Outback Sunset (30 page)

Vanessa, Kyle and Bren stayed at Cullen Bay for three days then, pleading the need to get back to the station, they returned to Amaroo.

T
he arrival of the wet to break the drought was a good reason to throw a party at Amaroo, even if only six people attended. Fran outdid herself with the food, whipping up a special meal from what was considered a much depleted pantry. There was also plenty to drink. Bren and Curtis, no matter how tight finances were, managed to keep a supply of alcohol about the place. Vanessa, who for the most part drank little, was silently perplexed by the Australian males’ propensity for beer and the consequences of over-imbibing.

Reg, who became merry after four stubbies, would periodically burst into song, much to Fran’s embarrassment. Warren, after a few, liked to find a wall to lean on and grin inanely at everyone. Alcohol, unfortunately, made Bren aggressive and he’d want to challenge people to silly dares — such as swimming across Gumbledon Creek, now a raging torrent. And Curtis, well, he barely changed at all, other than becoming quieter than usual.

‘Hey, bro,’ Bren yelled to Curtis across the living room, ‘you’re not keeping up,’ he said, raising his can of beer in a challenge.

‘Not in the mood. Besides, I can’t compete in the grog stakes with you,’ Curtis retorted. ‘No one on Amaroo can.’

Bren grinned, pleased by what he considered to be a compliment. ‘Piker!’

Curtis responded with a rude gesture. Everyone laughed, well almost everyone. Vanessa didn’t. She didn’t want to appear a nark but Bren’s behaviour — he was no longer a teenager with a need to prove his manliness — was disappointing. She didn’t mind that he drank, it relaxed him, but why wasn’t he mature enough to know when to stop? Some evidence of what she was thinking must have shown on her face …

‘Wifey doesn’t approve, do you, hon?’

An eyebrow lifted as she queried him, ‘Approve of what?’

‘Me getting pissed.’

Vanessa tried to make her reply sound lighthearted, ‘What I don’t approve of is you being hung-over and grumpy for the next twenty-four hours.’

‘Doesn’t matter, not much to do in the wet anyway. Might as well be drunk as sitting around watching the rain. Gets bloody boring.’

‘It might be boring but we’d be cactus here without the wet,’ Curtis threw in.

‘Too right,’ Warren and Reg chorused and raised their tinnies in a silent salute to the rain.

‘I love the rain.’ Vanessa said. ‘The sound it makes on the tin roof, its awesome power. It reminds me of … ‘

‘Bloody England, I suppose,’ Bren retorted, turning nasty.

‘Amaroo, not England, is my home, Bren,’ she pointed out quietly, now aware that her husband was working himself into a thoroughly disagreeable mood. When he had too much ‘brew’ he would argue over anything and nothing.

Curtis tried to attract attention. ‘I will have another, bro. I need the practice ’cause one of these days I will drink you under the table.’

‘The hell you will!’

Vanessa’s smile thanked Curtis for his intervention, and like a co-conspirator he grinned back at her. They had a good, mutual understanding of each other nowadays, seeming to know when to join ranks against Bren’s more outlandish, unworkable ideas, and when to jointly encourage him. They made a good, if silent, ‘team’.

‘Wazza, mate, fancy a game of soccer in the rain?’ Bren challenged the lone stockman the station had retained. They could get away with a lean, mean working crew of just five, including Vanessa, because all were experienced in handling stock and other situations.

‘If I can have Curtis on my side,’ Warren responded after some consideration.

Bren looked questioningly at Reg. ‘We can do ‘em mate, can’t we?’

Reg shook his head. ‘You’re mad as a cut snake, Bren.’ Then he gave his boss a crooked smile. ‘Why not?’

A few minutes later Fran and Vanessa, while Kyle was having his afternoon nap, stood on the verandah, peering through sheeting rain as the four men kicked Kyle’s soccer ball around the front yard.
In seconds they were soaked and being covered in mud. Ripe language and insults rent the sodden air and with Curtis and Warren more lithely built and better coordinated than Bren and Reg, they ended up with the lion’s share of the ball, a fact which infuriated an overly competitive Bren.

‘They’re not coming inside wearing that mud,’ Vanessa muttered to Fran. However, in spite of her schoolmarmish tone she had to laugh at the sight they made. Every other time one man kicked the ball, he more or less ended up on his backside. ‘At times like this I wish I had a video camera.’

