When Colts Ran (29 page)

‘What a strange, jokey, great big bear of a man,' said Abbey, looking back over her shoulder. Hooke for a moment thought she meant Colts, their childhood's tall Uncle Kings, and was shamed.

But it was Ted Merrington disappearing through the flywire door into the dark street with Dominique elegantly blowing kisses a few paces behind him.

‘As if it was our fault there weren't any tables,' said Tina.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Your friend did a routine for us,' said Liz. ‘The disgruntled pop-eyed blimp who doesn't get what he wants but charms the children. I thought his wife looked embarrassed. She gave me a rather sweet desperation smile.'

‘Look what he did,' said Abbey, flourishing a paper napkin holding a lightning sketch in black biro of a nest of hair and two bright eyes over a strong small chin.

‘She called it
croquis
,
la foudre
.'

‘He made me prettier than I am.'

‘You are pretty,' said Hooke.

‘Oh, he perked up when he saw these two,' said Liz.

‘He invited us for dinner,' said Tina.

‘When?'

‘Tomorrow night if we want to come.'

They stared Hooke down and watched his discomfited surprise.

‘You'd cancel your train for that?'

‘Would we?' The girls consulted, then looked across at Hooke, holding the moment teasingly.

‘Your father's been wangling that invite for months,' said Liz.

‘Hardly,' said Hooke.

It amused her, Liz said, that Hooke went on advancing his sought-after friendship while the friendship itself, as far as she could tell, existed mostly in Hooke's imagination. But she was encouraged having laid eyes on madame.

Hooke told them about his plans for a full day out on the Bullock Run.

‘Oh, that Bullock Run,' said Abbey, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

Liz turned to the girls. ‘When your dad and I first met he took me there paddock by paddock over time. Then we came at last to the old mustering hut. That was where I loved my new country and your Alan Hooke in the same breath.' She leaned her head on her husband's shoulder. ‘The Bullock Run symbolises the life we made from our broken halves. The hut showed what we could do together. Once it was all bits and pieces. We nailed up board and batten, re-floored it in native pine, and installed the iron stove and unrolled the Egyptian-pattern rug.'

‘That Bullock Run,' groaned Abbey to her sister, ‘was where I lost my thongs, remember? The iridescent ones with the electric daisies?'

‘Have you got proper toilet facilities yet, Dad?' said Tina. ‘Or is it still the mattock and the Sorbent roll?'

‘I'm not saying we'd camp out.'

‘I can see that Mr Merrington squatting on his haunches,' said Abbey, ‘being jabbed by a prickle.'

‘Do I cancel the idea?'

‘Well, darling, I'm for it,' said Liz, before adding, ‘You should wait until they have us up there to Burnside as promised. Then we can ask them back.'

*

Hooke relished Sundays, the one day of the week when he slept past five and the phone didn't start ringing at daylight. There was a clattering in the kitchen, and a lot of hushed whispering, so he pulled a pillow over his ears and went back to dreaming. When he reached across for Lizzie she wasn't there, and a while later she came back to bed. ‘Where have you been?' he said. No answer, or if there was one he missed it as he drifted off again with her fingers stroking his back, a motion interrupted as she turned a fresh page of her book, and he waited, his body craving the resumption of touch like a fish getting closer to the surface of water and blazing. Remarkable it was to be the happiest man alive.

There was a knock at the door. Abbey and Tina entered with breakfast trays.

‘What's this?' Hooke sat up.

‘Nothing much,' said Tina.

‘Only all those outrageous luxuries they wouldn't let you carry at the station,' said Liz.

Humbled, Hooke glanced out the window into the bright early day, fighting back sudden tears while breakfast was attentively laid out on the bedspread. The window framed granite boulders and pale, bare soil. A straggle of wrinkle-backed ewes filed across the corner of the view. Merinos were always such sad-sacks. The blue shadow of poplars elongated on the ground. When Hooke looked back into the room and bit a square of toast dripping with butter and Vegemite he felt that if he died at that moment, and that was all he ever had, it would be enough.

Abbey buttered a croissant and spread it with strawberry jam, then put it on a small china plate and handed it to him. What antennae these girls had, smiling into his eyes, their hearts unerringly picking up what was right. Even when the faintest signal came in they felt its force.

*

One day soon afterwards the agency door rattled the way Hooke expected – a bit demandingly, a bit overdone. He didn't need to raise his head to know the touch.

