The Girl from Snowy River Page 19

  It was good to get the magazines though. I wouldn’t read them to Kirsty — I made her read them aloud to me. The dresses are higher than the women’s knees in some of them and every skirt is above the ankle! The women even have short hair!

  At least Kirsty really likes the story now. She even coaxes me to tell her more after dinner, and writes it down without any complaining. Or not much. Joey likes it too, and even Andy grinned last night when Mountain King outraced the bushranger then led his horse to freedom in the hills. Andy has let his beard grow, so you can’t see the moustache any more. His moustache looked funny at first with those red waxed points, but I miss it now.

  Boiled mutton and dumplings with onion sauce for dinner, and apple pie. The stored apples are starting to wrinkle and go off. Apple cake tomorrow, then I’ll make apple dumplings. Joey can take cold dumplings down for lunch.

  I am trying to be glad that Sandy really might have a girlfriend. Even if he still liked me that way, even if we had been engaged, I’d have had to break off the engagement now. I do want Sandy to be happy. If anyone deserves happiness it is Sandy Mack.

  The story grew. It filled the rest of the diary and half of the new exercise book she’d asked Sandy to bring her. A trap was set for Mountain King at the next race meeting — a trap to catch the greatest racehorse in the land. Kirsty spent an hour each day writing the words. Flinty wrote some of the story down too, partly because otherwise it went too slowly to keep Kirsty interested, but also because when she wrote she was no longer lying in a narrow bed in the kitchen, but galloping back up the mountains to freedom with the king.

  Mountain King could run while she was trapped in bed, could gaze across the ridges while all she could see was the small patches through the kitchen door and window.

  Mountain King chose his own destiny, not like a crippled girl, slicing swedes for lunch.

  But she could call herself happy, some of the time at least, the times when the pain didn’t snake down her legs, so that whichever way she lay it hurt, the hours when she could forget what might have been, and enjoy the small joys around her.

  Kirsty sang her times tables now as she plaited long strings of onions with Flinty, or worked out that if Andy gave her a penny a day, she could have new red shoes by Christmas, if she gave the cobbler her old shoes as part of the payment.

  Kirsty even read the newspaper because she was interested now, not because Flinty coaxed her to do it. It was more than a month old by the time Mr Mack had read it and passed it round the valley. But it still spoke to them of the world ‘down there’: short skirts and a campaign to make women’s wages in the public service four-fifths of men’s for the same job, instead of less than half; Australian Bert Hinkler flying non-stop from London to Turin, trying to be the first to fly the almost impossible distance from London to Australia.

  ‘Imagine a plane flying over us,’ said Kirsty dreamily.

  ‘He’d never get it over the mountains,’ said Flinty.

  ‘Yes, he would,’ said Joey. ‘Mr Hinkler flew over ten thousand feet high above the Italian Alps.’ He spoke as though Mr Hinkler was his own friend — which he may have been in Joey’s dreams. ‘Our mountains are not much more than a quarter of that.’

  Flinty imagined balancing like an eagle on the updraughts…but maybe a plane was noisy, like the motorcar they’d seen when they went down to town, its engine hiccuping and jolting along. She looked out the door at the slim patch of blue sky, the slip of winter-brown hillside. There’d been no more big snowfalls, just flakes that drifted in the breeze and two days of wind and sleet so sharp that Joey’s cheeks looked red and bruised from the journey back from school. He stayed at home till the wind died down, while Andy slept over at the Mullinses’.

  I want to fly, thought Flinty. I want to gallop on a horse again. I want to run as fast as the wind so the rain and snow can’t catch me.

  I want to walk.

  Flinty woke early on her birthday. The coals glowed from the fireplace. Outside she could hear the mutter of the wind as it slid around the house. Mum had said Flinty had been born in a snowstorm, the drifts so thick there’d been no chance to get old Grandma Mack up to help, or the doctor if anything had gone wrong.

  But it hadn’t. ‘You didn’t even cry,’ said Mum. ‘Just looked around as though you were happy to be here. So we called you Felicity. It means happiness. You’ve always been a happy child. We’re the happiest family in the mountains.’