‘That wouldn’t be good, they’d be inhibited. Besides, the lads are just letting off steam. No one can get used to days, then weeks of inactivity during the wet,’ Fran said, by way of excusing the rough-housing. ‘Silly Reg, he’ll be so stiff tomorrow he won’t want to get out of bed.’

‘Men,’ Vanessa chuckled. ‘I’ll never understand them.’

‘Mmmm, isn’t that what men say about women?’ Fran replied tongue-in-cheek. ‘They can shower the mud off in the stockmen’s quarters. I’ll make a pot of coffee to go with the madeira cake I took out of the freezer earlier on.’

Vanessa watched for a few more minutes, then she left them to it to check on Kyle …

It was late in the evening, the wet had come and gone and the flooding creeks and puddles were drying up. The Morrisons had retired for the night, Kyle was in bed and Vanessa, Bren and Curtis sat around the kitchen table, discussing finances.

‘The idea’s laudable, Vanessa, but I don’t see how the station can afford it,’ Bren said as he dropped the piece of paper onto the kitchen table.

‘I
don’t think the station can afford not to. We should look at ways to drought-proof Amaroo.’ She tapped the paper with its rows of figures. ‘Each year a sum of money should be set aside — perhaps two or five per cent of the station’s net profit — in a separate, untouchable account for when it will be needed.’

This was a scheme Vanessa had thought up while working in Melbourne. She would rather Amaroo have less disposable income each year than go through the privations they’d recently suffered. Their cash reserves had been expended and in the end she had had to sell the property in Darwin to keep the station’s figures in the black. There had to be a better way …

‘I don’t agree. Droughts here are as rare as hen’s teeth,’ Bren pointed out. ‘We probably won’t see another one in our lifetime.’

‘I hope we don’t,’ Vanessa said with fervour, ‘but if we do I’d rather be prepared — surely it’s good management. It’s going to take a year, probably two years, for us to become financially comfortable again. As well, we have to rebuild the breeding stock we sold.’ She stared directly at him. ‘A downturn in overseas sales, such as what happened during Desert Storm in ’91, could finish us.’

‘That isn’t likely,’ Curtis intervened. ‘The export beef trade is booming in the Middle East and Asia. I’ve heard that some stations in Western Australia can’t fill their prescribed orders.’

Vanessa’s chin tilted determinedly. ‘Maybe so, but where’s the harm in being prepared for the worst?’

‘Vanessa has a point,’ Curtis conceded to Bren. That he did made his brother scowl at him.

‘Ganging up on me, are you?’ Bren retorted. He was becoming increasingly irritated by Vanessa’s obsession with finances. After all, she was a relative Johnny-come-lately to the outback, what did she really know?

‘No, but it is worth considering,’ Curtis refused to be intimidated by his brother’s churlishness. ‘Why not run the idea by Fabian, see what he thinks of it?’

Bren stared first at Curtis, then he turned an angry gaze on Vanessa.
‘I own Amaroo
and I’ll make the decisions, thank you both.’ And so saying, he scraped his chair back, got up and strode from the room.

Annoyed by his display Vanessa got up, her intention to go after him. As she did she silently acknowledged a growing frustration at the way Bren dealt with confrontations and matters he didn’t like, by ignoring them or walking away, instead of talking things through. That it was happening more often with regard to Amaroo and their personal relationship concerned her. Just recently she’d said she wanted another child and they’d argued unsatisfactorily about it without reaching an agreement because Bren had walked away.

Curtis touched her hand. ‘Let him cool down.’ For a moment or two he studied the fieriness in her eyes, the rapid breathing, signs that her temper was on the rise. ‘You know Bren, he doesn’t like to be
told
. He likes to think “suggestions” regarding Amaroo emanate from him. I wouldn’t bring the savings plan up again. In a week or two — when he’s mulled it over — it’s likely that he’ll raise the matter as if it were his own idea.’

Vanessa stared at Curtis, admiring his ability to read Bren so well. Fleetingly, she wondered if he had studied psychology when he attended university. ‘Your brother can be very … annoying. I only want what’s best for Amaroo, we all do. Why can’t Bren see that?’

Curtis gave her a slow grin. ‘Stubbornness, it’s a Selby trait. You should know that by now. He’ll come round, wait and see.’

‘But … You do think it’s a good idea, don’t you?’

‘It has merit,’ he agreed. ‘As you know, there’ll be years when our profits will be low due to a variety of reasons. Most stations experience that.’