‘Look what the cat dragged in,' said Jenny Garlick.

‘Mind the phone,' Hooke told her, seeing Merrington's barging outline ripple through the double glass doors.

Hooke strode to the front of the shop and made a heartfelt greeting: ‘Good morning to you!'

Merrington looked pink-cheeked and fresh.
Off the grog
, thought Hooke, taking a punch to the shoulder delivered with a hard man's pugilistic reach. A token of friendship perhaps, it would leave a bruise.

‘I'll have that legendary cuppa I've heard about.'

‘Name your poison, Ted.'

Merrington looked along the shelf. ‘Could I have a Milo?' he play-actingly whimpered.

‘Good choice.'

‘Strong, two sugars.'

‘Coming up.'

‘Ouch!' Merrington mimed as they sat down in the swivel wing chairs under the stairs.

‘Sciatica still troubling you?'

‘I had a fall. Galloped the paddock crosswise and connected a chukka, but then my pony – not mine, lent by Frizell – chose its moment to belly-flop. Flattened out like the bejeezus. Actually, Hooke, I found myself forking up and stepping off. But I was jolted and the old trouble's back. Limped around using my polo mallet as a walking stick. Not much sympathy from Frizell.'

‘You mean Lionel Frizell?' said Hooke.

‘Kit, the son. He's a bit of a lad.'

As if Hooke didn't know it. The Frizells lived at Pullingsvale a hundred kilometres away where the high, tumbled country of the Isabel flattened to grass plains, and horsebreeding and the polo calendar dictated the year. The grandparent Frizells, now pushing up capeweed in the family plot, had been valued clients of Careful Bob in the distant past, whereas Lionel and Kit rarely paid without a summons and Hooke had long since stopped their account. But sometimes they met at cattle sales, and when eye contact was made a cheque would be scribbled and passed over with an air of largesse, putting Hooke on the drip-feed till next time.

Merrington took a deep breath through flaring nostrils. ‘Polo is my game,' he declared. ‘I'm less than useful, though Kit says he'll try me as “B” reserve player one day, so I must be doing something right.'

‘You certainly must be. At your age.'

‘There's life in the old dog yet. If it doesn't work out there's always the Galloping Wombats, if they'll take me on.' He flashed an inquiring grin.

Hooke ignored it and busied himself with the electric jug. Obviously Merrington knew that he played polocrosse sometimes; knew it, too, as a game for tradesmen and pony clubbers in polo parlance.

Hooke said dryly, ‘The Wombats have their standards. But you wield a mean length of plastic pipe, Ted, I've noticed, with a classy wrist action.'

‘Touché,' said Merrington, giving his Milo a slurp. ‘By the way, Kit and Annabelle are coming for dinner on Saturday night. Why don't you and your good wife join us?'

So there it was, the invitation after all this time, rather offhand and at short notice.

Merrington peered at Hooke over the rim of his mug with a twinkly expectation. It occurred to Hooke to beg off, make an excuse, let the whole thing drop.

‘Bring your daughters,' said Merrington. ‘Abbey the carroty one and Tina the little blonde.'

Offhand, just like that.

Hooke stared at him, trying to make something of it.

Merrington grabbed a copy of
The Land
and read out the long-range forecast.

‘El bloody Niño strikes again. This has happened to me before, Hooke, every time I take up a new piece of country – rain to the north, rain to the south, but wherever I happen to throw down my swag there's bugger-all.'

‘It's a dry,' agreed Hooke, amused at the way Merrington talked himself up.

‘Your bumph said “safe district”. I should have allowed for the bullshit factor.'

That Merrington blamed Hooke for long-term weather patterns was a pretty good joke. It raised the stock agent to the level of a god and made every humorous bite a supplication. For this reason, whatever Merrington wanted Hooke was ready to give to him at that moment, except he still had to know what it was.

‘This is Australia,' said Hooke. ‘Safe means divide by two and take away the number you first thought of. Anyone with half a brain knows that.'

Merrington pulled a small, defeated face.

‘I'll remember it next time you build my hopes.'

The point was obvious and Hooke came to it: ‘Short of feed, Ted?'

Merrington squirmed in his chair.

‘It's not only that, it's the feeding out. I can't even hoist a bale without feeling as if my knuckles have been torn from their sockets.'

