Coming Rain (17 page)

The old homestead was built of local honey-coloured stone and the hardwood timber
jarra-djarraly. The stones had been taken from the Daybreak Springs formations. Lime
masonry cement mixed in a dry creek bed near the house. The roof was of terracotta
tiles, the old Cordoba thigh tiles carted up from Fremantle docks. Took two weeks.
Bullock carts then, camels too sometimes in the summer, they said.

As he approached the house, he could see the wide, dark verandas with canvas deck
chairs and old tables. Piles of books
and the pages of abandoned newspapers lifting
in the breeze. Iron filigree: circle and star, fleurs-de-lis; lathe-finished veranda
posts and dressed lintels. Five palm trees in a row and green lawns.

Along the west wall, windows large and low enough for a man to step into and out
of. Akubra hats, an oilskin Driza-bone coat and two coiled stockwhips hanging from
hooks next to a door. There was a snaffle bridle and below that a stockhorse saddle.
Four tennis racquets on another set of hooks against the ancient honey stones. Wisteria
vines coming into full summer leaf and shivering, they had claimed a southern hip
and an ancient jacaranda in the front yard, startling against the blue sky, the mauve
November flowers. Some had fallen onto the red gravel driveway.

Jimmy was coming out of a side door holding a galvanised bucket in one hand and a
stool in the other. He did not see Lew and disappeared around the side of the building.
A rooster crowed somewhere beyond a line of lemon trees. Jimmy reappeared, leading
the small Jersey cow, must be Velvet. He tied her to a fence and sat down on the
stool near her back leg. He placed the bucket beneath her, leaned into her flank
and, using both hands, began milking her. He turned his head, saw Lew as he approached
the front of the house. Raised a hand. ‘Mr Lew.' He called. ‘
Cooooeee
.' The cow too
had turned her head to gaze at him. She slowly chewed her cud.

Lew paused at the bottom of the steps. Debated if he should say to Jimmy nobody used
cooee like that anymore. Or that he was terrified coming here. Shook his head. Not
within cooee. I am not within cooee of being good enough to walk up these steps.
Thought of Clara and the candle on the floor between
them. The canvas and rubber
smell of tennis shoes and the length of her legs climbing into his window. The glimpse
of white underwear between. He took a breath and quickly walked up the steps, crossed
the veranda and knocked on the front door. There was no answer and he waited. He
knocked again and after a few minutes John Drysdale came to the door.

‘Lew?' He frowned and looked at him and past him as if looking for Painter.

‘Mr Drysdale.'

‘Lew, you here by yourself?'

‘I am.'

‘Well, what can I do for you young man?'

‘I would like to stay on for the wheat harvest and to see your daughter, Mr Drysdale.
Clara. With your permission.'

Drysdale reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief, wiped his burnt eye.
Looked at what he had wiped off. ‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I would like to see Clara.'

Drysdale shook his head. ‘Well she is not here at the minute Lew. She…' He paused.
‘You want to see her? Go out with her? To dances and the like? Socials and engagements?
The Gungurra Show?'

‘Yes Mr Drysdale.'

He almost laughed, then looked at Lew again. ‘Are you serious boy? No. Don't be bloody
silly, it's out of the question. Listen to yourself. You are a shearer. Clara is
my daughter.'

Lew stood there, not knowing what to say.

‘All right?' Drysdale stepped back into the doorway and began to close the door.

Lew realised he was nodding in agreement with Mr Drysdale. Heard himself even say
yes all right then as he turned and reached the veranda balustrade at the top of
the steps. His hand was shaking. He saw his leg go out to take the first step down
and his knee too was trembling. Didn't remember reaching the bottom step but as he
held the post he suddenly took a deep breath and spat.

‘Righto, that's the story?' he said and felt a terrible burning in his belly; opened
and closed his mouth. ‘I am a shearer here.' A humming behind his eyes and he clenched
and unclenched his hands. The biceps in his arms seemed more sensitive and he wanted
to take off his shirt. She kissed me and asked me to ask, should I have told the
old man? Knew it would have made no difference. I have become, he thought, a coward.

Lew was about to walk off when he heard the faint scrape of the front door being
reopened. John Drysdale's voice.