  Until the war, thought Flinty. The war ate ten million men and took chunks of our family too. Mum might be alive if it hadn’t been for the shock of Jeff’s death. Dad wouldn’t have died of the influenza, spread by the troops coming home.

  She heard the scrape of the chest of drawers in Joey’s room. He must be up then. Andy had spent the last few nights down at the Mullinses’ farm. The days were too short now for him to come home every night.

  Would Joey or Kirsty remember it was her birthday? She hadn’t wanted to remind anyone. She was probably the only one who kept a note of the date on the calendar anyway.

  I should have told them, she thought. When they realised they’d forgotten all about it they’d be embarrassed not to have made her a present or a cake. Best to pretend she had forgotten it too.

  ‘Morning,’ muttered Joey. He wore his going-to-school clothes, not quite as patched and darned as the ones he wore on the farm. He bent and shoved some kindling onto the fire. It flared as he added some to the wood stove too.

  He had forgotten. Flinty swallowed her disappointment. Joey looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I’m late.’ He sawed off a hunk of damper, spread it with dripping and treacle. ‘This’ll have to do me. See you tonight, Flinty.’ He picked up the bag with his lunch in it.

  ‘Have a good day,’ she said, as Kirsty came bleary eyed along the corridor to help her wash and dress.

  It was hair-washing day, Kirsty decided, putting on every saucepan they owned as well as the kettle so they could both have hot water. Afterwards she built up the fire to help their hair dry, spread across their shoulders like rain running down the hill.

  ‘And let’s put on your Sunday dress,’ said Kirsty.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we look pretty with clean hair,’ Kirsty replied, with perfect logic.

  Flinty nodded. It was easier to agree. At least her Sunday dress would make it feel a bit like a birthday, even if they hadn’t had breakfast yet.

  Kirsty fussed, sitting on spread-out old newspapers, polishing her red shoes. Flinty’s tummy growled. She didn’t have much appetite these days, but it must be nearly ten o’clock. The hens hadn’t even been fed. ‘Kirsty,’ she began.

  ‘I’ve got boot polish on my sleeve.’

  ‘Give it a scrub with sand soap before next wash day.’

  ‘It’s on my sleeve, Flinty!’ Kirsty sounded as though Flinty expected her to dress in cobwebs and ashes. She hauled the sand soap out from under the bench and scrubbed the sleeve anxiously. ‘It’s out!’ she exclaimed at last. She sat back on the newspapers. ‘I’ll wear my sleeve protectors next time.’

  ‘Good,’ said Flinty. She really was hungry now. ‘Look, leave those and put the porridge on. Or we might even have pancakes. How many eggs have we got?’

  ‘Done,’ said Kirsty, ignoring Flinty’s question. She held up her shoes. ‘Look at the shine on them!’

  ‘Yes, but —’ Flinty stopped at the sound of hoofbeats outside, the familiar sound of Empress’s whinny and Snow King’s high trumpet call in reply. Joey must have forgotten something. Or maybe Empress had picked up a stone. She thought with guilt about the hind leg that Empress sometimes still favoured.

  She waited for the sound of Joey’s boots on the verandah. But there was silence. ‘That was Joey,’ she said to Kirsty.

  ‘Was it?’ Kirsty looked innocent. Too innocent. ‘I’ll go and see,’ she said.

  She vanished out the door.

  Flinty waited. Wheels, she thought. I can hear wheels too. And creaking,
like the Macks’ cart. And then more hoofbeats, and the mutter of voices.

  What was happening? For a moment she felt fear: fear of swaggies, old soldiers, all the terrors that might happen to those she loved while she was helpless here. Then at last — or two minutes later — she heard the tap of Kirsty’s shoes.

  The back door opened.

  ‘Happy birthday!’ yelled Kirsty. She held a bright red balloon. Joey grinned behind her, and Andy and Mr and Mrs Mack, and even Amy White and her mother, and Sandy holding another bunch of everlastings (Where could he have found them in mid-winter? He must have searched for days!), and Ron Mullins and his mum, and Barry Brown with his little sister Enid, and Meg and Hannah and Mutti Green, someone from every Colour of the Valley, the women all carrying plates of food.

  ‘Oh,’ said Flinty, and burst into tears.