‘Then, in the years we make good profits, we put aside twice as much.’

His grin widened. ‘You’re a hard woman to get around, Vanessa Selby.’

Delighted that he saw the merit of her plan, Vanessa’s anger abated and her eyes suddenly twinkled at him with mischief. ‘That I am, Curtis.
You
should know that by now,’ she paraphrased what he’d said earlier. ‘Living in the outback has taught me to be determined.’ She rinsed their coffee cups in the sink then walked to the hall doorway. ‘I’ll say goodnight.’

Left alone at the kitchen table, Curtis did his best — and failed — to erase from his mind that cheeky look of hers before she’d left. Vanessa Selby was
turning out to be a woman of some substance. Feisty, intelligent, talented. He brushed crumbs off the table with his left hand and let them fall onto the floor. Then he closed his eyes and shook his head as a panoply of memories assailed him, from the first time he’d laid eyes on her. How she had dug her heels in and been determined to learn everything she could about outback life, embracing the good things and the hardships with equal vigour. How brave she’d been after the dust storm. Yes, she was turning out to be a true-blue, modern pioneer woman though she didn’t have a drop of Aussie blood in her, which made her character and behaviour all the more admirable.

His swing from dislike to admiration, to respect and liking, had occurred subtly, he realised, because he had been almost unaware of the change. He squinted at the sheen on the stainless steel kitchen sink, wishing … What did he wish? That Bren would appreciate the treasure he had in Vanessa. She, not his moody brother was becoming Amaroo’s strength, its heart, its soul. But in the next breath he scoffed at his musings — they were too fanciful — as he stood up and went outside. Tilting his head back he looked up at a star-studded night, doing so was a ritual with him, before he went to bed.

Christ, he slapped his thigh as he walked towards the cottage, his brief talk with Vanessa had put him into a strange mood. What he needed was to get away, to go and see Regan. He’d go whenever Georgia was off on a photo assignment in Europe. That way they wouldn’t need to see or trade insults with each other.

Regan was almost twelve. That thought jolted him. Where had the years gone, and how quickly they were passing. His daughter was almost a teenager, and he’d been alone, without a woman for almost seven of those years. He’d never done anything really about trying to find a woman, as he’d said he would do before Kyle’s transplant.
Maybe that’s how it was meant to be
. Not every man in the outback ended up happily, or even unhappily, married. That made him spare a fleeting thought for Nova and the night she had kissed him — such un-Nova like behaviour had been a shock. He shrugged a shoulder, dismissing her action as coming from someone who’d had a few too many glasses of wine. Nova didn’t fancy him, he was sure of that. She was in a full-on relationship with Leo, the guy in the band. After a last look at the stars, and a long sigh, he opened the cottage door and went inside.

Vanessa typed the words ‘the end’ into the computer, sat back and breathed out in a satisfied sigh. The script provisionally titled
North of the Nullarbor
was finished, at last. The work had taken considerably longer than anticipated and she knew that Kerri was anxious to receive the final draft because she had two potential backers. They were interested in an overall production package which, if negotiations went well, might include Toni Collette, veteran actor Jack Thompson in the role of Rufus Whitfield and Andrew Clarke as Rupert. With the possibility of Jane Campion, a talented director from New Zealand — if she liked the script — directing the film. The project was getting to the
exciting stage and seeing the script through to the end had given her a sense of fulfilment. However, having limited experience in the ways of film and stage proposals, Vanessa knew the project was a long way from being a done deal.

Bren came into the office and stood behind her. His strong hands began to massage her tight shoulder muscles. ‘Finished. That’s great, hon.’

‘I don’t know about great, but it was a relief to type “the end”.’

‘You’ve devised a wonderful, pioneer story, Vanessa, about Emily Whitfield and her family,’ he assured her. ‘There’s passion and privation, greed, murder, a cattle stampede and the bad guy gets his just desserts in the end. I’m no expert but I reckon it’s top movie material.’

Vanessa chuckled at his praise. ‘Maybe you should go to London and try to sell it to the backers.’

‘Your agent wouldn’t like that. I’m still not sure that Kerri fully approves of me.’

She turned around in the chair to look at him, couching her words so she didn’t hurt his feelings. ‘Nonsense, Bren. If Kerri didn’t like you, believe me, you would know it in no uncertain manner. She doesn’t hide her feelings, her likes or dislikes unless it’s prudent for her business to do so.’