‘Young man.'

Lew turned.

Drysdale's eyes narrowed. He looked down at Lew from the top of the steps, studied
him for a full ten seconds. ‘I,' he said. ‘I should not have been so short with you
just then.'

‘Mr Drysdale.' Lew looked up at him.

‘You were good enough to come to my door, I will give you that. And I am the son
of a Kalgoorlie gold miner. He was a man, he told me, equal to any other white man.'

Lew was looking at him and holding the rail.

‘You better come through,' Drysdale said. ‘I should like to show you something…I'm
sorry about before.' He turned into the house and left the front door open, walked
through a long hallway
and opened a back door, also left that open, framing it in
a rectangle of light, stepped onto a wide back veranda and disappeared.

Lew followed him into the house. The hallway floor, a long narrow Persian carpet.
Wide, dark floorboards. A table with a brass top and a dried flower arrangement in
a vase. Yellow light from a side window edged in stained glass. Photographs of rams,
horses and wedding groups. A bullock wagon piled high with wool bales. Dogs and Clara.
Clara at the Royal Show on a grey horse, ribbons and medals around her neck and her
smile. Families at a beach. A group of workers, posed in front of a mine-head poppet:
Great Western Gold Mines. Two football teams and a cricket eleven. Into the light.

John Drysdale was staring at a small grave. A beautifully threaded marble headstone:

Poppy Elizabeth Drysdale

Born April 30 1902 Died Aug 21 1906

Aged four years and four months. Safe in the arms of Jesus.

A posy of rusting flowers fashioned out of sheet metal was resting against the base
of the headstone. A plaster dove, sun pitted and ingrained with red dirt. An Agee
jar with the dried stalks of dead wildflowers and a white line around the shoulder
where the water level had been. Next to Poppy's grave another larger and more ornate
memorial. Fewer words, more swag and scrolling.

William John Drysdale

Born 1858 Died 1921

At Rest Now.

John Drysdale glanced back at Lew and then continued to stare at the grave of his
father. ‘Sixty-three and still looking for gold,' he said. Nodded as if agreeing
with his dead father. ‘Yes, you were.' He knew the young shearer Lew was standing
respectfully behind him, but he kept looking at the graves as he spoke. ‘A bucket
of rocks fell on his head. I found him at the bottom of the shaft. He had twenty-four
thousand acres of sheep and wheat and he still wanted to find the gold. Twenty-four
thousand acres, can you believe it?'

They were both silent.

‘Y'know Lew, we never spoke much. My father and I.' John Drysdale cleared his throat,
leaned back, looked up. ‘That rain storm last night was promising,' he said. ‘We
might be right now.'

‘It was, Mr Drysdale,' Lew said. He had approached the fence and was standing alongside
the old man.

‘After Poppy died, I asked him why our God would take her like He did.'

Lew was silent, nodding, not knowing what to say.

‘My dad, y'know, he didn't say anything for a long time when I asked that. That bloody
impossible question. Seemed like years but it was probably only about five minutes
or so.'

Drysdale paused and his head sank below his shoulders as he laughed. ‘And then he
said, did you hear Poseidon won the Melbourne Cup son?'

Lew nodded.

‘Won the bloody Caulfield as well, the old man said, and the St Ledger. Bloody good
horse. Still entire. Tommy Clayton the hoop. A great Melbourne Cup it was.'

Lew cleared his throat. He didn't know what to say.

‘It was 1906. Tommy died from injuries he took from a fall three years later, 1909.
Horse called All Blue fell on him, would you believe it? Took him four days to die.'

‘Four days?'

Drysdale nodded. ‘Anyway, after my father was killed, Mother went to her people in
Adelaide. She put me in a Perth boarding school and a manager on the place until
I was old enough to take over. Never was right after Poppy, never was. It was the
end of her here.' Drysdale waved at the flies landing on his face. ‘Tommy Clayton.
Yep, the old boy said he was a top jockey until that horse fell on him. You know
what entire means?'

‘No Mr Drysdale,' Lew said. ‘I don't.'

‘It means they hadn't cut his balls off.'

Lew looked at the headstones. ‘Like a wether? Or a barrow?'