  There was a giant sponge birthday cake with cream, and five sorts of pie, and jam tarts with eight types of jam, and rock cakes and custard slices, and mutton and chutney sandwiches, and the chocolate coconut-covered little cakes called lamingtons that Flinty had never had time to make before her accident.

  None of it was proper for breakfast, but it was morning-tea time for everyone else. They ate and talked and drank a dozen pots of tea. They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ as Flinty blew out the candle on the cake and Mrs Mack and Mutti Green put on kettle after kettle of water.

  Suddenly there was a creaking sound along the verandah. Flinty looked enquiringly at Andy. He grinned. ‘Happy birthday, Sis,’ he said quietly, as Mr Mack wheeled in her present.

  ‘It’s from all of us,’ said Mr Mack.

  It was a bathchair. Not like Nicholas’s all-metal one. This was mostly wood and wicker, with bigger wheels, more cumbersome. It looked like Nicholas’s chair’s grandmother, like you’d need to push it hard to get it along a track.

  It looked like freedom.

  ‘We asked Dr Sparrow,’ said Mrs Mack. ‘He said it couldn’t hurt you to sit in the chair for a while each day.’

  Which probably meant he said that nothing could injure my back any more than it is already damaged, thought Flinty, staring at the chair.

  ‘It was Sandy’s idea,’ said Andy, and Sandy blushed and moved from one foot to another.

  ‘Got a nurse friend in Sydney who knows about bathchairs, that’s all,’ he muttered.

  ‘Come on, lass,’ said Mr Mack. She lifted her arms as he bent to pick her up; he placed her in the chair.

  It hurt as he moved her, but it wasn’t bad when she was sitting down. It did feel unsteady, till Mrs Mack propped pillows around her to sort of jam her in. She sat there in her Sunday dress while they all stared anxiously until she smiled, thrilled despite the pain of moving.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ asked Andy.

  She wanted to go up the tallest mountain, up above the tree line, find the snow line and run back down. Instead she said, ‘Out onto the verandah.’

  Andy pushed her down the corridor, with everybody following, out the front door, onto the verandah. The valley stretched away on one side, brown now except for the always-green she-oak trees along the creek and the silver gleam of the Snowy River at the junction of the hills. On the other side the mountains were topped with a blaze of white, dressed for winter, whiter by far than the clouds above.

  She took a deep breath. She could smell mothballs, from Mrs White’s fur coat, wood smoke and old boots and horse droppings. She could smell the mountains too.

  She wriggled her feet under her Sunday dress, lifted them as far as they would go, let them fall down. Even that small movement was exciting. She looked up to find Sandy looking at her strangely.

  ‘That’s all that will work,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘Now, not too much on the first day,’ said Mrs Mack. ‘You don’t want to tire her out.’

  ‘I’m not tired,’ said Flinty.

  It wasn’t true. The pain, the shock, the happiness, the hope had all exhausted her, though they’d given her energy too.

  She glanced down the track at the Rock. Mist hovered above it, trickling down the gully. Soon, she told it. I can come to you soon.

  Chapter 31

  1 August 1920

  Dear Diary,

  I am in love with my chair. Who would have thought it a year ago? Four wheels instead of two legs. But I watched the moon rise from the front verandah last night. Isn’t that wonderful?

  It took her a week to be able to roll the chair by herself, pushing the wheels with her hands. She could make her way around the kitchen, even out to the woodpile on the back verandah to bring in firewood. As long as the wood was stacked high enough for her to reach, she would put it on her lap to bring in and place in the fire compartment of the wood stove.

  She could wheel herself out to the front verandah, watch the mist trickle down the gullies or enjoy the days when it spread like a white plate below Rock Farm, hiding the valley below. When someone visited now she could make her way to the window to see who was riding up, instead of having to lie helplessly, waiting for whoever came in the door.

  Slowly the awareness of what she couldn’t do began to seep into the joy.

  The chair was cumbersome. She needed to go back and forth six times to manoeuvre around the kitchen table. It had no brakes, so even if she could somehow get down the stairs she couldn’t push herself down the track herself — or up it either. This chair was for use on smooth level ground only and was easy to tip over, unlike Nicholas’s lighter and more compact chair. On any slope it could run out of control, unless strong hands pushed her and controlled it. The chair was a prison, still, as well as a friend.

