The Grass Castle (17 page)

‘Give it time,’ she says, getting up and heading for the bathroom. Time to run, she thinks.

16

Daphne is in the four-wheel drive with Abby on the way to the national park. It’s an overcast day and grey clouds muscle against the horizon. It has been like this for a week: the skies threatening rain, but delivering nothing. Abby says she has given up hope of a decent autumn, and Daphne agrees. The land is brown and hungry, and the cool wind suggests winter is coming.

It’s been a few weeks since Abby visited Queanbeyan, and Daphne has been worried that she frightened the girl off with her trip down memory lane, spilling the contents of her boxes and blurting parts of her story like that. Then Abby rang and invited her out to the valley, said she’d found a suitable day. Daphne has been spinning with anticipation ever since, counting off the days. Perhaps Abby didn’t mind her reminiscences after all.

But when Abby collects Daphne from the Queanbeyan house, she seems distant somehow and hesitant, as if she’s changed her mind about taking Daphne with her. For a while she is silent, and Daphne feels uncomfortable. Then Abby looks sideways at her and mumbles ‘I’ve met someone.’ And finally Daphne understands. She almost laughs, relieved that the girl feels sufficiently relaxed to share her news. She also notices that Abby has a pretty radiance about her, a coy self-awareness that comes with physical loving. Daphne remembers feeling that way with Doug early on. It had been a surprise to her that sexual charms lurked beneath his veneer of gruff hairy reserve. She hadn’t expected it of him—the shock of tenderness and intimacy and the ability to arouse the woman in her.

On their wedding night, she had anticipated pain and fear and awkwardness, and there had been some of that, yes. But from the beginning Doug had been attentive to her needs, focused on her pleasure. He wasn’t the rough bushman he appeared; there was sensitive magic in his work-toughened fingers. He leaned over her that first night, in the muted glow of candlelight, thoughtfully lit for psychological warmth, and unravelled her slowly with careful gentle delight shining in his eyes, as if he was unwrapping the most exquisite present. And she supposed perhaps she was a gift to him. Doug was not a young man when Daphne married him. He was in his early thirties, a hard worker, on the cusp of bachelorhood.

Theirs had been a restrained and cautious courtship on the tail of her father’s death. Doug had been almost painfully respectful of her grief, and she’d been in no hurry, striving to recover from the loss of her father. She was emotionally fragile, and had he rushed her, pressed her, made demands of her, it is likely her bruised heart would have ruptured and she’d have run into a different life. As it was, Doug’s patience was so profound she was well recovered when he bashfully offered his first gestures of affection—a deliciously restrained and gentle caress of her cheek with the back of his hand, his eyes brimming with the power of his feelings. By then he was sure she wouldn’t reject him. He had visited at the farm often, accepted invitations to dinner, selflessly assisted with many jobs too difficult for Daphne and her mother after her father’s passing. He had humbly made himself available and displayed his interest subtly, through service, allowing Daphne to come to him in her own time.

It was a beautiful form of romance—Daphne sees that now. Back then, it took some time for her to appreciate it. Initially, she had resented his presence. But his was such a gentle and furtive way of slipping beneath her skin. From her thanks and gratitude grew the first stirrings of affection, and from there came awareness of the bright light in his eyes when he looked at her, followed, eventually, by the desire for his approval and his touch. It was a masterful breaking in, like her father’s skilful handling of a young horse.

‘Well that’s lovely for you,’ she says to Abby, hiding these recollections of Doug which must surely be glowing in her eyes. ‘Do you mind if I ask what he does for a living?’

‘He’s a journalist,’ Abby says. ‘Very smart.’

Daphne smiles. ‘I’m sure you’ll run rings around him.’

‘I doubt it. He’s streets ahead on general knowledge.’

‘That’s his job, isn’t it? To know a little about many things. Or at least to appear as if he does.’

Abby looks glum. ‘He pulls it off well.’

‘So long as he’s nice,’ Daphne says. ‘That matters more.’

‘Yes, I suppose he’s nice.’

‘That’s good then, isn’t it?’ Daphne sees the nervous jitter in the girl’s hands as she grips the steering wheel.

‘He’s very keen,’ Abby says, suddenly miserable.