‘Where did you get your hay?' said Hooke.

Merrington blinked in puzzlement.

‘You mean because I didn't buy it from you?'

‘Yes.'

‘I had a shedful back on the old place after I de-stocked. I trucked it down when they settled, and I had my five other cows there too. Now I've got too many – bad timing. I hear it's pissing down at the old place, has been for weeks.'

Hooke leaned back in his chair, his smile changing from a jagged slit in galvanised iron to something cosier, more forgiving. Better men than Merrington made mistakes on a larger scale.

He made a decision: ‘Look, Ted, have you got an hour or two?'

‘Right now? I'm stuck while Tinkers do a drive shaft on the Merc.'

‘Okay, let's go.' Hooke grabbed his hat. ‘I want to take you somewhere.'

SIXTEEN

NOTHING MUCH WAS SAID
when they came to the locked gate where the yards were. Nothing much needed to be said as they got under way and started climbing the high, sparkling ridges of the Bullock Run.

Merrington just asked, ‘This paddock yours?' And then at the next vista – ‘This one, too?'

Each time Hooke nodded and Merrington took it in.

The late-afternoon light played its part compounding impressions, speaking for abundance, coming in thick, golden slabs from around steep corners and through old forest eucalypts parted in bars of shadow on the track. Surely, thought Hooke, this was a picture.

Merrington sat with his shoulder jolting against the passenger door. He seldom spoke but Hooke could almost hear the cogs in that gnarly brain. Light shone across into the heart of the mountain, purple against the tightly massed trees, the eucalypts giving out their oils and mists of oils, blue growth tips among the red growth tips achieving the mixture of colour. An artist would know that without being told. A dabbler would feel a twinge. A scrap man might look at it that way, rust being red-gold. It was human to look for beauty and sustenance in the fragile growth. It held the Australian eye.

The Toyota climbed the winding gravel track, its tyres spitting stones into gullies of fern. Up higher, more exposed, were ridges of silver-topped ash with conical ant hills like mud-built houses and native reeds among the dry stones. Hooke said that he often imagined all of Australia in these four thousand acres, the walloping variety of the country from the southeast forests to the outcrops of the Kimberley, the distillation of abundant space in a wagtail balanced on a blade of grass, nipping at ripe seed heads. He'd seen them in both places, cousins across a line endless on the diagonal.

While the agent waxed lyrical Merrington's mind was on the material part.

‘Four thousand, you say?'

‘More or less.'

‘All this your timber?' he grunted. The ash was sieberi, a eucalypt prized for hardwood house frames.

‘Yep.'

‘Why don't you mill them?'

‘Would you?'

‘I might. Then again I might not.'

Merrington started talking about the geology up there. It emerged he knew a lot. It turned out he'd had mining interests, all gone bust thanks to a partnership with the redoubtable Eddie Slim. Through those interests he'd learned his geology, though. Each gully of the main creek had a story to tell that Hooke had never heard better told, dramatised with a commentary that might have been lifted from the Nature Channel. As Merrington spoke, Hooke saw changes to the landscape speeded up, the patterns of erosion at work. Where the creek cut terraces over the years, thick with tussock and reed, mazed by cattle pads, Merrington aged trees. Hooke realised that on the lower terraces there was no tree older than when Careful Bob first brought him there. It showed that at least since then there had been limited ravages, no landslips and mini Grand Canyons as on the Mundays' dismal overcleared subdivision lower down, where entire creekbanks floated into neighbours' paddocks when it rained, carrying grass, rocks and cowpats – chunks of country like wedges of cake flipped from the main plate.

Hooke interpreted all this as Merrington praised him personally, giving him points.

But then Merrington snapped. ‘Why are you doing this, Al? Do you think I'm that loaded?'

Hooke laughed. ‘You are. But I'm not selling it.'

‘No?'

‘Never. It's for my kids and their kids. I think of myself as holding it in trust.'

‘Noble sentiment,' said Merrington.

‘If they don't want it I'd rather give it back to the blacks.'

‘If you mean that,' Merrington angled a look, ‘I could introduce you to someone.'

‘Let's wait and see.'

‘So what's the deal?'

‘I'm offering you a respite, Ted, a place to spell your cows and build them up, leave you with grass at home.'

‘Really? Truly?'

