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chapter 11
Ally – Seven years later
I was in a rut. No, I was in the bottom of one of those opal mine shafts that delve straight down into the ground with sheer, unscalable walls. I was in so deep that it was perpetually dark. I needed a break. I needed a change. Life wasn’t what I thought it would be. I hadn’t gotten laid in forever, but I hadn’t really wanted to either. Every time I went into Longreach, I met the same people. I was chatted up by the same blokes who used the same lines on me. I’d hang with the same friends and do the same thing. Every weekend. Week in, week out. Just for a change I’d started going to church with Ma and Nan, staying home on Saturday nights and driving in just for Sunday morning. I just kept on digging that damn hole even deeper.
I was bored.
I was unhappy.
Dad had invited me to stay with him in Sydney for a while, and even though the city wasn’t for me, I’d been thinking about moving there just for a change of pace.
I always thought that life would have… more. More smiling. More affection. More love. It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy with my family. I knew they loved me, and we laughed together all the time. But it wasn’t what I really wanted. I was lonely. I was a thirty-five-year-old woman who’d never had a boyfriend—unless you counted the disastrous stint dating Phil—and I lived like a bloody nun.
I was frustrated and angry. I wanted to blame fate for dealing me a shitty hand of cards, but I couldn’t even do that. It was my fault and because of that, I was sad. More than anything else, it was melancholy that hovered over me.
I wanted to be swept off my feet. Romanced and wined and dined. I wanted to curl up on the couch with my man and cuddle. Naked. I wanted kissing and sex, but I wanted more too. And I was never going to get it here. I’d been half in love with two men for a decade, but they just weren’t into me, and that was okay. I wasn’t self-centred enough to think that the world revolved around me, or that Sam and Craig would suddenly become bisexual after a couple of decades together. They were gay. Not that anyone knew it—not even me for sure. They’d never confided in me. Still. They were hesitant to advertise their relationship to the world, and I understood that. But we’d been mates for so long that their failure to tell me hurt more than them not being into me. I wouldn’t rock the boat—I could guess how uncomfortable a working environment that would make for—so I respected their choice not to tell me. What else could I do? Their friendship meant too much to me to risk it by outing them, even if I could wait until it was just the three of us around to ask.
Seeing them together though broke my heart. They had the kind of relationship I’d always wanted. It was rock solid, unwavering for so long that sometimes I took for granted that relationships weren’t always as picture perfect as theirs. And yet, there was never more than a secretive look between them. A knowing glance. Their touches didn’t linger. They never stood too close or showed any kind of affection to each other than the blokey kind between mates.
Even if I couldn’t have what they had, I still wanted Craig and Sam to be themselves around me. We spent enough time together that they should know I’d never judge them for loving each other. I thought they would have figured that out by now, but they never wavered. Never even hinted it. Then I realized that maybe they just didn’t know how to bring it up after so long. Or maybe they just didn’t trust me. I couldn’t help but pull away. For every night I spent with them, it was one less that they could curl up together on the couch or while away the hours in bed together. It was precious time that was passing us all by and I wouldn’t be responsible for them not having any alone time anymore.
So, my options were to keep doing what I was doing and stay stuck in my rut or shake things up a little. I’d tried dating in Longreach and that had failed spectacularly. Maybe I needed to look further afield.
But first, we had a visitor arriving at the station, and then a muster to run. It was going to be a few hectic weeks. I loved being out there though, and if I did take up Dad’s offer to move, this muster would be my last time out in the desert. I wanted to enjoy every moment. Days on horseback and nights sleeping out there in the open, lying on the sandy red dirt and looking at a sky full of stars while the warmth of the fire seeped into my bones. It was one of my favourite things.
The couple of days of mending fences that we’d just returned from had been hard work and I’d been dusty and sore. Last night was almost worth it though. A perfectly clear sky. A campfire. Billy tea, damper cooked in coals, and a stew that we’d warmed in a pot hanging above the fire. Then afterwards, Waru and Yindi told us about Yindingie and the Catfish. It was a story of the rainbow god turning a man into a fish when he’d boasted about his swimming abilities, despite never having tried to swim.
But then everything had come crashing down. I wasn’t sure whether they gravitated to each other in their sleep and needed me between them to keep some distance, or whether Craig and Sam believed they needed to protect me like they would their baby sister. Whatever their reason, I slept between them, just like I did every time we were out in the open. It was both infuriating and achingly sweet. It made me want to run in the opposite direction; reaching out to them wasn’t an option.
No, being loved by them was an impossible dream, and the pain of wishing for it for over a decade was made even worse by the rumours that had resurfaced at the pub. Rumours that both Craig and Sam had hooked up with different ladies. I knew that they needed to keep their relationship under wraps and crafting stories of their exploits with women was the best way to do it. But their need to even start the rumours broke my heart. The thought of them having to go through with it to quell any doubts, killed me. I’d blinked away the tears of betrayal, angry tears borne of frustration and injustice for two men who loved each other and couldn’t say “bugger it” to the world and simply be true to themselves.
