"Not long now, I reckon," he said. "A few more years in the sugar should see me through. The old back's a bit sore these days, but I can still cut with the best of them, eight or nine tons a day. Arne and I have twelve other gangs cutting for us, all good blokes. Money's getting very loose, Europe wants sugar as fast as we can produce it. I'm making over five thousand quid a year, saving almost all of it. Won't be long now, Meg, before I'm out around Kynuna. Maybe when I get things together you might want to come back to me. Did I give you the kid you wanted? Funny, how women get their hearts set on kids. I reckon that's what really broke us up, eh? Let me know how you're getting on, and how Drogheda weathered the drought. Yours, Luke." Fee came out onto the veranda, where Meggie sat with the letter in her hand, staring absently out across the brilliant green of the homestead lawns. "How's Luke?"
"The same as ever, Mum. Not a bit changed. Still on about a little while longer in the damned sugar, the place he's going to have one day out around Kynuna."
"Do you think he'll ever actually do it?"
"I suppose so, one day."
"Would you go to join him, Meggie?"
"Not in a million years."
Fee sat down in a cane chair beside her daughter, pulling it round so she could see Meggie properly. In the distance men were shouting, hammers pounded; at long last the verandas and the upper-story windows of the homestead were being enclosed by fine wire mesh to screen out the flies. For years Fee had held out, obdurate. No matter how many flies there were, the lines of the house would never be spoiled by ugly netting. But the longer the drought dragged on the worse the flies became, until two weeks before it ended Fee had given in and hired a contractor to enclose every building on the station, not only the homestead itself but all the staff houses and barracks as well.
But electrify she would not, though since 1915 there had been a "donk," as the shearers called it, to supply power to the shearing shed. Drogheda without the gentle diffusion of lamps? It wasn't to be thought of. However, there was one of the new gas stoves which burned off cylindered gas on order, and a dozen of the new kerosene refrigerators; Australian industry wasn't yet on a peacetime footing, but eventually the new appliances would come. "Meggie, why don't you divorce Luke, marry again?" Fee asked suddenly. "Enoch Davies would have you in a second; he's never looked at anyone else." Meggie's lovely eyes surveyed her mother in wonder. "Good Lord, Mum, I do believe you're actually talking to me as one woman to another!" Fee didn't smile; Fee still rarely smiled. "Well, if you aren't a woman by now, you'll never be one. I'd say you qualified. I must be getting old; I feel garrulous."
Meggie laughed, delighted at her mother's overture, and anxious not to destroy this new mood. "It's the rain, Mum. It must be. Oh, isn't it wonderful to see grass on Drogheda again, and green lawns around the homestead?"
"Yes, it is. But you're side-stepping my question. Why not divorce Luke, marry again?"
"It's against the laws of the Church."
"Piffle!" exclaimed Fee, but gently. "Half of you is me, and I'm not a Catholic. Don't give me that, Meggie. If you really wanted to marry, you'd divorce Luke."
"Yes, I suppose I would. But I don't want to marry again. I'm quite happy with my children and Drogheda."
A chuckle very like her own echoed from the interior of the bottle-brush shrubbery nearby, its drooping scarlet cylinders hiding the author of the chuckle.
"Listen! There he is, that's Dane! Do you know at his age he can sit a horse as well as I can?" She leaned forward. "Dane! What are you up to? Come out of there this instant!"
He crawled out from under the closest bottle brush, his hands full of black earth, suspicious black smears all around his mouth. "Mum! Did you know soil tastes good? It really does, Mum, honestly!" He came to stand in front of her; at seven he was tall, slender, gracefully strong, and had a face of delicate porcelain beauty. Justine appeared, came to stand beside him. She too was tall, but skinny rather than slender, and atrociously freckled. It was hard to see what her features were like beneath the brown spots, but those unnerving eyes were as pale as they had been in infancy, and the sandy brows and lashes were too-fair to emerge from the freckles. Paddy's fiercely red tresses rioted in a mass of curls around her rather pixyish face. No one could have called her a pretty child, but no one ever forgot her, not merely on account of the eyes but also because she had remarkable strength of character. Astringent, forth- right and uncompromisingly intelligent, Justine at eight cared as little what anyone thought of her as she had when a baby. Only one person was very close to her: Dane. She still adored him, and still regarded him as her own property.
Which had led to many a tussle of wills between her and her mother. It had been a rude shock to Justine when Meggie hung up her saddle and got back to being a mother. For one thing, Justine didn't seem to need a mother, since she was convinced she was right about everything. Nor was she the sort of little girl who required a confidante, or warm approval. As far as she was concerned, Meggie was mostly someone who interfered with her pleasure in Dane. She got on a lot better with her grandmother, who was just the sort of person Justine heartily approved of; she kept her distance and assumed one had a little sense.
"I told him not to eat dirt," Justine said.
"Well, it won't kill him, Justine, but it isn't good for him, either." Meggie turned to her son. "Dane, why?"
He considered the question gravely. "It was there, so I ate it. If it was bad for me, wouldn't it taste bad, too? It tastes good."
"Not necessarily," Justine interrupted loftily. "I give up on you, Dane, I really do. Some of the best-tasting things are the most poisonous." "Name one!" he challenged.
"Treacle!" she said triumphantly.