  But on the second weekend Andy carried the chair down off the verandah onto the grass, then lifted her into it. If he thought it was strange that she wanted to be taken down to the Rock he didn’t say so. It had the best view of the valley after all.

  The mist was almost too thin to be visible, but she still felt its chill as Andy pushed her into it. It wasn’t like the breath of winter, with its tinny scent of rock and snow. The Rock had a scent all its own.

  ‘Sure you want to stay here, Sis?’

  ‘Please. I’ve been in the house so long. I’m happy here by myself. Really.’

  He didn’t argue. He’d needed time to himself too. He never did say much these days, though at least his nightmares seemed to have gone. She watched him stride up the hill, then past the house and into Snow King’s paddock, to shovel the droppings out of the stables and barrow it down to the vegetable garden for the spring’s cabbages. Then she turned to watch the valley.

  A new green rectangle of paddock at the Browns’ — they must have put in a field of oats. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the Greens and Mullinses, hidden among the green, a faint haze from behind the hill that would be smoke from the Macks’ stove. Across the valley the mountains wore their winter patchwork of green and white and slashes of black shadow, where the low-angled winter sun wouldn’t kiss the rocky gullies until spring.

  Something moved behind her. She turned. A wallaby gazed at her, as though it couldn’t believe a human could sit so still, then blinked and hopped off into the hop bush. A currawong began its liquid descant, echoing across the valley.

  She snuggled further into the rabbit-skin rug that Kirsty had tucked around her. She could hear the wind moan up on the mountains, as though complaining about the high hills that made it creep and roll instead of flying straight ahead. Here on the Rock the air was still, the fog thickening, like a stew after you’d added flour and water. The mist grew deeper, and deeper still. The valley slowly vanished. The world was white and still and cold.

  And Nicholas didn’t come. She had known he wouldn’t come after the first few minutes. If he had been on the mountain he’d have been here all day.

  She had known he’d be away for many months. It felt like years had passed, but it had only been six months. She had hoped nevertheless that he might be here today. If it was impossible that a ghost from 1970 would appear then
maybe another impossible could happen too.

  But Nicholas had known what was going to happen to her too. Probably he thought she wouldn’t be able to get down to the Rock, or at least not so soon. Besides, visitors didn’t come to the mountains in winter. They came after the spring thaw, to fish, to climb the hills.

  Of course Nicholas wasn’t here today. She realised she had simply hoped he might be so that he could reassure her that there was a future for her. Good things, he’d said.

  The chair was good. But it wasn’t really, really good, as Kirsty would say. The chair just made what had happened a little less bad. Andy’s return was good too, and Sandy visiting again, talking to her, to Andy and the others, almost as though the war had never been. But none of it made up for all she’d lost.

  Her future — and any good bits — were still lost then. No, not lost, just still to come. She had to believe that, just as she had to carry on.

  When she heard footsteps behind her now she knew it was Andy. She smiled at him, her kind big brother with the long red beard he never bothered to trim these days. She let him push her up the hill, to the kitchen where Kirsty had pancakes ready with plum jam.

  Chapter 32

  2 August 1920

  Dear Diary,

  Andy wants a motorbike! I just sat there with my mouth open when he told us while Joey cried, ‘Wacko!’

  ‘Why do you want a motor anything?’ I asked.

  He looked at me like I was crazy. At last he said, ‘To ride to work and back. What if Empress or Lord George go lame after Snow King goes down to a trainer?’

  ‘But a motorbike,’ I said. ‘You can buy ten horses for the price of a motorbike.’

  ‘A second-hand motorbike,’ he muttered. ‘Fellow down in Gibber’s Creek has one for sale. It’s got a sidecar too.’

  I said, ‘You want to use my money —’ but Andy didn’t let me finish. He just slapped his napkin down and said, ‘Well, I’m earning the money we’re actually living on, miss, and I’ll buy a motorbike if I want one. What else is there for a bloke in this place? Not even a woman under forty.’ Which isn’t true, but is in a way because they’re either married or at school.