A Changing Land(73)

‘Get off,’ he struggled. Ahead Lee was shuffling along the avenue of trees, beyond lay the neatly plotted square of the vegetable garden. One of the maids was in the garden, a basket over her arm. As if on cue Lee began walking towards the maid, his fist flaying the air in agitation, chasing the girl from his domain. Angus and Willy crawled on their stomachs to a tree and then darted to another.

‘Ouch.’ Willy extracted a prickly burr from his big toe.

‘Shh,’ Angus frowned.

Margaret’s soft voice drifted across to them. They dropped behind a log as Mungo and Margaret sat at the base of a gum, he with his legs spread long and wide and she with her skirts tucked about her ankles.

‘I would see you tonight.’

Angus peered above the fallen timber, watching bug-eyed as Mungo took Margaret’s hand in his. It was pale next to his blackness.

‘I’ll be going again soon; in two full moons.’ Mungo glanced about them. ‘We could meet at the ridge.’

Angus clapped Willy on the head and they ducked behind the log, their hands clasped across each other’s mouths.

Margaret removed her hand from his grasp. ‘I’m promised.’

Mungo took the girl by her shoulders. ‘He is old. He will die soon and then –’

‘Then there will be another.’

There were tears in the girl’s eyes. Angus saw them swell in size like small quail eggs and then drop, glistening, to wet the material of her dress. Mungo reached for her and kissed her.

Angus jammed Willy’s face in the dirt to muffle his laughter.

‘I would be with you,’ Mungo said softly.

‘For one night?’ Margaret shook her head. ‘It is not enough.’ She stood, turning to look at him. ‘In here,’ she touched her chest, ‘I am not black, I am not white. I am me. Do you see me?’

‘I too have dreams,’ Mungo told her. ‘Most of them remain in the sky with the spirit people.’

‘That is because you make it so.’ Margaret shook her head. ‘You are not the one who must lie with an old man. Who must listen to the jibes of the women because my father was white.’

‘These are our people.’

Margaret scowled. ‘I have not seen you camped by the creek. I have not seen you for nine moons. I think maybe that sometimes you too are white.’

Mungo scrunched a handful of twigs in the palm of his hand and tossed them into the tufted grass at his feet. Margaret walked away.

Angus rolled away from the log. ‘Blackfella business.’

‘Mebbe whitefella business too,’ Willy answered. ‘This is bad thing,’ he cautioned, ‘this wanting.’

Mungo looked like bad meat had entered his belly.





Frank Michaels looked at his appointment book and squinted, as if wishing he were blind. Sarah Gordon was slotted in for 3 pm, Mr Harvey Jamieson, a personal friend and prominent entrepreneur with a recalcitrant wife and messy divorce looming, had a thick line through his name. He would have to take the old boy out for a scotch to make it up to him, Frank decided. God knew he would probably need it. He was on his third wife. Pushing his reading glasses onto the bridge of his nose, Frank studied the facsimile received earlier.

Mr Woodbridge advised he was acting on behalf of one James Robert Macken of the village of Tongue, Northern Scotland and that his client wished to receive his full entitlement as bequeathed to him by the late Angus Gordon. Further, his client wanted a full cash payment and a thirty per cent share of both the livestock and the contents of Wangallon Homestead. James Macken would therefore be contesting the last will and testament of Angus Gordon accordingly. Frank placed the facsimile to one side, removed his reading glasses and leant back in his black leather office chair. Tony Woodbridge was capable enough. The man knew how to argue a case. Unfortunately he was not averse to underhand shenanigans either.

‘Ronald, old chap,’ he said aloud, addressing Sarah’s father, ‘you should have kept your dick in your pants, old boy’. Frank wasn’t one for dramatics but he felt disturbed by James Macken. In his experience there was nothing worse than dealing with someone who was comparatively poor with a grudge, and it was clear by the Macken boy’s demands that he did begrudge the Gordons. His second concern of the day came via another telephone call that caused him to drop his blue enamelled Sheaffer ink pen on the office floor. Were it not for the knock on his door announcing his personal assistant, Rhonda, with Sarah Gordon in tow, he may well have added a little whisky to his morning coffee.