A Changing Land(128)
‘I have to go. I have to try to get on a flight home and I need to be at the surgery by 3 pm.’
Shelley experienced a sense of foreboding. ‘Take care.’ Her friend gave her an excuse for a smile. Shelley grabbed her wrist. ‘Please call me if I can help.’
Sarah extricated herself and gave Shelley a brief kiss on the check. ‘I will.’ They both knew she wouldn’t.
The chardonnay left a sour aftertaste in Shelley’s mouth as Sarah walked out of the restaurant. Her friend hitched her handbag over a shoulder, clutched a brown paper bag to her chest and dipped her head into the wind. Shelley shivered, recalling the old saying about someone walking over your grave. The dictates of Sarah’s ancestors were haunting her from their tree-shaded plots and Shelley knew that no matter what anyone advised, Sarah would take the hardest path. She always had. The girl was drawn to Wangallon and was clearly determined to protect it. But then with a history like the Gordons, what did she expect. There was going to be some fallout, Shelley decided as she winked at a dark-haired man near the restaurant door.
Jim waited patiently on the opposite corner of the street near Hyde Park, feeling guilty at his newly acquired skill. His decision to follow Sarah after the meeting with their respective lawyers had been borne of both anger and frustration. There was a fight looming, one he wanted to avoid if possible. He had planned on confronting Sarah without the ‘suits’ and suggest they try to discuss things amicably, although now he realised how naive he had been and his initial readiness to confront her had been replaced with indecision and tiredness.
Jim watched as Sarah left the restaurant alone, eventually dawdling in front of the David Jones department store window. Her long, glossy hair blew in the wind as she readjusted her handbag, before turning the corner. Jim dashed across the lanes of traffic to follow her, narrowly missing two taxis and a bus. Sarah walked quickly and Jim found himself ducking between pedestrians and apologising for his rudeness as he circumnavigated the crowds at the next set of traffic lights and stepped blindly in front of a lady in a wheelchair. Eventually he found himself in Pitt Street Mall. There was no sign of Sarah.
Jim sat heavily on a wooden bench and listened blankly as two young office workers discussed the death of a friend’s parent. The widow was taking it very badly. So badly that sedatives were being used and their girlfriend was moving back home on the advice of their family doctor. Jim pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it carefully. Tony Woodbridge had located his birth father’s address in Queensland. Ronald Gordon lived on the Gold Coast and his wife, Sue, Sarah’s mother, was recently deceased.
‘They’ll be grieving for months, that lot.’ The rather rotund girl commented on Jim’s left.
‘You’re not wrong, Kylie. Once you lose someone close it takes months for people to get over it,’ her friend added, ‘if they ever do’.
On the flight from Scotland, Jim had wondered what it would be like to meet his birth father. He’d had visions of a welcoming reunion, of being literally embraced by the man who was his real father. Now he knew the reality was very different. Ronald Gordon had known of Jim’s existence for years and he hadn’t bothered to make his acquaintance before this. The death of Sarah’s mother was unlikely to change Ronald’s attitude. The real barrier between them, Jim guessed, wasn’t time and absence. It was Wangallon. Sarah was obsessed with the property and she was her father’s daughter, and Jim Macken was the unwanted lad from Scotland who could ruin a close family’s heritage.
There was a young busker standing only a few feet away from where Jim sat. He was singing along to music from a tape recorder. His voice verged on the ordinary, yet any coin that came his way was greeted with such a wondrous smile that he invariably found the donation doubled. There was a person, Jim decided, who was happy in his own skin. He was making his own way in the world and not taking anything that he hadn’t made himself. Jim thought of his Scottish parents and wished he was back home. Next week, he promised himself. Next week, after the tests are back he’d book his return flight home. He wasn’t going to stay here with no friends to support him. He was paying his lawyer a fortune so Woodbridge could handle everything in his absence.
Sarah approached the busker and dropped coins in the hat at his feet. The man stopped singing and spoke to her for long minutes. Jim watched as Sarah laughed and then walked away. He followed her once again, trying to rehearse in his mind what he might say. He would like to talk to her one more time, yet somehow the words wouldn’t come and instead he found himself thinking of the eerie night he’d spent in Wangallon Homestead with the sprawling paddocks beyond. When Sarah crossed at the lights, Jim didn’t follow. He knew that not only did he not belong in her world, he was unwanted. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets as the early afternoon shoppers and hurrying office workers milled around him. He should never have come to Australia at Robert Macken’s urging, he decided. He should have listened to his mother.