A Changing Land(84)
Lauren laughed. He was just the type of boy who’d pretend something like that just to make him tougher. He dressed slowly and then splashed water on his face from the bowl on the washstand until his shirt was wet through. Taking a drag of the cigarette, Lauren plucked a stray piece of tobacco from her tongue and flicked it into the air. This McKenzie was a strange one to want her services in the middle of the afternoon. Even with the curtains drawn tight against the heat, one could not escape the thickness of the air. It was an unholy time for fornication. She stepped into her chemise, sweat dripping down her like a washer woman. That was her mother’s occupation and it struck her as funny that on a day such as this they would both be suffering. ‘What’s it like then, being there on that great property.’
‘Good. You want to come and see it?’
‘Why?’ Lauren asked guardedly. Luke Gordon had sent her scurrying out the door whereas this one was giving her an invitation.
‘I’ll be getting my own hut out there.’
Lauren knew that meant he wanted someone to cook and clean for him. ‘Not much interested.’
‘I’m planning to be overseer or head stockman and I figured you’d like that.’
Lauren hunched her shoulders and leant against the walls of the hotel room. She inspected her broken fingernails and took another drag of her cigarette, before dropping the butt in a glass of water on the bedside table. ‘You sick of paying for me?’
‘There’s money in it for you.’ He counted out more coins and sat the pile on the edge of the washstand. ‘You need a home. I could give it to you.’
Lauren wet her lips. ‘At Wangallon? Why?’
Because he had Hamish Gordon’s eye and was about to embark on an adventure that would make him indispensable in the future. ‘Respectability.’ Curled within that one word was Jasperson. Having lost count of the number of times he’d spewed up a day’s food after lying with him, he was ready to rid himself of the man. Besides which he needed the other stockmen on side, not laughing at him behind his back. He was no man’s whore. It had all seemed easily attainable until Wetherly’s arrival. His coming freed Andrew Duff for the role of overseer once Jasperson was out of the way and would bring Mungo back to the head stockman position if needed. There was more than a man too many for his liking. Two of them would have to go.
Lauren looked at him. ‘I’m not a whore, you know.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘That I’m not just for the asking.’
He grinned. ‘Well I’ve asked four times and you’ve bedded me.’
Lauren pulled on her skirt, did up her blouse. ‘Come back soon and we’ll see.’ She slid the coin from the bed into the palm of her hand and, slipping on her shoes, she left the room.
The wife of a boundary rider, Lauren thought as she walked downstairs. That would be all the boy was offering: Overseer, blah. Still, it was the first offer she’d had. On the landing Lauren looked over the bannister to make sure no one she knew was in the bar, and then she ran lightly across the floor and out the back. The yard was crowded with Mr Morelli’s hens, and the remains of his vegetable garden were a wilted testament to summer and the limited novelty of bucketing water from the hotel’s well. At the splintered gate, Lauren checked the coins in her hand before lifting the latch and running down the side street to her house.
Mrs Grant was in the backyard, leaning over a fire, stirring a blackened cast iron pot bubbling with water and something grey in colour that Lauren imagined had once been white. The baby, her youngest brother, was lying on the grass balling his eyes out, her sister Annie playing in a patch of mud from used wash water. Mrs Grant was a big woman with thinning blonde hair beneath which were round bloody scabs; some dried, some freshly picked and bleeding. She looked up from the copper and grunted towards a balled-up mess of wet clothes, steam rising from the pile into the hot air. Lauren dropped the bundle into another pot of cold water and swished them about with a wooden paddle before proceeding to pull sheets, long johns, petticoats and towels from the tangled mess to throw over the paling fence to dry. Some of the wet things looked clean, others smelled liked boiled rats. Lauren turned her nose up at the stench. No wonder the clothes usually dried and aired for two days.
‘Well?’ Mrs Grant said in a husky voice grown deep with steam and heat. ‘You missed your sister Susanna. She’s gone and got herself with child. Of course the father wants nothing to do with her, called her a slavering whore or some such.’ Mrs Grant wiped her dripping nose with the back of her hand. ‘Don’t blame him.’