They were tears I had no right to cry. But cry I did when I thought of how Sam’s heart would break as he imagined Craig giving himself to a woman, or how Craig would have had to fight every protective instinct in him as Sam got intimate with a lady he had no interest in. They’d slept soundly beside me while I’d cried, and when my tears had dried, I’d watched the twinkle of the stars overhead, praying to the universe to lay out the path I should take.
Should I stay, or should I go?
But unlike The Clash’s classic song, it wasn’t someone else who needed to tell me. It was my own heart. My own future that needed to be decided. Waru and Yindi’s story had come back to me then: the catfish forever trying to shift back into human form so he could take his place in his tribe, lost because of a lie. He’d built a Bora Ring in the creek and swum endlessly in circles trying to undo Yindingie‘s magic. Would that be me? Swimming in circles forever, wanting and wishing for two men I couldn’t have? That’s what staying would mean. Or I could leave, strike out to Dad’s. Maybe try uni.
Weary, I dried my hair with the towel in my hands and watched the dust being kicked up by the vehicle coming down the long drive. When the black ute pulled up at the station, its tray filled as high as its roof and covered with a tarp, I knew our visitor was serious about staying as long as he’d planned. I grinned, excitement at meeting the new guy zinging through me. Throwing on a pair of jeans and a tee, I jogged down the wide timber stairs and stuck my head through the door. Scottie sat at our long table looking more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him. Fidgeting and tense, his jaw was clenched, and his ears were as red as the flush that had crept up his neck. I bit my lip and grinned, trying not to laugh at my poor brother. He was a good bloke, the best in fact, but he used staying at home and hiding as a coping mechanism for anything outside his comfort zone. I figured that our guest—Peter, I thought his name was—had just unwittingly shattered my brother’s delusion that by marooning himself like an island, nothing unfamiliar would ever intrude.
“Hey, new guy,” I greeted, still smiling, and not even feeling remotely sorry for my brother’s discomfort. “Scottie here has no manners, and Nan and Ma will keep you chatting all day. Want me to show you round before tea?”
Peter looked at Scottie, then smiled at me and I had to bite back a laugh at Scottie’s scowl. I liked this guy already, purely for being able to ruffle Scottie’s perpetual calm. “Sure.”
He was cute in a nerdy kind of way. Really young too. He couldn’t have been much more than twenty, but maybe it was his pale skin dotted with freckles and his fiery red hair that gave him a babyface. “I’m Ally.” I shook his hand and smiled.
“Pete or Macca. I’ll answer to both. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.”
“You’re welcome. We’re pleased to have you. Come on, I’ll show you round.” I pointed out the comfortable couch that took up most of the lounge room. “You’ve got a tele in the guesthouse, but this one here is bigger and we all tend to gather together one or two nights a week. You’re welcome over anytime.”
We wandered outside and I helped him unload his duffel and a smaller satchel stuffed full of books and a laptop before taking him to the guesthouse. “This here is where you’ll be staying. You’ve got three meals daily included in your rates, so don’t hesitate to join us for brekkie, lunch, and tea. When we’re on the muster, it’ll just be you, Ma, and Nan. Jono will be there for a bit in the mornings too. But don’t worry, you’re still welcome at the table even though most of us will be gone.”
We entered the guesthouse and the history practically spoke to me. Memories of generations of Pearces were within these walls. Ma had crawled on the floorboards as a babe in arms, and Pop before her had done the same. It’d been the station’s gathering place for four generations. Only Scottie and I had grown up in the main house, thanks to Dad insisting that we needed more space when he’d moved here. Since Pops passed and Nan had shifted into the main house, it had languished, deteriorating as it lay vacant. We’d asked Jono if he wanted to move in, but he was happy in his little cabin. Waru and Yindi had said the same. Now, since its restoration we’d been able to rent it out and keep the house in a state Pops would have been proud of. Making a few bucks from it had been a bonus; I hadn’t thought it’d actually be popular, but we often had people stay.
Macca quickly dropped everything on the kitchen table and looked to me. “Righteo, where to now?”
We walked to the springer paddock, then across to the big shed, worker’s cottages, and back towards the main house via the veggie patch, before heading over to the paddock abutting the stables where the horses were. “So, you ridden before?” I opened the gate and whistled for ‘Tella so I could say hello. Our horses were gathered around feeding on the hay bale we’d dropped fresh in there that morning, but she cantered over when I called her, kicking up the fine red dust as she moved. She was pissed with me for having gone away overnight and not taken her. It was obvious in the way she kept coming, moving closer without slowing, only to stop short a few feet from me. Shaking her mane and stamping her foot, my horse huffed and nudged me, playfully pushing me back a step.
“Hey, girl,” I soothed. Macca barked out a laugh when my ungrateful shit of a horse nudged me again. “Yeah, yeah. I know I haven’t been to see you in a coupla days. Feels like we haven’t been riding in ages. But I bought a peace offering. Here.” I held out the apple I’d snagged from the fruit bowl in the guest house and explained to Macca, “This is ’Tella, short for Nutella.”
