fob her off with platitudes that everything was fine, when her heart and her intellect told her it wasn’t.

When Fabian left early next morning, with Reg flying him back to Kununurra, Bren still refused to be drawn on what was wrong. By bedtime that night Vanessa had had enough of tiptoeing around and of respecting Bren’s ‘space’. She had built up sufficient hurt and anger internally and she intended to have her say. After dinner, sitting in a leather chair with Sandy asleep on her lap, she watched Bren refill his whisky glass for the third time and began with a casual remark. ‘Considering the remoteness of Amaroo, isn’t it unusual for an accountant to pay a client a personal visit?’