‘That's right,' John replied. He nodded to Poppy's grave.

‘My little sister. I remember when she died. Snakebite. Big brown, must have been
five foot. Over near the chook run. I was eleven.' He straightened and squeezed the
top rail of the fence in his hands. ‘Little Poppy. Still see her sometimes. Bugger
it.'

‘A brown snake, Mr Drysdale? The gwarder?'

‘Yep,' he slapped his hat and hand against his leg, ‘gwarder kill a horse. They can.'
He cleared his throat, waited and continued speaking. ‘I wanted to name Clara after
her. Call her Poppy. But Judith found it too morbid. You have to let go of the past,
she said. Judith was my wife. The cancer. Did you know?'

Lew looked at the sky. Cumulus cloud moving against the blue. ‘Yes sir,' he said.

‘That's her over there,' Drysdale indicated with his chin a small black marble headstone
off to one side of the family plot. White writing. A mound of red soil. The rain
from the previous night had gouged tiny run-offs. Dead flowers flattened. Exposed
white stones.

‘I see her,' Lew said.

Drysdale did not indicate he had heard him. ‘How can you do that? Let go of the past.
That's just nonsense. How can it not be what it was, and what it is?' He continued
to speak, appeared unable to stop now. ‘I will be buried here next to her. Clara
will take over the place. My mother is buried in Adelaide. At the West Terrace cemetery
there. She didn't want to be here.'

They were both silent for a long time.

‘You can't go out with Clara, Lew. See her.'

Lew frowned and slowly shook his head in bewilderment. ‘What? I'm sorry Mr Drysdale,'
he said.

‘Do you not understand?'

‘No sir.'

‘This?'

‘The graves of your family, Mr Drysdale.'

‘There's a gate around the side of the house.' He gestured to the right as he continued
looking at the gravestones and markers, kept speaking, ignoring Lew.

‘I want to stay here for a bit longer. This is where I'll end up. Go on now and have
a think about it. You worked hard boy, I'll give you that, shore fine and clean.
I'd have you back.'

Lew stepped away from the railing.

‘But it's completely out of the question boy. You are who you are and there is no
changing that.'

Lew did not notice Jimmy standing with two buckets, watching him as he let himself
out through the side gate and walked back towards the shearers quarters.

Again he tasted the bitterness of his stomach. His heart beating in his temple and
at the end of his fingers. He had never felt like this since the day he had watched
his mother weeping and holding the pillow over her face so he wouldn't see the bruises
and missing teeth.

CHAPTER 42

It was coming into night when they stopped. She turned to the north and lifted her
nose into the wind. The fur across her back ruffled and she saw the black storm clouds
coming. She felt the thunder beneath her feet before she heard it. Began frantically
to dig. The young dog had stopped next to her and watched. She was using both her
front feet and digging as fast as she could.

He began to imitate her. It was as if she was trying to uncover a rabbit burrow with
young to feast on. She had made a hollow deep enough for her and he was almost there.
She started pawing at the earth where he was, helping him. The black clouds began
to squeeze together above them. Rain drops hitting the hot ground. Flurries of water
in the wind.

They dug faster and both lay in their hollows, noses to tails as the clouds opened
above them and it rained. The sky became a storm and seemed to be running from something
as she ran from the old man in the blue car. This is her licking the young dog. Him
licking her. She shook herself yet again as the downpour
continued. The hollows they
had dug to hide in began filling with water. The rain in heavy sheets.

They stood and waited.

Every now and again the dogs opened and closed their mouths and simply endured. There
was nothing else to do but this. He would glance at her but she would ignore him.

When the storm had ended and the rain stopped falling they sniffed each other in
reassurance. He, at a loss, looked to her to make a choice. She raised her nose and
sniffed the air and saw the night beginning to close. They stretched, front feet
out and backsides in the air. Wide jaws and then lifting their chests and flattening
their back legs. Stood up and shook themselves.

CHAPTER 43

Clara came for him the next morning. Monday morning.

Drysdale had taken Painter into Gungurra to arrange for payment for the shearing.
They were going to a branch of the Bank of New South Wales. Painter had repeated
that he needed more tobacco.