Love’s supposed to make you happy, Daphne thinks. But she knows the fear that can roil in your belly when infatuation first strikes, the tussle between lust and decency, the terror that this might be the forever you’ve been looking for, and for which you are suddenly and completely unprepared. She learned this herself with Doug when she was a girl becoming a woman. ‘So long as he’s good to you,’ she says gently.

‘Yes, he’s good to me.’ Abby looks away, one of her fingers twisting a hank of hair into a curl.

Daphne wants to tell the girl that love will work itself out in time, but she’s not sure how much she should impose her opinions, so she says nothing.

‘I’m sorry to burden you with this,’ Abby says. ‘Being with you reminds me of my Gran. I feel like I can tell you things.’

‘I’m glad you’re talking to me,’ Daphne says.

‘Have you ever felt like this?’ Abby’s lips tremble as she combs her fingers through her hair.

‘Like what, dear? I’m no mind-reader. You’ll have to tell me.’

‘I really like him,’ Abby says. ‘But I don’t want him too close. I want to stay safe.’

Daphne understands. She sees the anxiety in Abby’s face and she wishes she could convey that everything will be all right, that Abby’s terror will pass and that something softer and gentler will take its place, something longer lasting that will survive highs and lows and troubles, and metamorphose into real love. ‘Nothing’s safe, is it?’ she says finally. ‘Not even walking down the street to the shops. Anything could happen. And some of it might be good.’

‘You think so?’

‘Don’t you?’

The quiet smile that spreads on Abby’s lips tells Daphne she has hit the spot.

They drive into the park at last, through the forest and then across undulating flats to the car park at the end of the road. Abby cuts the engine and they sit for a moment in the new silence while soft fists of wind buffet the windows and gusts of swirling air sift through the trees—tall cypresses and pines, a pair of oaks, all out of place in this valley of grass and gum trees.

‘This is where the tracking station used to be.’ Daphne waves towards the concrete slabs beyond the parking area. ‘There were several buildings and an enormous dish. When the space race was over they were taken down. It’s hard to believe they were here, isn’t it?’

Abby gazes out on the empty area where the buildings once stood. ‘I knew about the space program being here, but I find it hard to imagine. If it wasn’t for the concrete and all these introduced trees there’d be nothing here. No evidence. Was your family still living here then?’

‘The government started buying up land in the early sixties just before the space program took off,’ Daphne says. ‘We had to let go of this country so we moved further south onto one of the other runs. There were no choices for landholders back then. If the government wanted your property you had to give it up.’

Abby’s face puckers thoughtfully, as if she’s trying to put herself back in that era. ‘The space race must have been exciting. Man on the moon and all that. Don’t you think it was amazing? Considering how basic technology was back then?’

Daphne has mixed feelings about that time. ‘Some people were quite taken with it,’ she says. ‘And I suppose there was a definite atmosphere round the place. Lots of new faces. Security gates. Enormous trucks. The satellite dishes. We were quite overrun, like an invasion. Up till then this place was ignored, even though it’s only an hour from Canberra. Then suddenly we were the centre of everything. But I can’t deny how proud and excited we were when they announced our dish was going to be involved in the moon landing. Everyone went to the local school to watch because none of us had a TV.’ She laughs. ‘Funny, isn’t it! The dish could see the moon but there was no TV reception in the mountains.’

She remembers all the cars and trucks lined up outside the little schoolhouse. ‘We had to crowd into a single room,’ she says. ‘All squashed in like sardines, trying to see the screen. It was a terrible blurry picture by today’s standards, but there he was, Neil Armstrong, stepping onto the surface of the moon.’

Daphne is surprised by the warm glow that accompanies her recollections. Generally she feels only the conflicting emotions of that period—the anger and resentment that their world had been taken over by foreigners and out-of-towners who had never shown any prior interest in the place. But she sees now that her memories are also embedded in an aura of nostalgia. She had forgotten the good bits. Yes, land was taken over and families were forced to move away, but there had also been local pride, a certain status that had come with being involved in the moonwalk. Afterwards, they thought they could go back to living as they had before. The dishes and buildings were dismantled. All the workers and officials disappeared. But the space program marked the beginning of the end.