It was odd and rather touching that Merrington hadn't understood this. He spent so much time working around behind people he missed the obvious open palm. Nobody else had grass and until this moment Hooke hadn't been thinking of letting anyone in.

‘What's your agistment rate, then?'

‘I don't want money for this.'

‘What do you want?'

Hooke hadn't thought of it. Now he thought of it. ‘A painting.'

Merrington said, with too much complacent cleverness for his own good, ‘One of mine?'

‘I was thinking of higher up your walls.'

‘Were you indeed.'

Nothing more was said. Anyway, thought Hooke, it was preferable to wait until Liz made the pick. Then, depending on value, Hooke could decide to let Merrington have more if it was worth more.

Liz didn't take long to make her pick.

‘That picture is worthless,' said Merrington.

It was on the Saturday night, Liz clutching her welcoming G & T, her eyes settling on a tiny portrait – it had passed Hooke by – a woman of around forty, plain as a plank of wood, but with a look of sharp authenticity staring from a paint-peeling frame.

‘That's strong,' she said.

‘Everyone says so.' Merrington gestured at other pictures with his whisky tumbler. ‘Can't you be less predictable?'

‘But I like it. Who is she?'

‘Who is she? She's an old domestic who did mopping and cooking. The joke is that she looked in the mirror and painted herself up. She must have had tickets on herself to get herself up so ugly, don't you think?'

‘Truth is beauty,' said Liz.

‘Do say.'

Liz ticked off a few famous names with excited pedantry as Merrington led her around, then came back to the tiny portrait.

‘Who painted it?'

‘Hand unknown.'

‘I like it as much as anything in the house. I love the character shining through. It's an unusual, soft palette, all those browns and pinks.'

‘Up the value or I won't get my grass. Come on, pick something worth dollars.'

There was some kind of secret burning him. Anger was the key. Why didn't he like it when people liked him and, particularly in the case of Alan, those who liked him a lot? What did he hate in himself like poison?

Liz thought,
This must be his mother
.
It's a treasure. I won't force it.

Merrington drifted back to the drinks table, stunning himself with spirits before the wine started flowing.

‘Your walls are such a living embodiment of art history,' said Liz, rather gauchely as it wasn't all good.

Merrington gave no reaction, but brightened when Liz added, ‘The twins asked me to tell you they appreciated your offer of conversation.'

‘And the sitting,' Merrington reminded her, ‘don't forget the sitting at going rates, times
twa
.'

They heard a car outside.

Kit Frizell and the young Annabelle were an hour late and were welcomed effusively by Merrington, even though he had fumed about their tardiness over drinks.

Annabelle was hardly older than the twins – early twenties at most. During introductions she held Liz's eye and smiled in a friendly, inquisitive way, as if to say,
Won't this be fun, but watch out
. There was a painting of her in the studio almost finished that Merrington was insisting on as a late wedding present, the sort of gift that would be a burden. It had that washed-out look, swirling blues and greens, and Liz's summation whispered to Hooke was that it lacked both character and accuracy, and that was the main difference from Merrington himself, who was overdosed on definition.

The male hug was new to country manners that year, but Frizell gave Hooke a clumsy one, and when the others weren't watching took a crumpled cheque from his pocket.

‘How does a grand affect you?' he confidently grinned.

‘It'll do for now.'

Over dinner Merrington raised topics from the head of the table.

‘Anyone heard of Cam Whitten?'

Nobody had except Hooke. Whitten was a pugnacious radio broadcaster at the stock exchange end of the dial. Apparently Merrington hated him, had a thing about him. They were very alike. You might guess Whitten had hit him with a Pig Iron Bob stab, on account of profiting with North Asians. Merrington said Whitten took his holidays in Manila and bought underage girls from their starving mothers for a few cheap dollars. Had this on good authority: heard it in Manila.

Jumping up, knocking his chair back with a vigorous clatter, Merrington described a plan he had of coming up behind the broadcaster and giving him a thumping on a dark night, teaching him a lesson he would never forget for the sake of those poor Lolitas, crippling the man's larynx with a rabbit-chop, disabling him for the microphone and breaking his legs with an iron bar and putting him in a wheelchair for life.

‘For life!' agreed Hooke, tossing back his wine.

‘Struth,' said Kit, grinning.

‘What sort of evidence do you have?' said Annabelle. ‘I mean, this is serious stuff.'