‘We didn’t realise what would happen when it was over,’ she says. ‘We thought we’d be left alone again. But once the government had their hooks in, they began to take over the region. There was talk of a national park. If a property came up for sale, the government resumed the lease. Farmers who’d lived here for generations were pushed out. And there was worse to come. They didn’t just move people off the land, they rubbed them out. Once the park was declared, most of the buildings were knocked down. People’s homes, farm infrastructure—if they weren’t old enough to be historic, down they came. People were trying to make new lives in places they didn’t want to be—in towns and cities—and when they came back to look at what used to be theirs, everything was gone. Perfectly good homes demolished. It was a slap in the face. People were already upset at leaving their properties. Then the way the government scrubbed everything—well, it bred a lot of anger and resentment.’

Daphne remembers her neighbour crying on her shoulder. The hurt of it! There was no consolation to be had. It was an appalling way to treat people. The government thought money and resettlement was enough, but they didn’t understand people’s bond with the land. They didn’t care. All these years and Daphne still feels the despair.

‘Doug and I stayed as long as we could,’ she says. ‘But by the early seventies almost everyone was gone. Families that my family had known for generations—they all left. A whole community, gone. The government kept telling us that sooner or later we’d have to go too. Not in so many words, mind you, but the message was clear. People gave in to it. Some were getting old and they thought they should take what they could and get out. Saw the writing on the wall. Then time was up for Doug and me too. We were the only ones left—empty land all around us. There was so much pressure to leave, and in the end, we had to give in. It was bullying. We had no rights.’

Daphne remembers packing up. They sold their tractors and machinery, equipment accumulated over decades, the animals. The horses were advertised in the paper and they went quickly: Doug’s favourite grey gelding, the brood-mares, Daphne’s staid bay mare. The cattle went to market—the cows and heifers, the old Angus bull. It broke Doug’s heart to truck them out. He couldn’t face going to see them off. It was the last time the yards were used. Not long after that, they were pulled down—almost as soon as Daphne and Doug stepped off the place.

They sold most of Doug’s tools at a garage sale—all he kept was a basic kit, his favourites, set on doing some woodwork and repairs in his new garage at the Queanbeyan home. He hated leaving his old farm shed. It was a solid dark wooden structure with big posts cut from mountain-gum logs, and rough-cut beams and slabs for walls. His shed had been his cave—a quiet retreat, sheltered from the wind, with a dirt floor beaten hard from decades of use, and a heavy wooden bench he’d made himself years ago. He’d made furniture in that shed, mended things, pulled apart engines and put them back together again. He’d fixed and serviced pumps, cars, trucks, chainsaws, mowers. He’d worked there in the company of his dogs, always heelers, which he preferred with the cattle. He liked kelpies too, but they were lighter-framed and softer, better for sheep; they tended to get knocked about by the larger, more aggressive stock.

At last they had to leave. On that final day, they walked up the valley together, said their silent goodbyes to the mountains and the trees. They could come back and visit, but they knew it would never be the same. Daphne wandered through the homestead one last time—it would soon become a ranger’s residence—then she went in search of Doug. She found him in the shed, crumpled on the floor, weeping harsh wretched sobs that no man should ever have to cry. It broke him, the wrench of leaving the place—just as it had broken the others who’d departed before them, torn from their land. Doug had wanted to stay till he died. He would never be a city man, would never adjust to the crush of the suburbs.

Daphne feels the familiar weight of loss settling upon her, and she looks out of the window to mask the sudden press of grief that fills her chest. Doug had been a good man, a good husband, but there were layers to him she hadn’t known about till they moved to the city. On the farm, their lives were busy and their days were shaped by meaningful activity, all tied up with their rural existence. Doug was never a big talker, but in the evenings they found things to say to each other. Sometimes they played cards: five hundred, canasta, gin rummy. They were easy in each other’s company. But it was different when they shifted to the suburbs.

Daphne didn’t see it happening at first—she was so caught up in her own sadness over leaving the farm. At their new home, Doug seemed to live in the shed, fiddling with a mower he’d vowed to fix, the old dog lurking around his legs. Then he started to roam the streets, gone for hours, walking and not eating. Daphne noticed his silences at night, his cheeks hollowing out, the dull emptiness in his eyes. Talk contracted to short grunts and muffled answers. Daphne tried to draw him out with stories and reminiscences, but soon it was apparent that he had more time and affection for the dog, which demanded nothing of him and accepted his silences and withdrawal. Daphne was hurt.