‘My 'usband, right or wrong, is a terrific “card”,' said Dominique, with aloof, rather razor-like concision of wit. You could see it was early days in their marriage and there were things to be learned about Merrington that might not be welcome. Dominique roused the admiration of the table, going through the entire evening on one small cut-glass goblet of shiraz, eating a small but highly considered portion of each dish.

Merrington scuttled around the table waving a new bottle and topping up glasses.

Liz asked in a change of subject: ‘Who can define the word “jackaroo”? Alan gives me a different answer every time.'

Annabelle shot straight back, ‘Young man of good family paid peanuts to slave in hope of advancement.'

‘Oh, I like that!'

‘It's certainly not a holiday job,' said Hooke, remembering Merrington's boast that he'd jackarooed in the school holidays many years ago. The judgement was out before he realised.

‘Beg yours?'

‘Well, remember you told me – '

Merrington snorted. ‘Of course I remember what I told you! Want to see my X-rays, or do you want to step outside?'

Frizell touched Hooke's elbow and winked, ‘Don't stay past midnight. Fun till then.'

Merrington tapped his fork on the edge of the dinner service. When Hooke looked up a pair of hooded, hawkish eyes met his. Too late already.

‘Do you want to put a price on that mountain grazing, Al, or just leave it to your wife to bargain me in over some dross on my walls?'

‘Not if she's a loved one,' said Liz.

‘Loved one, my arse,' said Merrington.

‘I'd rather leave it to Lizzie,' said Hooke. ‘What do I know about art? Anyway, it's a private arrangement, price not the most important factor, and I'd rather not discuss it in front of these people anyway.'

‘You've lost me,' said Frizell, raising his hands in goofy surrender.

At this moment Dominique left for the kitchen with an armload of plates, sending a glance at her husband fearful with appeasement.

Hooke felt cold and humourless. To have given, and to have hoped – well, that was past attempting.

Merrington turned to Annabelle almost coaxingly. ‘What should I do, young one? Let go the one she wants?'

‘You're asking me?' Annabelle pointed a finger at herself, leaned forward and laughed, then tossed her long blonde hair back over her slim shoulders. ‘It depends what you want to do,' she said with quick clarity.

Hooke interrupted, his voice blowing through the silenced room like a dry wind clearing a way for itself as it went.

‘I made a gesture of friendship, Ted. That's all it was. But if you want me to tell you, I will. The grazing's worth lots. Take it or leave it. Otherwise, believe me, you're out of the game and the RSPCA will slap a writ on you for starving your herd.'

‘I'll choose another picture,' said Liz.

‘Can't have that,' said Hooke. ‘It's the one, or the offer is zilch.'

There was a long, uncertain silence and then Merrington made a loud mock yelp of pain.

‘Done!'

He brought the painting around a few days later, insisting on finding the best place in the house to hang it – ‘Where she'll feel at home,' he quipped. Liz was wary of him at first, then enjoyed the visit and was moved when Merrington stood in front of the picture and said his goodbyes, folding his hands in front of himself ceremonially meek, like a chastened small boy, the ringleted cherub of yesteryear, addressing a few words to the face.

‘Wherever you are in outer space, look down on us kindly for our sins.'

‘Amen,' said Liz with a sense of having softened Merrington almost to the point of confession.

They took tea on the verandah corner overlooking the ram paddock. It was where Hooke sat with his shotgun on wild nights, waiting for town dogs to try their worst. ‘Your husband's a tough cookie,' he said, ‘drives a hard bargain.'

‘He sees that in you,' said Liz.

Merrington asked were Abbey and Tina interested in coming up to Burnside.

‘I believe they are,' said Liz. ‘They're on a savings junket for the overseas experience.'

Liz had, besides, on the absolute q.t., made a phone call to Annabelle Frizell to ask if there'd been anything out of order when she sat for Merrington – men with paintbrushes being what they were in the moustache-twirling department.

‘Not a jot,' Annabelle confirmed, ‘not a whisper of anything untoward. You heard him, he hates all that. Though I did unbutton my shirt when he asked.' Then she paused to express something perhaps she knew, but couldn't quite be said. ‘I think I scared him, but aren't your girls quite strong? Anyway, Dominique's there in the next room cooking up a storm. She's super-duper.'

So Abbey came down three weeks later because Tina had found work at Just Jeans and she hadn't. She stayed the weekend at the Merrington house, starting early, finishing late.